Broken Read Online Free PDF Page B

breath, and the gun swayed by millimeters as he did so. “You were my favorite student, the best pupil I ever—”
    “ Do you kill the lovers of all your best students?” I saw him blanch. “Or am I special?”
    He let hang a moment of silence between us. “You’re special all right. Or you were. Now you’re so blinded with rage you can’t even think straight enough to come up with an operational concept and carry it out with a clear head.” He waved his hand at my pistol on the floor and then let it come back to mop the sweat pouring down his brow. “Whoever got that gun for you oughta get their ass kicked; all they did was set you up to commit suicide.” He smacked his dry lips together again; they were dark in the low light of the kitchen, almost blue.
    “ I’ll make sure to let Kurt know what you think of his efforts,” I said.
    “ You have to analyze your target’s weaknesses—”
    “ I know that,” I snapped.
    “ Well, you didn’t do it!” He looked like he was ready to yell again, but then a calm settled over him. Beads of sweat hung heavy on his forehead and I saw him open his mouth slightly, move his tongue around inside, then he blinked three times in rapid succession. “Oh. You did.”
    I watched him without flinching. “I did.”
    The shotgun lowered and he started to slump, falling down the counter until he rested on the floor, his back against the wall. “How?” His eyes were clouded, and then he nodded once in understanding. “The vodka.”
    “ The vodka.” I took slow, easy steps over to my pistol, where I stooped to pick it up. “You’ve been going through so much of it, once I sapped the delivery guy’s memory it wasn’t very hard to figure out which box was going to you. I saw you get one of the marked bottles from outside the window. The ones with the yellow label.”
    He gasped a little, his breathing unsteady, and he looked up at me. “How did you know I wouldn’t kill you outright?”
    I nodded. “It was a little bit of a risk, but this was the first test.” I walked back over to him and put my foot on the barrel of his shotgun, pinning it to the floor, before I slid it out of his unresisting grasp. “The poison wasn’t enough to kill you, by the way, even if you drank the whole bottle. You’d be fine in an hour or so, I’d guess. Metahuman metabolism works fast, you know.”
    He looked at me, his eyes half-lidded. “You picked me first?”
    “ I picked you first,” I said quietly. “It had to be you first.”
    “ Why?” It came out as little more than a gasp, his lips blue from the cyanosis that he was fighting against, the lack of oxygen getting to his brain from the poison I’d laced his vodka with.
    “ Because you were going to be the hardest.” I watched his eyes, and they were warm again, even as I watched him struggle to stay conscious. The sweat was rolling off him now, dripping off his forehead and soaking his white t-shirt.
    He smiled. “I’m a tough target. Taught you everything I know. Everything.” His smile evaporated. “You really were my best student.”
    “ I know,” I said. “Which is why you had to be first.”
    “ No,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m not helping Winter anymore. I told him to shove it, after … “ he swallowed, “what happened. I told him he was on his own.”
    “ I know,” I said, squatting down across from him as I picked up the shotgun. “I heard about that.”
    “ I never wanted to—” His whole face sagged, and I watched his tough facade deteriorate. “I never wanted to do what we did that night. But you … “ He gasped, holding his chest, and I knew it must be agonizing. “You don’t know how bad it’s gonna be, what’s coming. I wish … I wish I’d seen a better way, but I didn’t.” He blinked, and then his next words came out choked. “I wish I could make it right.”
    “ You can’t.” I felt the bite when I said it. “Are there more guns in the basement?”
    “