Murder One Read Online Free PDF

looked back toward the skyline. “Oh, how I can relate. Life sure has a way of changing in an instant, doesn’t it? I used to wonder what I would do when I saw him face-to-face.” He knew she meant Vasiliev. “I contemplated what I would say to him as they led him out of the courtroom in handcuffs to spend the rest of his life in prison.” She shook her head, her eyes regaining focus. “If I had known he was going to walk, I would have just put a bullet in him and been done with it.”
    The comment surprised him. “No. You wouldn’t have.”
    She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “I’m not so certain.”
    “I am.”
    Sloane had never told anyone about the night he held a searing fire poker to Anthony Stenopolis’s face and threatened to blind the man who had murdered his wife. He hadn’t done it, though, realizing that revenge was a poor substitute for justice.
    “It’s what separates us from people like Vasiliev—and the man who killed my wife.” She turned from the view. “I had the chance. And believe me, I thought there was nothing more in the world I wanted to do.”
    “The paper said they never caught him.”
    “They didn’t.”
    “Did you—”
    “Kill him? No. I didn’t kill him.”
    “What stopped you?”
    He debated how much more he wanted to reveal, having also learned there was a fine line between being sympathetic and being pathetic. He wasn’t about to start spilling his guts about growing up in foster homes because his mother had been raped and murdered as he cowered beneath his bed.
    “I just knew if I pulled that trigger, I’d be stepping through a very dark doorway that I’d already escaped once. And I didn’t want to go back.”
    She squeezed his arm. “I’ve never brought anyone up here before. There was never anyone I wanted to share it with.” She pushed onto her toes and gently kissed his lips. Sloane felt a dozen different emotions. Together, they paralyzed him. She pulled back. “I’m sorry . . . I shouldn’t have . . .”
    “No.” He touched her shoulder. “It’s just that I haven’t . . . not since my wife died.”
    “I understand.”
    “I don’t think you do.” He put his glass down. “There hasn’t been anyone, Barclay. So I might be a bit rusty when it comes to compliments and things, but you have to understand, you didn’t just takeme by surprise the other night; you took me someplace I haven’t been in a long time. And it all feels a bit foreign.”
    “There’s no rush, David.”
    He pulled her close, wanting to feel the warmth of another human being.
    This time, when she inched onto her toes, he bent and met her halfway.

FIVE
    T UESDAY, S EPTEMBER 6, 2011
Q UEEN A NNE H ILL
S EATTLE , W ASHINGTON
    H e stared at the blank ceiling over Barclay Reid’s bed, but in his mind he saw the face of Albert Einstein—the black-and-white print hung on his office wall, the genius with a twinkle in his coal-black eyes, a mischievous, elflike grin, and his trademark silver hair as wild as the bristles of an exploded broom.
    A person starts to live when he can live outside himself .
    John Kannin, Sloane’s law partner, had hung the print where Sloane would always see it. No one would ever accuse Kannin of being subtle.
    After Tina’s death, Sloane became absorbed by so much sorrow and guilt it had left him physically ill. He had little appetite, frequently forgot his train of thought, and lacked energy to the point that getting out of bed became a struggle. His world lost color, everything a dull, ugly gray. Though work had once been his refuge from the loneliness of his life, even there he could not function. Finally, Kannin gathered Charles Jenkins and his wife, Alex, and Sloane’s secretary, Carolyn, and together they orchestrated an intervention in Sloane’s office. It was nothing dramatic, just a heart-to-heart suggestion that Sloane take some time off. He had resisted, not because he thought their assessment wrong, but with Jake