Alone in the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page A

have my shirt back?’
    Her glance flicked down to his bare chest, then shot back up to his face like a rocket. ‘I’m sorry. Your shirt is evidence now, along with the Kevlar vest, but my partner brought you something to wear,’ she said, her tone coolly efficient.
    ‘Marcus,’ Deacon said pleasantly.
    Marcus nodded once. ‘Deacon,’ he said in the same pleasant tone.
    Deacon held out a plain black T-shirt. ‘Good to see you’re not dead.’
    Marcus clenched his teeth against the memory of the shots fired at close range. ‘Yeah,’ he said bitterly. ‘That would have left an even bigger mess.’ He tugged the shirt over his head, managing to swallow most of a groan as fire streaked across his shoulders and down his back.
    ‘I heard that. You need to go to the hospital,’ Scarlett said firmly.
    ‘No. I don’t.’ Marcus took an experimental deep breath, happy when both his lungs inflated properly. ‘I’ve had enough of hospitals to last me a lifetime. Nothing they can do for broken ribs anyway.’ He gave the medic a nod. ‘But thanks for checking me out.’
    ‘Whatever,’ the paramedic said, shaking his head as he slammed the ambulance doors closed and drove away.
    Then it was just the three of them at the end of the alley, standing in a little bubble of silence as CSU processed the scene fifty feet away. Scarlett and Deacon were waiting for his statement, he knew. Suddenly wearier than he’d been in months, Marcus straightened his spine, his gaze arrowing in on the patch of bloodstained asphalt. He had to be careful. He was tired, he was in pain. But most of all, he was filled with cold rage. In this state he could easily reveal more than he should.
    Clear your mind. Tell them only what is relevant to catching Tala’s killer. Everything else was not their business.
    He cleared his throat. ‘Her name was Tala. She was only seventeen.’
    Cincinnati, Ohio
Tuesday 4 August, 3.45 A.M.
     
    ‘Tala what?’ Scarlett asked evenly, thanking God that the man had put a shirt on. Not staring at his chest had taken a sizeable portion of her concentration. Now she could focus on his words. Now I can do my damn job. A girl was dead. The victim deserved justice, not the half-assed efforts of a homicide detective who couldn’t keep her hormones in check.
    Scarlett was glad Deacon had arrived. In the moments she’d stood in the alley alone with Marcus O’Bannion, she’d lost her professional perspective. Her emotions had taken over – and a few of those emotions hadn’t left her feeling proud of herself. She’d felt jealous of the dead girl, for God’s sake, because he’d been meeting her. Then disappointment that he’d been meeting her. All combined with a nearly obsessive refusal to believe that whatever Marcus was up to could be wrong in any way.
    She believed too deeply, too blindly, that he was a good man. That he was a hero.
    ‘She never said her last name.’ Marcus didn’t look at them as he spoke. He was staring at the crime scene, at the spot where the girl had died. ‘I didn’t get the chance to ask.’
    Because the girl had been shot. As had Marcus.
    ‘What did she get the chance to say?’ Scarlett asked.
    Marcus clenched his jaw. ‘That her family was in danger. When I asked from who, she said, “The man and his wife, they own us.”’
    Scarlett’s heart sank.
    Deacon muttered a curse. ‘Owned exactly how?’ he asked.
    ‘I started to ask, but that’s when the first shot was fired and she collapsed. The only other words she said were “Help” and “Malaya”. Then she was gone.’
    ‘ Malaya. ’ Deacon was already typing on his phone. ‘She could have been talking about a place. A reference to modern-day Malaysia.’
    ‘Or it could have been a word,’ Marcus added quietly. ‘Tagalog for “freedom”.’
    ‘Tagalog,’ Scarlett murmured. ‘A dialect of Filipino, right?’ Which would make sense. The girl’s ethnicity was Southeast Asian. That included the