Sacrifice the Wicked Read Online Free PDF Page A

. . . screamed. Vivid red. Mottled pink and gray. Streaked brown.
    Blood and brain and bone.
    Parker steeled herself, forced her eyes to glide from one photo to the next. There wasn’t anything left to identify the operative with. Not without scraping it all together and dropping it into a man-shaped bucket.
    “Who am I looking at, Ms. Foster?” she asked coolly.
    “Jesus,” came a whisper from somewhere beyond Foster’s desk.
    Ice bitch . She didn’t have a choice. If she let herself think about the face, the personality, the mind behind all that smeared gristle and paste, she’d be as useful as a two-legged chair. The men— her missionaries—deserved a foundation stronger than that. She’d learned long ago to compartmentalize her emotions from the job.
    All good missionaries—all successful ones—did.
    “David Carver.” Foster’s voice wasn’t quite as steady. “Rookie, ma’am. Came in on the last recruitment drive.”
    She searched her brain. On cue, an image of the rookie surfaced—pale skin, dark blond hair cut close to his scalp. Green eyes?
    No, blue.
    Her frown tightened. “Where was he on the training regimen?”
    “Level three,” Foster said quietly. “He was training under Eckhart’s crew.”
    “He flew through level two,” another voice offered, and Parker glanced across the divider to meet Neely’s serious gaze. “Bright kid. Real talent. Scouted him from the selection myself.”
    A hush fell over the office. Parker straightened, her hand coming down on Elizabeth’s thin shoulder. Brief. There and gone. “Neely, Foster, put a rush on the samples from the scene. Where was he found?”
    They exchanged a glance Parker didn’t miss.
    “His home, ma’am,” Foster said when Parker’s eyes narrowed. “The bastard got him in his home.”
    Parker nodded. “That makes five.” She turned, pitched her voice to carry. One by one, the agents she knew had been watching her met her eyes. “Five of our agents have been murdered, missionaries. Five of your friends and teammates. Do I need to make any clearer the importance of Operation Domino?”
    “No, ma’am,” came at her in a rippled chorus. A few headshakes.
    A lot of hard-eyed stares.
    Parker met each set of eyes in cool appraisal. “Those men and women below the sec-line are counting on us. Let’s not let them down.”
    “Yes, ma’am!”
    “You have your tasks. Everyone get back to work.” The sudden flurry of activity that followed jangled. “Make sure all the evidence is given highest priority,” Parker added to Foster. “I want the labs on this immediately.”
    “Ma’am,” Foster replied, already lowering her attention back to her computer screen.
    Parker strode to her office. Every step earned eyes pinned to her back.
    Anger? Probably. Confusion, she was sure. Fear among the non-street teams.
    Carver made the fifth dead operative in the past two weeks. The nature of each varied. Carver, so much meat. Hannah Long, another rookie, had been nothing but ash. The other three had been shot, one in the back and two execution-style in the forehead.
    The only connection seemed to be their occupation.
    Someone was hunting witch hunters. Many someones, given the differing MOs. And those someones, she thought, her mouth set into a grim line, were very good at it. Operation Domino had just blown the rest of her priorities out of the water.
    But she couldn’t ignore Ghostwatch, either.
    The former was an obvious problem. The perpetrator behind Domino’s string of murders needed to be found. But the latter was an ongoing issue. Initially, Ghostwatch began as a shadow in her lead technical analyst’s radar, then morphed into a monster of a problem within weeks. A hacker was infiltrating previously secure systems across the city and causing her lead tech specialist unending amounts of trouble.
    Jonas Stone was a fine missionary, the best tech the Mission had. Possibly anywhere. He could go into any database, learn anything,