In Shadows Read Online Free Page B

body out of the water by its arm. Again, there were bullet holes everywhere. “This all of ’em?”
    Jake frowned, shrugging. “I don’t know how many were in the cars.”
    The cop nodded, pointing down the beach. “There’s another puddle of blood there, bigger than the one by the car. Who the hell killed these guys?”
    “I don’t know,” said Jake.
    He shivered from the rain and wind and shock. Slipping his hands into his pants pockets, his fingers wrapped around the chain he’d ripped from José Torrio’s throat, and he lifted it to his face. A beveled stone the color of fresh blood was attached to the chain with a gold jeweler’s mount. Jake stared at it, wondering what impulse had caused him to safeguard the bauble through the murderous events of the past few minutes.
    “You must have a real guardian angel,” said the cop, grinning sarcastically. He jerked on the corpse’s arm again, and it came away from the torso. The cop whistled under his breath as his partner caught hold of the corpse’s lapel and continued dragging the body toward the beach. “You ever seen anybody get fucked up this bad?”
    “What’s that?” whispered Jake.
    “I asked if you’d ever seen anybody this fucked up.”
    “Not in a long time.”
    He shoved the necklace into the pocket of his jacket and turned away, heading back toward the beach.
    Run away, Jake. Run away.

HE STORM BLEW OVER BEFORE DARK , leaving the smell of ozone in the air and brilliant stars dangling from a sheet of black crepe. It had taken the rest of the day and half the night before both the Galveston and Houston Police were done questioning Jake. Both departments wondered just what the hell he thought he was doing meeting with Reever alone, and how eight men ended up dead, four shot so many times they looked like sieves. Jake had no reasonable answer—which bothered him as much as it did anyone else. But what bothered him worse was the explosion of violence itself. He couldn’t get the thought out of his head that he was somehow responsible for it.
    If he had planned the meeting better, at a more public location, then José wouldn’t have dared try the hit. If he had informed Cramer beforehand, his partner would never have okayed the meeting. If . . .
    By three in the morning he was well into his third double Scotch when he heard the lock clicking on the front door. A bottle of pain pills rested unopened on the glass-toppedtable beside him, and the liquor hadn’t yet dulled his senses, not nearly as much as he wanted it to. He could see the brightly lit interior of his apartment reflected in the liquor bottle so he didn’t turn, just glanced at the Glock, resting in a box beside the liquor.
    “Hello, Cramer,” he said, as his partner sauntered out onto the balcony.
    Jake could have bounced a baseball off Cramer’s frown as the man dropped into the other lawn chair like a giant cannonball. His face looked as though it had been carved out of black granite, then shot head-on with a bowlful of dry Grape-Nuts, and he was so dark people said the whites of his eyes blinded them. A tough, streetwise cop, he bore not one but three bullet scars from separate encounters with what he called “percolators.” Jake expected to hear some homespun Cajun platitudes, but tonight Cramer was in plain-speak mode.
    “Nice,” said Cramer, staring at the bottle and the painkillers. “I could have been one of the Torrios for all you knew, and you’d be too messed up to do anything but smile while I blew your stupid head off.”
    Jake shook his head. “I’m sticking to Scotch. And to my knowledge none of the Torrios’ men has a key.”
    “New piece?” said Cramer, nudging the pistol with a finger the size of a hand-rolled cigar.
    “Backup gun.”
    “Goddamn it, Jake! That meeting was about the stupidest fucking stunt you’ve pulled since I’ve known you.”
    Jake shrugged. “You still look a little peaked.”
    “I’ll give you
peaked
, you sonofabitch.