Dark Sins and Desert Sands Read Online Free PDF

does.” The hooker looked at him in lurid appraisal for a moment, as if considering whether or not his dark looks and hard body were enough to make her stay. Then some wiser instinct took hold of her. “Never mind. I’m outtie.”
    Ray sighed. Nobody ever wanted to do things theeasy way. Before she broke eye contact, Ray seized her mind. “Sit down, Missy.”
    She fell back into the chair as if pushed. He was relieved to find that it wasn’t a struggle. Except when it came to Layla Bahset, Ray was able to use this power whenever he needed people to look the other way at an airport, or give him money from their wallets. Most times, people didn’t realize what had happened, and shook it off. Unfortunately, Missy seemed acutely aware. “H-how did you do that?” The girl’s garishly painted fingernails clawed at the chair as she stammered, “You’re in my head. You forced me…”
    “Look, I promise I won’t hurt you,” Ray said. “I won’t touch you. I just need you to wake me up if I haven’t come back to myself in an hour.”
    “You just want me to wake you up in an hour?”
    “That’s right,” Ray said. “One hour.”
    The call girl bit her lower lip, shaken but wary. “Anybody could do that for you. Why me?”
    “Three reasons,” Ray said, ticking them off. “First, because it keeps a kid like you off the streets for an hour. Second, because hiring a hooker isn’t exactly suspicious behavior in this town. And third, because underage girls like you don’t talk to the police.”
    “Why are you afraid of the police?” Missy was way too curious for her own good. “Are you, like, a drug dealer?”
    Ray removed his coat and threw it over the back of a chair. It was too damned hot for a coat in Vegas anyway. “No.”
    “Then you’re an addict,” she decided, eyeing the scars on his wrists. “You’re going to shoot up, and you want me to make sure you come out of it.”
    “No drugs,” he said, holding up a bottle of bourbon. “Just booze.”
    And he’d save that for later, when he was sure he’d need it.
    Missy was still staring at him, giving careful consideration to his black hair and dark complexion. “You’re a terrorist?”
    “No, goddammit, ” he snapped. In the army, everybody was supposed to be one color. Green. So he’d laughed it off when war buddies called him Captain A-Rab or teased him about being a Muj. But the assumptions people made about him now were no laughing matter. “I’m just going to sleep for an hour.”
    “No you’re not,” she said shrewdly, narrowing her eyes. “You’re going into someone else’s head, like you just went into mine. Aren’t you?”
    Clever girl, Ray thought. But he hadn’t any use for clever girls right now. “Will you shut up, so I can close my eyes?”
    “How do you know I’m not just going to take your wallet and walk out the door once you’re asleep?”
    “Because I peeked into your memories and I know you’re not a thief,” Ray replied. “Now, look, I’ll pay you another hundred bucks to just shut up and let me close my eyes.”
    With the promise of cold hard cash, she went silent and Ray tried not to think about how nervous he really was. When his victims were in the same room, it was easy enough to enter their minds, but he’d blown it today with Layla Bahset. She’d nearly swallowed him up in the sands of her mindscape. Now he knew to be wary.
    Flopping onto the hotel bed, Ray took a picture ofLayla Bahset from his pocket. It wasn’t a glamorous photo; it was from a directory of mental health professionals, and showed her with her hair swept back and a pair of glasses precariously balanced on the bridge of her nose. Ray just needed the photo to help him focus. To help him remember that she had no power over him now. And if he could channel all his strength, she couldn’t hide from him. He’d have to enter the maze of her mind from afar, with just the memory of her cat-green eyes as his guide. He’d stared into