Killer Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

This wouldn’t do. She worked to make eye contact with the boy her age, hoping to provoke him enough to come to her rescue. Instead, he moved toward the doors and pulled one open. She fired off a coy smile that she’d borrowed from a Beyoncé music video. He didn’t seem to react, which left her hunting for another easy mark. There was no time to waste. She had to put her plan in motion.
    They entered the sumptuous lobby of dark wood and brass fixtures, alabaster chandeliers bathing the space in honey-colored light. Foreign-accented voices of the receptionists mingled with small talk coming from the couches and chairs directly ahead. Beyond the couches was a second set of double doors that she saw led to a patio and an outdoor ice-skating rink.
    Her father handed her an envelope with a card key in it and joined the bellman in the elevator.
    “Don’t lose it,” he said, ever the voice of confidence.
    The last phone call had obviously not gone well.
    “Gee, I’ll try not to,” she said. “Tell you what: I’ll meet you up there.”
    They remained fixed in a staring contest until the elevator doors closed.
    She scanned the lobby: no one remotely her age. Maybe the pool or tennis courts would turn up a worthy candidate, although she was hoping for a local boy, someone with a car. She hadn’t given up on the hotel staff just yet.
    “You don’t get ahead by waiting for handouts.”

10
    H ello?” a heavily accented voice answered Walt’s call. He wasn’t any good at deciphering accents, but just hearing it made him wonder if he’d stumbled into a kidnapping ransom drop.
    “Malone,” Walt said.
    “You’re late.”
    “Complications.”
    “Three twenty-five Aspen Hollow, Northwood. Twenty minutes.” The line went dead.
    French or Italian, he thought. He’d been to Mexico a couple of times: it wasn’t Spanish.
    He called dispatch, requesting backup. The office had eight patrols out at any one time, covering an area roughly the size of Rhode Island. He was told there were no cruisers in his vicinity.
    “How about Brandon?” he asked, his stomach turning.
    “He’s graveyard tonight.”
    Deputy Tommy Brandon lived close by, two miles south of Ketchum, with Walt’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Gail. It had been going on for the better part of the past two years, though Walt had only discovered the affair a year earlier.
    “On call?”
    “Yes, sir. You want me to raise him?”
    “Please.”
    Ten minutes later, a shiny black pickup truck pulled up beside Walt’s Cherokee in front of the Elephant’s Perch, an outfitting store in the center of town.
    Brandon, a big man with a boyish, rosy-cheeked face, had thrown on his deputy’s shirt and gun belt over a pair of blue jeans and running shoes. He walked with urgency to the door of Walt’s Cherokee.
    “What’s up?”
    Walt filled him in on Malone’s death and the discovery of the high-tech briefcase, currently in the Cherokee’s passenger’s seat.
    “If it’s a ransom drop,” Walt said, “maybe it gets tricky when I show up in place of this guy. I’m going to tape down the TALK button on my radio so you can monitor the situation.”
    “It’s just us?”
    “There’s a possible time element.” He checked his watch. “Let’s move.”
    “You get shot up, Sheriff, and I’m the one backing you up . . . Well, given our . . . situation . . . how do you think that’s going to look?”
    “Not good for you. Thankfully, that’ll be your problem, not mine.”
    “You’re making jokes?”
    Walt indicated his radio handset clipped to his shirt’s epaulet. “If you hear it going south, do something.”
    “Thanks for clearing that up,” Brandon said.
     
     
     
    W alt parked down the street to keep his Cherokee out of view and walked up a horseshoe-shaped driveway of hand-laid brick pavers, the attaché case in his left hand, his gun hand free. The driveway contained a small aspen grove with a man-made, rock-lined gurgling brook. The aspens blocked any view