Devil's Keep Read Online Free PDF

money as down payment on an apartment block in Seattle. Within weeks, he sold the building and tripled his investment. He tripled it again with a quick series of land swaps and purchases. Favor found that he had an uncanny sense of impending value in real estate. His cunning and guile and unshakable nerve, developed over years under deep cover, also served him well. They made business almost too easy.
    He continued to prosper. After about a year, Arielle accepted his offer to work with him. The salary was generous, and she received a ten percent share of his newly formed holding company. And she earned it. Arielle ran his office, kept his books, hired his staff, dealt with his bankers and attorneys.
    When Favor bought the Tahoe property, he chose a corner room in the lodge for his personal office. The room had a magnificent westerly view that took in the lake with the gray granite ramparts of the Sierras on the far side. It was a few steps from Arielle’s office, a larger room with a slightly less expansive view.
    From her desk, Arielle looked across a hall to the half-open door of Favor’s office. Now three hours had passed since he had disappeared inside. Not a word, not a rustle. This was unusual. Favor didn’t like to be desk-bound. He often ducked in and outof his room a dozen times a day, prowling the building, pacing around the property outside.
    She shuffled through a stack of folders, chose one, and walked out and across the hall.
    She paused at his door.
    Favor’s office was dark and completely still. She must have somehow missed him slipping out.
    Then she noticed a shadowy figure at one edge of the big window, standing so quietly, so completely motionless, that she had to look twice to be sure. At first she thought that he was gazing outside, absorbed in the view. But the slump of his shoulders and the cant of his head, and his eerie stillness, made Arielle think that he wasn’t really seeing the lake
at all.
    Ray Favor was zoning out. She paused at the threshold, expecting him to notice her at any time. Favor was always alert to the presence of others, and Arielle knew that his hyperawareness had preserved his life more than once. But now he seemed oblivious. Several seconds passed, and he still didn’t move. She felt like an intruder, a voyeur to some private, unguarded moment.
    She stepped into the office, moving briskly, making more noise than necessary as she crossed the hardwood floor. This finally got his attention. His head turned toward her as she approached his desk.
    “Appraisals on the Santa Barbara purchase,” Arielle said, showing him the sheaf of papers. “No surprises, but you might want to review it anyway.”
    He watched her as she put the folder on his desk.
    “And the Tulsa boys will be here in forty-five minutes,” she said. “You want something to eat first?”
    After a pause that seemed much too long, Favor shook his head.
    “Nothing?” she said.
    “I’m not hungry.”
    “Hey, Ray,” she said. “You okay?”
    “Sure,” he said.
    “Something on your mind?”
    “No more or less than usual.”
    “Right,” she said. She started to leave and was almost out the door when he spoke again.
    He said, “Life’s a bitch—you know that, Ari?”
    She stopped and manufactured a smile as she turned to look back at him.
    “That’s the rumor,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. But she was thinking:
Who are you? And what have you done to Ray Favor?
    It happened again an hour later.
    They were in a conference room on the second floor. Favor sat in a leather swivel chair at one end of a long table with Arielle beside him, taking notes, as three developers from Tulsa made a presentation at the other end.
    The developers wanted to build a luxury hunting retreat and gun club on 2,800 acres of scrubland in southeast Kansas that Favor had owned for about a year. Rough and rocky, the land had never been cultivated. This had made it inexpensive for Favorto buy, and it was perfect