Midnight Pursuits Read Online Free PDF Page B

thirty-one years old, but she felt like a child again. A lost little orphan who hadn’t known a shred of kindness until she’d met the equally young and equally lost Henry Albright.
    Gulping hard, she returned to his side and bent over his weakened body. She didn’t want to aggravate his injuries by hugging him, so she simply stroked his cheek before brushing a tender kiss over his freezing-cold skin.
    â€œI love you, Henry.”
    â€œI love you, Jules.” There were tears in his eyes too, and his features strained with effort as he lifted one hand to her cheek.
    His icy fingertips on her skin felt like a caress from death. She fought another wave of tears, then took a couple of shaky steps back. She wanted to say something more, but words eluded her. Finally, she just smiled through her tears and murmured, “Good-bye, little brother.”
    She was two feet from the door when he spoke again.
    â€œYou have an idea, don’t you? About who he is?”
    She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Yes.”
    â€œGood.” A satisfied gleam, and then his brown eyes closed and he whispered that ominous phrase once more. “Kill him for me.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    Juliet checked into a small suite at the Grenadier Hotel, a modest downtown establishment with the kind of sloppy security she looked for in a hotel. She took the stairs up to her second-floor room and went straight to the bathroom, slightly startled when she glimpsed her reflection in the mirror. Her cheeks were splotchy, her eyes red and swollen beneath the fake glasses, which she removed and set down on the laminate counter.
    After she’d washed the tears and makeup off her face, she left the bathroom and settled on the queen-size bed with her cell phone. She pulled up the number she needed, but didn’t press SEND yet. She had to make sense of a few things first.
    Like the fact that Zoya had died from three neat bullet holes to the head.
    Alone, that could be nothing more than a random detail, but the precise positioning of the shots was too familiar to ignore. One temple,
bang
. Second temple,
bang
. Right between the eyes,
bang
. It screamed execution, but, more than that, it was a signature.
    And Juliet knew of only one contract killer who possessed that macabre signature.
    But why would he want to kill Zoya? That was the million-dollar question.
    Zoya Harkova didn’t have any enemies—Juliet knew that for a fact, because she’d had the woman investigated once Henry began dating her. Zoya was a schoolteacher. She was a tad timid, way too sweet, but she’d been perfect for the kindhearted Henry. The only noteworthy detail about Zoya’s life was that she happened to be the daughter of a lower-level official in the Ministry of Justice. Her father was hardly a political powerhouse, Juliet recalled, just an insignificant cog in the government machine, but maybe his position in the ministry was the reason the man’s daughter had been targeted. Or at least it was the only one Juliet could think of, and she made a mental note to get Paige to dig into his background ASAP.
    Chewing on her lower lip, she finally raised her phone to her ear. Three rings later, a deep Irish brogue danced over the line.
    â€œWhy, hello there, luv. Long time no speak.”
    Sean Reilly sounded thrilled to hear from her, which came as no surprise. Juliet knew Sean would jump into bed with her in a nanosecond if she gave him the okay, but although she liked him well enough, she didn’t mix business with pleasure. And she valued Sean’s talent for producing information from thin air far too much to risk losing such a crucial contact.
    â€œHow’ve you been, Sean? How’s Ollie?”
    â€œWe’re both peachy. Though my brother is probably peachier—he’s in the Bahamas at the moment, lying in the sun and drinking piña coladas, while his poor twin is shivering his ass off