Last to Die: A gripping psychological thriller not for the faint hearted Read Online Free Page A

invented, Darla thought sourly as she hung up.
    ‘That the dog woman?’ Chippy asked, squeezing words out around his burger. Darla tried not to look at the congealed mass in his mouth. She tolerated Chippy’s brain-dead conversations, his casual attitude to work, his rudeness and his inability to use deodorant, but she hated that he talked with his mouth full and had lost count of the number of times she had told him to stop doing so. Had she her way, she would have opened the Escalade and booted him out there and then. Unfortunately, Darla’s boss, Popeye, paid Chippy cheaply and off the books, and he could at least operate a camera.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘She say when we need to go see her?’
    ‘Tomorrow at noon.’
    Chippy looked worried.
    ‘What?’
    ‘I don’t like dogs. Especially those big ones.’
    ‘Too bad, it’s a two-page spread in the supplement. We need the photos of them in action.’
    ‘Those dogs, man, I seen them. They’re real mean.’
    ‘They’re  supposed  to be mean. They’re attack dogs.’
    ‘Shit man, what if they attack us?’
    ‘Then we’ll have a different slant on the story.’ Darla shot him a sneaky glance. ‘But seriously, if I were you Chippy I’d wear good running shoes.’
    ‘ Me? ’
    ‘Sure, I like dogs, so I’m okay, but you … they can smell fear you know. Smell it like a shark smells blood in the water.’
    ‘Oh Jesus, really?’
    ‘Trained for it. You’ll be like a big piñata to them.’
    Chippy grew pale under his tan. Darla glanced out the window and thought about how much she really hated her life.
    She had worked at  The Gazette  for four years. Four years of covering stupid drunks who crashed their cars into trees on payday, stupid cats trapped behind walls and stupid hick families who swore they saw ‘ something ’ in the woods while camping. But this, this stupid  dog  crap, seemed like a new low.
    It was a joke assignment; she had become a joke.
    Darla sighed. It hadn’t started out like this. True, her father, Ted Levine, had been the one to get her through the door at  The Gazette , but nepotism did not prevent her from working hard. It was just that nothing really ever happened in Rockville. Hell, even Denton, the next city over, had a decent football team whose players were constantly in the news for various stupid but entertaining pranks. Denton provided not just one, but two politicians caught with their pants down in bathrooms, swearing blind they had no idea foot tapping could be so suggestive, while their wives stood, stone-faced, behind them.
    ‘Hey, ain’t that the guy?’ Chippy said.
    ‘That’s him.’
    Darla watched Sam Villiers stroll down the street. His massive gut was cinched tight beneath a pink and green check shirt, which was tucked into gaudy mint-green pants that would not have looked out of place on a 1970s pop singer, assuming the pop singer was a small obese auctioneer with a brand-spanking-new addition to his police record which he hoped and prayed no one knew about.
    ‘Let’s try to get a shot of him with the bank in the background,’ Darla said. She grabbed her recorder and fluffed her hair in the rear-view mirror.
    ‘Aw, look, he’s turned around.’
    They watched Villiers pat his pockets and do an about turn.
    ‘Musta forgot something.’
    ‘You don’t say.’
    ‘Prob’ly his wallet.’
    ‘Mm.’
    ‘Funny how he always eats in the same place.’
    ‘What’s funny about it?’
    ‘How come he don’t get bored, man?’
    ‘How come you don’t get bored asking stupid, unanswerable questions?’
    ‘Me, I get bored eating the same shit. Gotta change it up.’
    ‘You’ve eaten tacos and burgers every single day we’ve worked together.’
    ‘Different shit in ’em though. It ain’t the same if the shit’s different.’
    The phone rang again. Darla offered a silent thank you to whatever saint covered mindless conversations.
    ‘Darla Levine!’
    ‘Where are you?’
    It was Pip Lowe from the