Green: The Beginning and the End Read Online Free PDF Page A

accent.
    Billy turned, startled out of his moment of unguarded admissions. They? He’d asked to see only Monique de Raison.
    He caught his image in a ten-by-ten mirror framed in heavy black ironwork. Still dressed in the same white shirt he’d thrown on just before landing eight hours earlier. The self-applied blond highlights in his red hair looked too obvious, and his head hadn’t seen a brush since the takeoff from Washington, D.C., a day earlier. Here stands Billy Rediger, one of the three famed gifted savants who turned Paradise, Colorado into a household name . The rumpled look would have to do.
    He was twenty-nine going on nineteen. If they only knew.
    Billy wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans, squirted a dash of cinnamon freshener into his mouth, straightened his collar, and strode for the door as the dark-haired Williston looked on with a deadpan stare.
    “Thank you, Williston. Thank you very much, sir. And by all means, ditch the blonde from France. Go for the local girl. It’s what you want.”
    The man blinked with surprise. “Pardon?”
    “Ditch Adel. You think she’s a whore, and you’re probably right. Go for the maid—what’s her name? Betty. Yes, Betty.”
    The man was speechless—probably wasn’t every day a stranger told him what he was thinking. This far from home, not many knew of Billy’s unique gifting. And if they did, they associated it only with a distant face seen on the Net, not a real, living human being walking before them in three dimensions.
    He stepped past the ten-foot doors into a white office with colonial latticed windows that looked out to the thick green jungle beyond. At the room’s center sat a large teakwood desk with a cream-colored lamp that shed yellow light over a clean glass top.
    The dark-haired woman who stood behind the desk looked younger than her reported sixty years—all those drugs she manufactured, he supposed. After six months of searching out every scrap of information he could harvest from records far and wide, Billy felt as though he already knew Monique de Raison.
    She’d accepted full control of Raison Pharmaceutical from her father, Jacques de Raison, after the Raison Strain had all but destroyed the infamous company. Rebuilding the company’s shattered image was no small task, but she’d risen to the occasion and delivered with flying colors. The sharp, dark eyes studying him as he walked toward her opened to a mind that missed nothing.
    Billy knew, because it was his gift to know what anyone was thinking by looking into their eyes.
    This is what Monique was thinking at the moment: Younger than I expected, dressed like a punk. Is he really reading my thoughts this very moment? Does he know I will turn him away regardless of what he hopes to accomplish? Does he know that he’s a freak?
    Billy stretched out his hand. “Yes, I do know that I’m a freak.”
    Monique stared at him for a moment, then lifted a pair of dark glasses from the desk and put them on, effectively blocking her mind from his probing eyes. She took his hand. “So you can do what they say.”
    “Thanks to Thomas Hunter,” he said, and released her hand. Because yes, without Thomas Hunter there never would have been magic books to turn him into the freak he was. But that was all in the past.
    Billy was here to change the future.
    A blonde woman of about Monique’s age sat to his right, one leg crossed over the other, hands folded in her lap. She wore dark glasses already, not wanting to risk any exposure to his prying eyes, but he recognized Kara Hunter immediately. Thomas Hunter’s sister, keeper of many secrets regarding the blood Billy was seeking.
    Both Kara and Monique in one sitting. He’d struck gold.
    Billy crossed to Kara, who rose and offered her hand. “Mr. Rediger.”
    “And you would be Kara Hunter.”
    She nodded.
    “Please, have a seat,” Monique said, motioning to the guest chair in front of her desk.
    He did, and they both eased back into their chairs.