Black Lightning Read Online Free PDF

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    Anne glanced at Kraven’s hand for a moment, her eyes fixing on the long, strong fingers, the heavy tendons, and the thick veins starkly etched against Kraven’s pale skin. An image rose in her mind of those hands sunk deep into the organs and entrails of his victims. Involuntarily, she took a step back.
    Pulling her eyes away from Richard Kraven’s hands, Anne forced herself to look directly into his face.
    Though he was past forty, Kraven looked to be no more than thirty. The coal-black, wavy hair that had given his features a vaguely Byronic look had been shaved off the night before, but his face was exactly as Anne remembered it from his trial.
    The softly curved, almost voluptuous lips; the straight, aquiline nose and wide-set eyes—movie star eyes, Anne had always called them—were the same as they had always been. No lines showed in his pale skin, no creases had formed around his eyes or mouth. When he spoke, it was as if he’d read her mind.
    “If I were guilty, don’t you think it would show in my face by now? Don’t you think just the knowledge of what I’d done would have started to change me?”
    Even his voice was the same, soft and reasonable.
    “Did you ever hear of Dorian Gray?” Anne countered.
    Kraven’s lips tightened slightly, but the flatness in his eyes didn’t change at all. It was that look that Anne remembered most, the cold flatness that had been the first thing she noticed about Kraven when she met him four years ago, after he’d been arrested in Bridgeport and it seemed as if every reporter in Seattle had gone to Connecticut on the same plane. It was those eyes that made his face a terrifying mask of almost alluring cruelty back then, and now, as he trained them fully on her, their effect hadn’t changed.
    “Shouldn’t you be a bit more gracious?” he asked. “After all, you’ve finally convinced them to kill me.”
    Anne shook her head. “I wasn’t on the jury, and I wasn’t the judge. I wasn’t even a witness. Neither at the trial nor to any of the things you did.”
    Richard Kraven offered Anne Jeffers the smile that had convinced so many people he was innocent. Had it not been for the flatness in his eyes, his expression would have looked almost wry. “Then how can you be so sure I did anything?”
    “The evidence,” Anne replied. Her eyes flicked toward the closed door at the end of the hall, and the guard, who was watching through a glass panel. How quickly could he open that door? Again it was as if Kraven could read her mind.
    “Surely you don’t think I’m any danger to you?” he asked, his voice taking on a warm concern that would have soothed Anne if it had come from anyone else.
    How does he do it? Anne wondered. How does he make himself sound so normal? Except for the shaved head and the prison clothes, Richard Kraven still looked exactly like the popular young electronics professor he had once been, back when his star was still rising at the University of Washington. “I think if you had the chance, you would kill me right now,” she said, keeping her voice level by sheer force of will. “I think if you weren’t behind those bars, you would strangle me without so much as a second thought, and then take my body apart the way you did with all the others.” As she stared into his expressionless eyes, Anne felt fury rising up in her. Why wouldn’t he admit what he was, what he’d done? Her voice rose a notch. “How many were there, Kraven? Besides the three you were convicted of, how many? How many just in Seattle? Five? Seven?” There was still no reaction at all in Kraven’s eyes, and Anne felt her rage building. There had to be some way to get through to this—this what? Man? But Richard Kraven wasn’t a man. He was a monster. A cold, unfeeling monster who had never acknowledged what he’d done, let alone shown any remorse. “Have we even found all the bodies yet?” she demanded. “For God’s sake, Kraven, at least tell me that