A Darker Justice Read Online Free PDF

up there.”
    “My team has already formed a perimeter around Judge Hannah’s farm. We’ll keep Ms. Crow safe the entire time she’s there.” Safer looked at Mary. “Have you ever fired a gun?”
    “I shoot a 9mm Beretta twice a week,” she replied promptly. “I’m no sharpshooter, but I do okay.”
    “Then it might not be a bad idea if you brought the Beretta with you.”
    “Just a minute!” cried Jim. He turned to her, his thick gray brows drawn with concern. “Look, Mary, I know how loyal you are to your old friends, but you’ve got no business in the middle of a federal operation like this.”
    Mary thought of her mother’s death years ago, and her grandmother Bennefield’s death in September. Jonathan had left her, and as of two hours ago, Alex was a married woman. She looked at her boss with somber eyes.
    “Jim, Irene Hannah is the last shred of a family I’ve got left,” she answered softly. “I would do anything to keep her alive.”
    Jim shook his head, knowing further protest would be a waste of breath. He knew all too well what Mary Crow was like when she dug her heels in. However much he might say, she would go off and try to talk this judge into being guarded by these idiots, everyone else be damned. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then he stabbed his finger at Daniel Safer.
    “I can remember when the FBI would have been embarrassed to ask a female civilian to help with an investigation. . . .”
    “This wasn’t my idea, Mr. Falkner,” Safer interrupted. “I have orders to follow, just like Ms. Crow.”
    “I don’t give a damn what you’ve got,” Jim thundered. “If this girl comes back here with as much as a broken fingernail, I’ll personally hack off one of your most treasured parts. And I won’t do it in a single blow, either! I don’t care if you’re J. Edgar Hoover reincarnated.”
    “That won’t be a problem, Mr. Falkner.” Safer snapped his briefcase shut, then turned his dark eyes on Mary. “Meet me here at the courthouse at seven tomorrow morning. Bring your weapon, Ms. Crow, and be ready to do some fast talking in North Carolina.”

CHAPTER 4
    Two hundred miles north of Atlanta, two boys were exploring the third floor of Camp Unakawaya’s castle. The first two floors of the old place held little interest for these boys; they attended home school on the first floor and slept in a drafty dormitory on the second. But the third floor was something else. Long regarded as haunted, the third floor was an old, shadowy warren of hospital rooms that still held medical equipment from 1919. It was said that during thunderstorms you could still hear the screams of the mutilated ghost-soldiers as they revisited the trenches in their nightmares. It was, of course, here that the boys explored.
    “Look!” Willett Pierson thrust one pudgy hand deep into an old chifforobe. “There’s some cool stuff back here!”
    Tommy Cabe watched as Willett pulled out a small, suede-bound notebook and something that looked like a weird set of false teeth. Grinning, Willett handed the book to Cabe and immediately stuck the teeth in his mouth.
    “Cheeldren
of ze
night,”
Willett moaned, imitating Bela Lugosi. “I
vant
to suck your
blood
!” Holding his hands out like claws, he began to creep toward Tommy. At just an inch over five feet, with hair the color of a carrot, Willett Pierson looked more like a North Pole elf than a Transylvanian vampire. Tommy Cabe laughed.
    “Man, can you believe somebody actually wore these?” Willett spat the teeth from his mouth. They were the top front teeth only, constructed long ago, with thin, painful-looking wires to hold them in the wearer’s mouth.
    “I guess.” Tommy Cabe examined the book Willett had handed him, squinting at the spidery old-fashioned script. “Somebody wrote this diary. Captain Nigel Dempsey of the Eleventh Fusiliers.”
    “I bet he was one of the patients here,” cried Willett. “This must be all his old shit.