In the Blood Read Online Free PDF

much." He hated to admit it, but he did miss her, no matter what she'd done to him. It made him feel stupid, powerless and degraded, but his dick was hard enough to cut diamonds.
    "I missed you, too. But I won't this time!"
    Loli halted the wheelchair at the top of a flight of stairs that seemed to stretch, Escher-like, into another dimension. Palmer's head began to swim. He tried to stand up, but his arms and legs were strapped to the wheelchair.
    He twisted his head around, hoping to catch another glimpse of Loli. Instead, he found himself staring down the bore of his gun. He knew he was dreaming and knew what would happen next. He also remembered an old wives' tale-or was it a disputed scientific fact?-that if you dreamed you were killed, you'd die in your sleep.
    Surely even an imaginary Loli couldn't miss at this range.
    Palmer threw himself headfirst down the warped, endlessly replicating stairwell.
    Miraculously, the wheelchair remained upright as he caromed off gothic arches and past half-glimpsed crumbling facades. He could hear Loli shrieking obscenities from

    Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer ( http://www.novapdf.com ) the top of the stair, along with the sound of receding gunfire. He wasn't sure where he was going, but at least it was away from Loli, with her bleeding mouth and punishing .38.
    For a brief, giddy moment, Palmer knew what it was like to be free. Then he saw the massive brick wall blocking his way. And in front of the wall, standing in a policeman's firing stance, both hands wrapped around the handle of the gun, was Loli.
    "Fooled you!"
    When he woke up, he realized he'd wet the bed.

    Palmer looked at the rows upon rows of cold marble and granite, then back at the map the caretaker had given him at the gate. According to what information there was, Geoffrey Chastain, better known as Chaz, was buried in Sector E-7. Most of the headstones in the area were newer models, some even looked machine made. The names and dates were still sharply defined and easy to read. It would be several years before the wind and the rain rendered the inscriptions as vague as those found on the older stones.
    It was early February and frost crunched under his heels as he made his way among the stones. Palmer was cold despite his anorak, and his mood had not been helped by the nightmare that had jerked him awake, sweating and shivering, at four that morning. He'd been unable-unwilling?-to go back to sleep, his scar throbbing like a bad cigarette burn.
    He rechecked what little information he'd been able to get from the cemetery caretaker's files as he trudged along. Chastain's plot had been paid for anonymously-in cash. The only point of interest was that the deceased had originally been interred in Potter's Field, then dug up and replanted in a proper grave, complete with headstone, a month later. Palmer was certain Sonja Blue was behind Chaz's change of address. But why? Was it out of guilt? Sense of duty? Love?
    He literally stumbled across Chaz's grave by accident. His feet had become entangled in the faded remains of a funeral wreath, and to keep from falling, he had leaned against a nearby tombstone. When he'd finally freed himself, he saw he was resting his butt on Geoffrey Chastain's monument.
    Palmer stepped back and stared at the nondescript granite marker: GEOFFREY
    ALAN CHASTAIN 1961-1989. There was no other information, sentiment or religious symbol to be found on its chill face, except for a stonemason's mark at the bottom.
    Palmer cursed himself, the self-deprecations rising from his lips in puffs of mist.
    What had he expected to find out here in the first place? The missing heiress's forwarding address chiseled into her dead lover's tombstone?
    Then he saw the flowers. At first he thought they were part of the same wreath he'd originally tripped over; then he realized they were wrapped differently. He bent and lifted the bouquet from its resting place atop Chaz's grave.