Vendetta Read Online Free Page B

gang of street toughs.
    The horn honked again and he ignored it. The car slunk on.
    On the sidewalk up ahead, the criminal duo Vincent had been trailing seemed to lose interest in sizing up prey and fell to arguing about football instead.
    Vincent’s path took him more deeply into Greenwich Village. Windows flickered with light. Bodies moved along the sidewalk in silhouette from the car traffic. There were a lot of vehicles on the road, especially considering the time of night and that this was Greenwich Village, not busy midtown Manhattan.
    He approached an alley partially blocked by an especially fragrant Dumpster. Years of training as a soldier urged him to caution; it was the perfect hiding place for a potential mugger.
    Then, through the street noise, he detected a snick from across the street in the alley opposite to this one. He sent blood to his auditory system, enhancing his hearing.
    Zing!
    His ears picked up the sound of a bullet rocketing straight at him. His reflexes kicked in and he dove behind the Dumpster, flattening on the ground and covering his head.
    The projectile slammed into the Dumpster, rolling it on its wheels toward Vincent. He rose cautiously to his feet and crabbed backwards against the shadowed brick wall. He focused quickly down his alley in both directions, ensuring that no one was headed his way. Threatened, his beast side began to emerge; he didn’t rein it in fully but he also took care to remain concealed. For all he knew, someone had taken a potshot at him just to see if they had the right man.
    The right
beast
.
    For years, he had been unable to prevent himself from beasting out whenever his safety had been jeopardized. But then Catherine had come into his life and he had learned to subdue it, if not entirely control it. If someone was trying to unmask him, this was a damned dangerous way to go about it.
    There were no more shots. He eased around into the narrow space between the other side of the Dumpster and the wall, and squinted in the direction of the shooter. He spent a couple of seconds recreating the scene as only a beast could do. In his mind’s eye he saw a single shooter in a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and boots—looking much like Vincent himself, actually—standing in the alley across the street holding a pistol. As soon as the man had loosed the shot, he had run.
    Vincent took off with a burst of speed. He could run faster than any human alive. But once he crossed the street and leaped over trashcans and wooden pallets into the alley, he found nothing, and he couldn’t track his quarry any farther. Able to see in the dark, he looked up toward the fire escape, then higher up at the rooftop. He raced through the alleys of the next three streets, hearing only his own footsteps.
    He blurred west, then east, doubling back, then slowed and settled into predator mode once more. Centering himself, he allowed his beast side to collect more evidence: smells and visual clues his human side would never uncover. The man had been wiry, and none too clean. He used heroin. Vincent mentally saw the man fire off a round from a .40 caliber handgun, run, then climb into a car that was rolling along. The car was old. He couldn’t tell much about the vehicle except that it had recently had an oil change.
    He returned to the Dumpster and ran his fingers along the grimy exterior facing the street, seeking the bullet. It had torn through the thick metal and lodged in the other side, causing a dimple. He decided that before he went Dumpster diving to retrieve the cartridge, he’d see if he could find the shell casing. He crossed back into the shooter’s alley and searched.
    There was no casing, or it could simply be that Vincent missed the tiny object. That could be a telling detail. A random shooter would have left evidence behind, being either too ignorant or uncaring to bother retrieving it. A pro would have been more diligent. So the question remained: was this someone who had intended to