Dark Time: Mortal Path Read Online Free PDF Page B

town of Loon Lake in upstate New York for two weeks, scouting the area as a young woman devoted to bird-watching and solitude, spending long hours rowing on the lake in a rented boat.
    Target: John Henry Sawyer, known as J. H., prominent scion of a New York old-money family. J. H.
    had leveraged his progressive Woodrow Wilson-style viewpoints, including strong support for the League of Nations, into political wins, and his run for the presidential candidacy was catching fire. If J. H. was knocked out of the running for the 1920 election, the United States would probably not join the League, a situation that would please Rabishu. Even a tenuous prospect of world peace drew the demon’s ire.
    Crossing the porch of the politician’s summer home, she tested each wooden board for squeaks before putting her full weight on it. Inside, the door to his den was about fifteen feet away, open to the entry hall. She drew her throwing knives from their sheaths, their familiar weight resting in her palms as she moved forward.
    A sound came from upstairs, moaning followed by retching. It was so clear and miserable that her gut twisted in sympathy. There was a pause, another moan, then “Johnny…”
    Susannah froze in the hallway. She’d watched J. H. arrive alone, leaving his heavily pregnant wife in their New York City home. Unaccountably, the wife was here now. A relative or servant must have brought the woman, probably over J. H.’s objections.
    A light snapped on in the hallway upstairs and the cry took on urgency. “Johnny!”
    She heard papers rustling inside the den, then the sound of a chair scraping back from the desk. J. H.
    appeared in the doorway of the den.
    “Lucy? Is everything all right?”
    Susannah reacted automatically and launched her throwing knives. The instant they left her hands, regret stabbed at her.
    Death was in the air.
    She lunged forward to grab the knives, to retract her decision to kill. A spinning knife nicked her finger, but even with her speed, she was too late. If J. H. had been ten more feet away, she could have caught the deadly blades.
    J. H. fell, a knife in his throat, another in his heart. He made no sound, but there was a scream from upstairs at the moment of his death, as if he were a ventriloquist.
    She heard shuffling and groaning from the stairway, as though each stair descended was a victory over pain that threatened to engulf.
    Susannah dashed to the body. Bending over, she pulled her knives out, wiped them quickly on the dark cotton of her sleeve, and replaced them in their sheaths. She retreated quickly to the shadows near the front door.
    There was another scream—much closer.
    A woman stood at the foot of the stairs, clutching her very pregnant belly, nearly doubled over in pain. The lower part of her nightgown was soaked. Her water had broken on her trip downstairs. She started to straighten up, but immediately bent over and vomited. Wiping her mouth, she squinted at the shape in the hallway and saw that her husband was on the floor.
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    “Johnny, oh my God, the baby’s coming early, Johnny, get up I need help, oh my God what’s the matter with you?”
    It came out as one long string of pitiful sounds. Then the woman spotted her husband’s blood inching forward on the polished wood floor.
    Susannah, flattened against the wall, breathed so shallowly her chest barely stirred. She was the Black Ghost, in her killing outfit that left only her eyes exposed. She could make it out without being seen, and her assignment would be over.
    Leave! This isn’t my business.
    Susannah had her hand on the doorknob when she heard a shriek that packed in every emotion from horror to desperate love to grief. In spite of her strong desire to get away, the scream compelled her to turn and view the scene.
    Lucy had collapsed on the floor next to her husband. A powerful contraction gripped her and she wailed. The hairs on Susannah’s arms rose and she felt something