Sacred Read Online Free Page A

Hamlyn and Kohl.
    But recently, shell-shocked I suppose by our exposure to the raging psychosis of Evandro Arujo, Gerry Glynn, and Alec Hardiman—an exposure that cost Angie’s ex-husband, Phil, his life—we’d closed the agency. We hadn’t been doing much of note since, unless you count talking in circles, watching old movies, and drinking too much as doing something.
    I’m not sure how long it would have lasted—maybe another month, maybe until our livers divorced us byciting cruel and unusual punishment—but then Angie looked at Trevor Stone with a kinship she’d shown toward no one in three months and actually smiled without affectation, and I knew we’d take his case, even if he was so impolite as to kidnap and drug us. And the fifty grand, let’s admit it, went a long way toward helping us overlook Trevor’s initial bad form.
    Find Desiree Stone.
    Simple objective. How simple the execution of that objective would be remained to be seen. To find her, I was pretty sure we’d have to find Jay Becker or at least follow his tracks. Jay, my mentor, and the man who’d given me my professional maxim:
    “No one,” he told me once near the end of my apprenticeship, “and I mean, no one, can stay hidden if the right person is looking for him.”
    “What about the Nazis who escaped to South America after the war? No one found Josef Mengele until he’d died peacefully and free.”
    And Jay gave me a look I’d become accustomed to during our three months together. It was what I called his “G-man look,” the look of a man who’d done his time in the darkest corridors of government, a man who knew where bodies were buried and which papers had been shredded and why, who understood the machinations of true power better than most of us ever would.
    “You don’t think people knew where Mengele was? Are you kidding me?” He leaned over our table in the Bay Tower Room, tucked his tie against his waist even though our plates and table crumbs had been cleared, impeccable as always. “Patrick, let me assure you of something, Mengele had three huge advantages over most people who try to disappear.”
    “And they were?”
    “One,” he said and his index finger rose, “Mengele had money. Millions initially. But millionaires can be found. So, two”—his middle finger joined the index—“he had information—on other Nazis, on fortunes buried under Berlin, on all sorts of medical discoveries he’d made using Jews as guinea pigs—and this information went to several different governments, including our own, who were supposedly looking for him.”
    He raised his eyebrows and sat back smiling.
    “And the third reason?”
    “Ah, yes. Reason number three, and the most important—Josef Mengele never had me looking for him. Because nobody can hide from Jay Becker. And now that I’ve trained you, D’Artagnan, my young Gascon, nobody can hide from Patrick Kenzie, either.”
    “Thank you, Athos.”
    He made a flourish with his hand and tipped his head.
    Jay Becker. No one alive ever had more style.
    Jay, I thought as the subway car broke from the tunnel into the waxy green light of Downtown Crossing, I hope you were right. Because here I come. Hide-and-seek, ready or not.
     
    Back at my apartment, I stashed the twenty grand in the space behind the kitchen baseboard where I stow my backup guns. Angie and I dusted off the dining room table and spread out what we’d accumulated since this morning. Four photographs of Desiree Stone were fanned out in the center, followed by the daily progress reports Trevor had received from Jay until he disappeared thirteen days ago.
    “Why did you wait so long to contact another investigator?” I’d asked Trevor Stone.
    “Adam Kohl assured me he’d put another man on it,but I think he was stalling. A week later, they dropped me as a client. I spent five days looking into every private investigator in the city who had an honest reputation, and eventually settled on the two of