The Guardian (The Wolfe Series) Read Online Free Page A

seeing Aragon.  After all, the city never slept so she might as well use that fact to her advantage.
                  Julie could see that Laurie was weakening.  She called very few of her many clients friends, but she considered Laurie one of them.  She’d never met a sweeter, kinder person than Laurie Kincaid.  She’d watched over the younger woman since she’d arrived in New York so Laurie wouldn’t be taken advantage of.  Julie had begun to worry about Laurie, though.  She saw her friend spending more and more time alone or with that damned horse of hers.  How could you have a normal life if you were spending all of your free time in a horse barn?
                  “Remember, seven o’clock Friday night.”  Julie stood and grabbed her purse before heading for the front door. 
                  “I’ll remember,” Laurie said as she shut the door firmly behind her friend.
     

C hapte r F ive
     
     
    T he “Assassin” was a true psychopath.   Enrique Perez wasn’t motivated by love or fear or anger or hatred.  He didn’t feel those kinder emotions.  He didn’t feel anything at all.  He was a deviant killer, detached from the kind of emotions and feelings other might have, living for sexual indulgence and the thrill of the kill.  He didn’t care about his victims lives or deaths.  He was a seducer, charming his way closer to his victim.  There was no remorse once the killing was done as he was already looking forward to his next kill. 
    He was second-in-command of the C rótalo Cartel and on one occasion, in a single afternoon, he and several other members of the cartel had massacred forty-nine people whose corpses had been decapitated, dismembered and dumped on a highway as a warning to the other cartels and coyotes who were trying to take over his and his boss’, Luzaro Rivera’s, territory. 
    Enrique turned toward the blood-red sunrise and licked his lips, the taste of blood sweet on his tongue.  He now stood in the middle of a second scene of carnage in as many weeks.  Covered from head to toe with the blood of his enemies and more blood dripping from the machete he held in his right hand, he drew the smell of their blood deep into his lungs.  He’d waited patiently until these eighteen people had neared Guadalajara before he and the others had struck from ambush. He had feasted on their screams of agony as they had been systematically mutilated.  He was a stone cold killer who lived to see fear and terror on the faces of others. 
    Enrique shook his head as Luzaro Rivera approached him.  He’d sensed the leader of the Crótalo was growing tired of the life they’d chosen to live so many years ago.  Luzaro had even mentioned getting out of the drug business, but they both knew that was very unlikely.  Luzaro had made too many enemies in his climb up the ladder as head drug kingpin to be safe anywhere in the world unless he was surrounded by his army of paid assassins.
    “Was all this really necessary?” Luzaro asked in a tired voice as he surveyed the carnage where they stood in the blood of those who had been killed.  He didn’t mind the killing, it was part of their business and a way of life to him.  But this kind of butchery he found difficult to understand.
    Enrique laughed a humorless laugh.  “You’re asking me that questions, you who killed twenty-nine cartel operatives in Nayarit last year?  Were the grenades and machine guns you used any different than the machete I prefer?”
    Luzaro was tired of the bloodshed, tired of constantly having to look over his shoulder.  He had formed the Crótalo with a band of army deserters who had acted as enforcers for one of the other cartels.  It had only been a matter of time before they had broken away and fought a bloody turf war with their former bosses and other drug gangs.  Under Luzaro’s leadership the Crótalo had grown into a gang of more than ten thousand gunmen with