The Devil's Elixir Read Online Free

thousands of miles to the east.
    A war that had left deep scars on Corliss.
    Scars he’d never forget.
    Mementos of that savage night in Mexico, like the pain that was now throbbing across his spine, a reminder that always reared its malignant head when it was least welcome.
    The speculation that a Mexican cartel was behind the violent kidnapping of the scientists was supported by the fact that the DEA and other law enforcement agencies had made significant inroads into shutting down hundreds of meth labs across the United States. This had driven production south of the border, where the narcos had set up superlabs far from the reach of the Mexican authorities and where the talents of the missing scientists were a more likely fit. Furthermore, this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. Other researchers had gone missing. In four earlier, separate incidents, chemists working for pharmaceutical corporations had been grabbed while doing fieldwork in Central and South America. No ransoms were ever demanded. The men were never seen again. Then things escalated. Two other incidents followed, this time on Corliss’s side of the border. A university chemistry professor in El Paso, a little over a year ago. Then another, a few months later, just outside Phoenix, snatched along with his lab assistant in an early morning swoop.
    And now this.
    Bang in Corliss’s jurisdiction.
    A vicious, deadly shoot-out on an idyllic stretch of the Pacific coast.
    A shoot-out that had snared Corliss’s interest even more than it naturally merited, given that he was heading the local DEA field office.
    He knew it wasn’t just any narco.
    He’d suspected it was Navarro the second he heard the news. Unlike his colleagues at the DEA, Corliss had never bought the story that Navarro had been killed by internal cartel bloodletting. He knew the monster was still alive, and when he’d dug deeper into the missing scientists’ areas of expertise, as he’d done for the previous kidnappings, he’d been left in no doubt. It fit a pattern, a common thread that ran through all their work, one only he had picked up on, one he’d kept to himself.
    For now.
    Raoul Navarro—El Brujo, meaning the shaman, the black arts practitioner, the sorcerer—was still after it. Corliss was sure of it.
    The burn in his spine intensified.
    He’s getting wilder, more bold, more reckless , he thought.
    Which meant one of two things.
    The bastard was getting desperate. Or he was getting close.
    Either way, it was bad news.
    Or, maybe . . . it was an opportunity.
    An opportunity for retribution.
    The retribution that Corliss had been hungering for since the day Raoul Navarro and his men came for him.
    His hands shaking and sweaty, Corliss reached into his desk drawer and pulled out the small, innocuous plastic bottle. He glanced furtively at the door to his office as he fished out a couple of capsules, making sure no one was on his way in to see him, then flicked them into his mouth and swallowed them without water. He didn’t need anything to chase them down with. Not anymore. Not after being on the pills for all these years.
    He didn’t have any proof that it was Navarro, of course. He wasn’t about to voice his suspicions either. He’d been there, done that, years ago, and he knew what watercooler chatter was going on behind his back. He knew that his colleagues and his superiors had little time for what they viewed as his delusional obsession with the man who’d ruined his life, the man who’d taken away what he held dearest on this earth.
    He didn’t care what they thought.
    He knew El Brujo was still out there. And, as it did for most of his waking life and a big part of his sleeping one, the mere thought of it whipped up a storm in the pit of his stomach.
    He stared at the muted screen again, his numb eyes taking in yet another loop of the same footage, and thought about the part of the story that he was most sensitive to: the pain and