In Shadows Read Online Free Page A

sonofabitch,” said the mustachioed cop, whistling through his teeth.
    The hole was low because he’d been lying on his back in the surf. But the bullet had only torn some skin as it bounced over his ribs, skittering off his collarbone, now exposed like one of the white shells on this beach.
    “Come on,” said the redheaded officer as the other policeman left to join the other cops near the shooters’ sedan. “Hop in my car. I’ll get you to the hospital.”
    Jake shook his head. “I want to see the men that were shooting at me.”
    “You need stitches.”
    “I’m not going to bleed to death,” said Jake.
    The cop finally shrugged. “Want to tell me what happened?”
    When Jake had finished recapping the attack, the cop just stared at him. “You didn’t kill these guys down here with any handgun,” he said.
    “They’re all dead?” said Jake, shaken. He recalled the shots going
down
the beach. Who had they been shooting at if not him or the arriving police?
    “They’re dead, all right.”
    Jake staggered around to the front of the cruiser where the other officers held their flashlights on the corpses.
    Jake had seen plenty of bodies before. Auto accidents, murder victims, suicides. Harris County wasn’t LA, but Texans didn’t like being outdone by Californians. They had their own host of serial killers, bar fighters, and road ragers. And of course shoot-’em-ups were as traditional as rodeos. But these guys looked like they’d been in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Their bodies were riddled with bullet holes and shotgun wounds.
    The redheaded cop ambled close enough to question Jake with his eyes.
    “What I told you was what I saw,” Jake croaked, swallowing a giant lump in his throat.
    “How long ago did the shooting stop?”
    “Maybe four, five minutes.”
    “Nobody else with you or on the beach but Torrio’s men?”
    “No one I saw,” said Jake.
    Lights and sirens were coming from both ends of the beach now. Jake started to say that the cars were going to destroy any footprints or tire tracks, but the rain was already accomplishing that.
    “Okay, then,” said the cop, coaxing Jake toward his car. “There’s no sense
us
standing here getting pummeled.”
    Jake slid into the passenger side of the cruiser, and the officer dropped into the driver’s seat, flipping on the heat.
    “There’s bandages in the console. You want me to put something on that wound?”
    Jake shook his head, ripping open one of the packs of cotton gauze. He smeared the cloth with an antiseptic and pressed it against the gash, grimacing not so much in pain but at the awful sensation of some alien substance oozing
into
his flesh.
    The radio crackled. “Looks like we got another one washing up.”
    Jake nodded into the wall of rain. “Let’s go.”
    The car dug into the sand, then slid and slithered along the beach to a second dark sedan bogged down near the surf. The cop was out first, trotting toward the headlights of the other cruisers. Jake followed slowly, ignoring the pain that was beginning to radiate from his ribs.
    One body lay on the sand, and two uniformed officers were up to their waists in the breakers dragging another corpse toward the beach.
    Jake felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.
    “You okay?” said the redheaded cop. “You’re looking pretty pale.”
    “I’m all right,” insisted Jake.
    But he wasn’t and he knew it. For fourteen years he had miraculously managed to avoid violence in a job where gunfire was an accepted hazard. Now, in a matter of a few moments, he had slaughtered three men in the parking lot, and Reever and at least four others were dead as well.
    He nudged his way past the cops to stare at what was left of the corpse on the beach. It looked as though the man had tried to eat one of the shotguns. Jake turned quickly away,striding out into the surf toward the oncoming cops and their grisly baggage.
    One of them managed a macabre grin, lifting the last