Promises to Keep Read Online Free PDF

… the man who took the boy—the one you are looking for—he was not the man that usually comes.” She chewed her lower lip. She seemed to be deciding if she could trust them with the truth. “The man that usually comes is shorter, heavier. This man was taller, thin. He had a scar.”
    â€œWhere?” he said, the skin on the back of his neck going tight. He knew before she even answered him.
    â€œHere,” she said, running her finger along her cheek. “It was long—from his temple to the corner of his mouth. I saw him once, in the street. He was getting into a big black car with an older man in a suit.”
    â€œHow do you know for sure it was him?” Ben said.
    She looked at Ben. “I recognized the scar, and—”
    The sudden impact of the bullet snapped the girl’s head back, its exit making a hole the size of a fist in the back of her skull. Blood sprayed across the plate of pastries, soaked into the white cloth that covered the table. Brain matter and even more blood splattered onto the bricks beneath their feet.
    Ben and Michael stood and moved swiftly, away from the cafe, for the cover of a narrow easement between the café and neighboring bookstore.
    Screams and shouts sounded from the café behind them, but neither one of them turned around. They kept walking—there was nothing they could do. The girl was dead.
    â€œFuck,” Ben muttered under his breath, shaking his head almost in time with his quick stride. “Someone didn’t want her talking.”
    â€œI know who,” Michael said, stepping out of the alley where they’d parked there car. He gestured for Ben to stay in the shadows while he surveyed windows and rooftops for possible blinds. It was instinctual, the need he felt to protect his team. Ben ignored him and stepped out in the road alongside him.
    â€œWell, Michael, are you going to share your answer with the rest of the class?” his partner chimed brightly while skirting the bumper to his side of the car.
    â€œReyes.” Just saying the name out loud made it almost too real to deal with. He should have taken him out a year ago, when he first found out that Alberto was targeting him.
    â€œReyes doesn’t strike me as the down-and-dirty type.” Ben pulled his door open before cutting him a doubtful look across the roof of the car. Sirens wailed in the distance, getting closer. “Besides, Reyes doesn’t have a scar.”
    Michael thought about killing. Heard the crinkle of plastic sheeting beneath his boots. Felt the resistant tug of skin and muscle against his blade. Reyes, his lizard eyes flat and distant, watching as he got what he wanted. He yanked his door open and returned his partner’s gaze. “He’s not and he doesn’t—but his son does.” And is.
    Now Ben smiled, but there was no humor in it. The sirens were close, but it mattered little to either of them. “How do you know?”
    Michael shrugged and tried to unearth himself from the avalanche of memories he was suddenly buried under. “Because I’m the one who gave it to him.”

Eight
    Cofre del Tesoro, Colombia
March 2008
    The tide was leaving, the shards of light scattered across the blue-green surface of the water losing their luster in the setting sun, growing dimmer and dimmer with every push and pull of the ocean.
    He looked down at the little girl playing in the sand a few feet away. “Time to go,” he said before casting an appraising look down the length of the private beach. It was deserted. Always was, but he scanned the trees just the same. Looking for the flash a scope, the sudden scatter of birds. He’d been hired to keep Reyes’s daughter safe, and that’s what he’d do. Even if all he was protecting her from was hermit crabs and sunburns.
    It’d been four months since he’d stood at the window in Reyes’s office, seeing the water in the