Angel Thief Read Online Free PDF Page B

whisper.
    Sara listened, then shook her head, frustrated. She couldn’t hear anything, not the tick of a clock, the hum of a refrigerator, not a floorboard settling or a human breathing. Then again, she didn’t have super-hearing.
    “It’d be nice to know how many are in the house. Khan mightn’t be alone,” Filip said absently. He stood, one knee bent to accommodate the slope of the roof. “Oh well.”
    He jumped and landed on the far side of the fence, on a patch of straggly lawn at the rear of Baz Khan’s house.
    The sudden action startled Sara, but she was beside him as he opened the back door. She heard the locks and bolt disengage at his command. Like her, he could simply materialise inside the house, but he’d need to carry Jay out. Humans didn’t travel well through walls.
    He paused. “You’d better go invisible.”
    “What about you…oh.”
    A black leather jacket and boots changed his casual appearance to one of menace. The gun that appeared in his hand threatened violence.
    Bullets and knives couldn’t hurt angels or djinn. Demons shared the same incorporeal immunity to physical attack. To hurt them required weapons of the spirit, such as the swords the guardian angels used.
    But an angel, djinni or demon could use physical weapons against humans.
    “Don’t hurt anyone.” Sara clutched a handful of Filip’s black jacket and shook it. “Promise.”
    She didn’t want to see him kill.
    He shrugged her off and strode in.
    ***
    Filip walked silently down the short hallway of the suburban house. It had been built sometime in the 1960s and the narrowness of the passage indicated that economy had been an issue. Now it needed either a bulldozer or a thorough renovation. Inhaling the musty smell of stale cigarette smoke and mildew, Filip voted for demolition. Before he obliged, he had to get Jay out.
    If Baz Khan knew anything about Vince Ablett, he’d expect an attack. Ablett hadn’t built an international criminal network by letting anyone beat him. There would be guns, maybe knives, possibly explosives. Of course, none of them could hurt him, but they could hurt Jay. The challenge would be extracting her without injury.
    He paused at the doorway on his left. Dim light filtered through the room’s windows, just enough to reveal it as a kitchen. It was empty, apart from whatever vermin inhabited its sagging cupboards and stinking drains.
    Beyond the kitchen the passage branched to the right. The standard house plan of the era meant the bedrooms and bathroom would be down there. Perhaps Jay was locked in one, sleeping in the exhaustion of terror. Filip doubted Baz Khan would sleep. He’d be awake, waiting for Vince.
    Khan would die at dawn, along with anyone helping him. Vince was efficient at vengeance and ruthless in maintaining his reputation. There would be none of the melodrama Khan himself indulged in with Jay’s kidnapping. Vince would torture, kill and display Khan’s corpse as a warning to anyone thinking of challenging him.
    Unless Filip himself killed Khan as he rescued Jay. He could give the man a clean death.
    Sara would never forgive him, never forget if she watched him kill.
    He halted in the living room doorway and swallowed a curse. He’d miscalculated.
    Khan was alone and he hadn’t locked Jay in a separate room.
    She lay on a mattress in a dark corner of the living room. She’d curled away from the door, facing the wall. Her breathing was even, relaxed in sleep.
    Khan was awake, the tension of his body strung to alertness. He sat on a wooden chair and watched Jay. A rifle lay at his feet. He held a knife with loose familiarity. He was about thirty, clean-shaven, dark. In his sweater and jeans he’d have been unremarked on an Australian street, just another working-class man—if he could hide his intensity.
    A small television at the other end of the room had the sound off, but its screen provided dim lighting in the curtained room. An old sitcom unwound sadly without its