Red Widow (Vivian Xu, Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

inhaled sharply. Someone had been looking
back at her from the other side of the peephole, just staring at
her.
    The light bulb swayed on a chain above
the kitchen table, spitting sparks and flickering malevolently. It
died with a robust pop, showering the darkness with fiery rain.
Daniel retreated from the door. She numbly retraced her steps like
a sleepwalker tugged along by an invisible thread. She didn’t even
remember returning to her room and curling up in a fetal position
among the blankets. Shivering in a cold sweat, she closed her eyes,
but she still saw the devastation through her eyelids.
     
    * * *
     
    “ Krista didn’t come out the
next morning,” Daniel whispered. “No one responded when I dialed
her room and knocked on the door. I felt I had no choice but to
contact the police.”
    Through the shadows, Vivian could see
the words carved into the wall. The sound Daniel heard… The
kidnapper must have carved the words into the plaster, only ten
feet away from Daniel.
    “ You cannot hurt me,”
Vivian said. “What do you suppose it means?”
    “ I was hoping you could
tell me. Krista would never hurt anyone. It doesn’t make
sense.”
    “ Do you suppose
Patrik…?”
    “ I’m not sure if he is
responsible for what happened that night. That’s what bothers me.
When their fights break out, usually he’s screaming and swearing.
This time, there were no voices.”
    Vivian looked at the phone
line protruding from the wall like ruptured blood vessels.
Suddenly, she remembered an eerie detail from the Blaze article. Krista’s
last cell phone signal had been traced to a vacant complex beyond
Prague.
    “ Has Krista ever been to
the outskirts?”
    Daniel perked up.
    “ Funny that you should ask…
Krista would often wander there. She was fascinated by its history.
She said she liked to soak it up and be a part of it.”
    “ Have you tried looking for
her?”
    “ Believe me, I’ve tried,
but the authorities won’t let anyone near the outskirts. Don’t you
remember what happened there?”
    “ Yes. I remember.” Of all
people, Vivian knew the atrocities that ravaged that area twelve
years ago. She had experienced them firsthand.
    “ Krista said she gained
passage to the outskirts through a gang in the metro
tunnels.”
    “ A gang? How did she manage
that?” an astonished Vivian asked.
    “ I don’t exactly know. I
followed her once when I learned she was connected to them. At
first, I thought she was hiding in the metro from Patrik, but she
would always return to the apartment. I watched her arrive at
Nádraži Metro and depart at Line C. Here, maybe this will help you.
Let me draw you a map.”
    She traced the layout of the metro and
its entangling routes. Vivian simply watched, wondering where her
journey would end. She snapped to attention at the sound of
Daniel’s voice.
    “ You won’t let her die,
will you?”
    Vivian’s eyes fell to the tangle of
tunnels Daniel had sketched, plummeting deeper
underground.
    “ Do you really believe what
you said earlier?” Vivian asked.
    Daniel stopped drawing.
    “ Every word.”
    “ So you still have faith
that Krista is alive?” Vivian asked, trying not to sound callous.
Daniel bit her lip.
    “ If I don’t believe, then
what else do I have?”
     
     
     
    THREE
     
     
     
    If I don’t believe, what
else do I have? Those words radiated with
more truth than Daniel cared to admit.
    Even Vivian had to cling to hope’s
feeble thread if that was all the world offered her. She couldn’t
lose faith for risk of wandering the destitute alleys forever—or
signing her life away to prison.
    That notion kept her company all the
way to the metro as the hours waned to dusk. The last few trains
were departing for distant apartments and city plazas.
    Only an hour remained before Nádraži
Metro closed and the gates would be bolted ominously shut.
Immigrant workers ferried from factories were already funneling
into the streets to greet the last splash of