Ethan Justice: Origins (Ethan Justice #1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

couldn’t remember exactly how it did work. Mark was always boasting about his high-tech security system. Fat lot of good it had done him.
    John pushed himself upright and steadied his shaking legs by grabbing the edge of the desk, taking care to miss the parts wet with his friend’s blood. Intrigued by the pointing arm being at odds with the rest of the body, John gently took the hand and began to pull away the fingers around the remote. He expected a cold and vice-like death grip, but each digit was still warm and came away easily. John removed the remote and laid it on the desk. In Mark’s palm was a small, folded piece of paper stuck to the skin. John peeled it away and began to unfold it when he heard footsteps entering the apartment. Instinctively, he slid the paper into the waistband of his underpants, hoping that it wouldn’t slip down.
    John turned slowly around to see two dark-coated men and a fireman, who had presumably responded to the alarm which had now ceased. The policemen appeared remarkably composed considering a dash up eight flights of stairs. Despite their matching attire, the two officers could not have been more different. The short one was in his late forties with the face and build of a well-battered heavyweight boxer. The other man was basketball-player tall but solidly built and most definitely in charge.
    Parkes, eyes shiny with indignation, hand raised, forefinger pointing accusingly at John, spoke first.
    “That’s him,” he said, panting like a dehydrated dog. “He’s the one I was telling you about.”
    “This isn’t what it looks like,” said John, knowing that it didn’t look good.

4: Saturday 24th September, 12:42
    Savannah Jones sipped at her cup of lukewarm herbal tea in a booth of a small Pizza Hut in Shepherd’s Bush, wishing she’d changed clothes before arriving. She had thought her small, damp-ridden bedsit would not provide the uplift in spirit she so longingly craved. Instead she had spent the last four hours at Hammersmith tube station on a fixed stool making a tall ‘Americano’ coffee last well beyond its intended lifespan. The pimpled teenage boy who worked the concession stand had seemed glad of the company and hadn’t pressured her to order more or to move on.
    Savannah sipped again at her tea. It truly was disgusting. She allowed the liquid to fall out of her mouth and back into the cup without swallowing. Why hadn’t she ordered a coffee?
    The red plastic, high-backed double seats gave her some protection from the eyes of the few other customers who, sitting down for an early lunch, could surely tell how she made her unsavoury living. She looked and felt like a whore. Goddamn it, she was a whore, or a prostitute as John Smith had called her.
    John Smith! She wondered why he’d withheld his real name. Maybe he’d known the bill for her services was his and blamed his friend to escape payment. Perhaps he’d rumbled her lack of confidence and figured she was easily cheated out of her fee. His place was big, and she knew that a Chiswick address didn’t come without a big price tag. No doubt she’d screwed up. She had much to learn.
    Savannah had known the world of escorting would be seedy, but her friend Amy, who had recommended Aphrodite’s Angels, said it would soon pay off her debts and give her the chance she badly needed to work her life out. Work for a month and then jack it in, she had told her. One day and two clients later and she had collected the grand sum of fifty pounds, fifty percent of which she owed to her new boss, Christos the Greek, who was already over ten minutes late. Not much of a living from an hour and a night’s work.
    She banged the cup down harder than she meant to, splashing straw-coloured liquid over the red paper tablecloth. It smelt worse than it tasted.
    “What’s up, Sweetie?” said a voice from behind.
    Savannah went rigid but somehow convinced her muscles to relax before Christos seated himself against the wall,