Carter Read Online Free PDF Page A

told her to wait. She entered before Murph did.
    “Your son, he is young?” Murph told her he was eleven. “You weren’t very old then, were you? I’m very old. Thousands of years old, and…I’m babbling.”
    “Yeah, so you are. And so you know, it’s kinda freaking me out a little. He’s not a killer or anything, but I appreciate the gun. He’ll…he’s pretty smart, and he’s very street smart too.”
    They moved up the stairs, and she paused in front of a door. The door was open about an inch, something that would never have happened if they weren’t in trouble. Looking at Linyah, Murph tried to think how to tell her about what they might find here. “He was with two friends of mine. And if…they’d never give him up, but if something is wrong, he’ll have run. It’s what he’s been trained to do. Understand?”
    “I do. But you should know that I can enter the room beyond and see if he’s there. Or if whoever you are hiding him from is there.” Murph put her hand on the wall separating her from her son. “What is it? You feel something.”
    “He’s not in there and….they’re dead.” A sob took her breath away, causing her belly to hurt more. “I don’t know if he’s run or not. I told him to when there was trouble, but I don’t know where to….”
    “I can find him if you let me.” She looked at the other woman. “Take me into the house and I’ll find something that he touched. I can find him that way.”
    “Can you tell me…is he…will you know if he’s dead if you touch it?” She nodded and Murph nodded back. Her heart was breaking for the people who had been killed. “They were all the people in the world that I could trust. He must have found them…my father, he must have figured out where they were. But Max, he would have hidden from them if he heard something. It took me a month to find him before, and that was only practice. He’s that good.”
    They entered the apartment.
    The first body that they encountered was that of her friend Rachel. She’d been shot twice in the head and her blood was still red, not the rusty color of old blood. Linyah handed her a gun that was lying about a foot from Rachel and asked her if she could use it. Thomas appeared in the hall just behind them with another man, both of them armed. With a nod, they moved deeper into the room.
    The living room was where they found Connie. She, too, had been shot, once in the chest and once in the head. Her body looked like she’d gotten in a few punches, too. Her knuckles were raw and her lip was bleeding. Linyah leaned down and touched her finger to her mouth and then stood up. Murph knew she had just gotten the scent of the man who had hit her friend.
    Max’s room was at the back of the apartment, hidden away from the rest of the rooms by way of a blank wall. There wasn’t a door to it from the living room, but from the bathroom linen closet. It was really the next apartment over, and she had cut an opening in the wall to hide him from anyone that entered.
    Someone had found his room; it was a shambles. Books were strewn all over the room, and his bed had been shot. Bullet holes also marred the wall above it and the closet. His computer was broken—stepped on, it looked like—and then left in a mess on the floor. She didn’t even bother looking where he might be hiding in the room, knowing that he was long gone. Or at least she hoped he’d left on his own. Leaning over, she searched the rubble for something to give Linyah and came up with a brush. But before she handed it to her, she looked her in the eyes.
    “You have no idea how much I’m trusting you right now. If you harm him, give him up, I will hunt you down with my dying breath and kill you. No matter what it takes, do you understand that?” Linyah nodded. “He’s all I have in the world. And I will kill for him. I have killed for him.”
    “I won’t hurt him or you. This I will promise you.”
    Murph didn’t want to do it, but