Dragon Tears Read Online Free PDF Page A

couple of fries.
    The newcomer seized the hostess by her belt, jerked her toward him, and grabbed a handful of her blouse. His assault was so sudden and unexpected, his moves so cat-quick, that he had lifted her off the floor before she began to scream. As if she weighed nothing, he threw her at nearby diners.
    “Oh, shit.” Connie pushed back from the table and came to her feet, reaching under her jacket and behind to the revolver that was holstered in the small of her back.
    Harry rose, too, his own revolver in hand. “Police!”
    His warning was drowned out by the sickening crash of the young blonde slamming into a table, which tipped sideways. The diners toppled out of their chairs, and glasses shattered. All over the restaurant people looked up from their food, startled by the uproar.
    The stranger’s flamboyance and savagery might just mean he was on drugs—or he might also be genuinely psychotic.
    Connie took no chances, dropping into a crouch as she brought her gun up. “Police!”
    Either the guy
had
heard Harry’s first warning or he had seen them out of the corner of his eye, because he was already scuttling toward the back of the restaurant, between the tables.
    He had a handgun of his own—maybe a Browning 9mm, judging by the sound and by the glimpse she got. He was using it, too, firing at random, each shot thunderousin the confines of the restaurant.
    Beside Connie, a painted terra-cotta pot exploded. Chips of glazed clay showered onto her. The dracaena marginata in the pot toppled over, raking her with long narrow leaves, and she crouched even lower, trying to use a nearby table as a shield.
    She wanted in the worst way to get a shot at the bastard, but the risk of hitting one of the other customers was too great. When she looked across the restaurant at child’s level, thinking maybe she could pulverize one of the creep’s knees with a well-placed round, she could see him scrambling across the room. The trouble was, between her and him, a scattering of panicked, wide-eyed people had taken refuge under their tables.
    “Shit.” She pursued the geek while trying to make as small a target of herself as possible, aware that Harry was going after him from another direction.
    People were screaming because they were scared, or had been shot and were in pain. The crazy bastard’s gun boomed too often. Either he could change clips with superhuman speed or he had another pistol.
    One of the big windows took a direct hit and came down in a jinglejangle clangor. A waterfall of glass splashed across the cold Santa Fe tile floor.
    As Connie crept from table to table, her shoes picked up mashed french fries, ketchup, mustard, bits of oozing cacti, and crunching-tinkling pieces of glass. And as she passed the wounded, they cried out or pawed at her, desperate for help.
    She hated to ignore them, but she had to shake them off, keep moving, try to get a shot at the walking phlegm in the Ultrasuede coat. What meager first-aid she might be able to provide wasn’t going to help them. She couldn’t do anything about the terror and pain the sonofabitch had already wrought, but she might be able to stop him from doing more damage if she stayed on his ass.
    She raised her head, risking a bullet in the brain, and saw the scumbag was all the way at the back of therestaurant, standing at a swinging door that had a glass porthole in the center. Grinning, he squeezed off rounds at anything that caught his attention, apparently equally pleased to hit a potted plant or a human being. He was still unnervingly ordinary in appearance, round-faced and bland, with a weak chin and soft mouth. Even his grin failed to make him look like a madman; it was more the broad and affable smile of someone who had just seen a clown take a pratfall. But there was no doubt he was crazy-dangerous, because he shot a big saguaro cactus, then a guy in a checkered shirt, then the saguaro again, and he
did
have two guns, one in each hand.
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