Acquired Motives (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

like church.
          Mercifully, his mind drifted again. He remembered a birthday many years ago. The sound of laughter, the taste of a white cake with pink frosting.
          Perhaps he fell asleep, or maybe it was only a daydream. But his eyes shot wide open, and he tried to scream when he heard a click.
          He wrenched himself back to consciousness. What? No one had touched him, but there had been a bright light, a popping sound.
          He strained to lift his chin and found he could see under the edge of the blindfold. He could barely make out a shape in front of him. A hand, gripping something.
          His heart began to pound. He thought he could smell his own blood for an instant. But that was impossible. Scared . . . he was so scared he knew he'd shit where he sat.
          Suddenly someone stretched his knees wider. He fought against the force, the naked vulnerability. He'd seen goats right before slaughter. His old man had been a master of the kill. He was quick with the blade, but animals always knew what was coming. They could smell death. . . and you could see death in their eyes.
          "So you fancy yourself a ladies' man?''
          There was laughter just as a sickening, red-hot pain radiated out from his groin.
          "Pain is a great teacher, Anthony."
          He was unconscious when the mask was ripped from his face, and the second photograph was taken. He didn't see the flash, and he didn't feel the blood that drained down his legs and pooled at his feet.

CHAPTER FOUR
    L ATE W EDNESDAY AFTERNOON , the Dark Canyon fire burning in the Jemez Mountains northwest of Santa Fe was declared seventy-five percent contained. Teams of firefighters working deep in the Santa Fe National Forest had spent two days and nights trenching a three-foot-wide fire line to encircle the flames. A Forest Service dispatcher confirmed that the fire had burned twenty-eight hundred acres, was still active in small areas, and would not be fully suppressed for a day or two.
          Three hours later, a new pressure system rolled in from the Chihuahuan Desert bringing hot forty-mile-per-hour gusts and not a drop of moisture. The previously lethargic Dark Canyon fire reacted to the transfusion of oxygen and opened up like a giant blast furnace. The ground fire had become a crown fire, one of such heat and intensity that it raced from treetop to treetop driven by its own winds.
          Benji Muñoz y Concha, a first-year fire rookie, fourth-generation firefighter, and furloughed minimum-security inmate at the Penitentiary of New Mexico, witnessed the explosion near San Antonio Creek. He said a fast prayer that he wasn't watching a blow-up, a blaze that literally shoots hundreds of feet skyward and might devour a square mile within a minute.
          He took off running uphill—like the flames—but veered west up the safety lane the crew had devised. The safety lane fed into an existing Forest Service road. Eventually, the road would intersect Highway 4.
          Night was lit up like day. Benji lunged over the rough road and felt heat lick at his heels. The runt end of the Dark Canyon fire was going to dog him until he reached the ridge top and his comrades. His heavy logger boots slowed him down; the fireproofed green pants clawed at his sweat-soaked legs. His yellow shirt was gray with ash. Somewhere along the way he lost his "salad bowl," the plastic hardhat all firefighters wear, as well as the backpack that contained his goggles, headlamp, gloves, maps, and first-aid kit. Also gone were ax, brush hook, and shovel. Two canteens still dangled from his nylon belt. So did a portable fire shelter—the tent-sleeping bag that was every firefighter's worst nightmare; once it became necessary to use the shelter, odds were the firefighter was a ghost.
          Benji felt confident he could outrace the fire. He was a runner trained for endurance, an athlete who had logged