Terrorbyte Read Online Free PDF

are there.”
    Mac’s brow creased and his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper as he said, “You want me to come?”
    â€œIt’s late.” I glanced at my watch. It was already past two in the morning. “I may not be home for hours. I’m sure your mom has plans for your day off and I’d hate to interrupt!”
    I could ask Mac to join the team if we needed him. I was sure Caine could wrestle him out of the Cyber Division to help. He’d done so numerous times before but not at my request. Mac had worked on cases with Lee and Sam and the other Delta teams, but not with one led by me. The request would depend on what was waiting for me in Alexandria and whether or not I felt we needed a cybercrime specialist on board.
    Did I want that? Did I want us working that closely as well as living together? A quiet voice in my head reminded me they were bridges to cross in due course. I just bet trolls lived under those bridges: evil, fat, drooling trolls, ready to cause all manner of trouble. It didn’t matter right now; the trolls and bridges would wait.
    I pushed away thoughts of us working together and focused.
    Mac tapped my arm and said, “That’s not an acceptable answer.”
    I saw the spark in his eyes; I knew he’d come if I asked. Good to know. It was possible that he didn’t want to find out what his mother had in store for him, and that was why he was keen to help out.
    I told myself the new case couldn’t possibly be the Son of Shakespeare/Jack Griffin/Charles Boyd, so there’s nothing to worry about; nothing at all. I’d worked at least nine cases since the Shakespeare thing. This was just another case. No reason to expect anything as bad. No reason to expect that anyone was targeting me or leaving bodies for me to find. No reason whatsoever.
    Just another case.
    â€œI might not be back until tonight,” I replied with a smile. “You know how unpredictable my job can be. Until I get there and view the scene, I have no way of knowing how this investigation is going to go, or what I’m going to find. Could be a long day. No sense you wasting your day off.”
    â€œSure?”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    The truth was I did not want this case. I wanted nothing to do with poems. I could have happily lived my life without ever seeing another poem at a crime scene.
    I tried my trusty ‘I’m okay.’ The results were less than convincing; nothing felt okay.
    Dang!

Chapter Five
Social Disease
    The early hours of Sunday morning found me standing on the pavement looking up at a building, the exterior lit by the rolling lights of five police cars parked out front.
    From the second I stepped through the outer door and into the foyer of the apartment building, I could feel it.
    We stood in the atrium of what used to be a high-rent, architect-designed apartment complex. Diffused red and orange light spilled from a grubby stained-glass window high above us. Odd. It was dark outside, yet I saw colored light falling inwards. The colors did nothing to brighten the drab interior. I peered past the colors and glimpsed spotlights on the roof beyond. The building had fallen into disrepair over the years; it was as if no one cared or remembered the architect’s intentions. I didn’t think he intended his dream to end in this sorry state. Yet someone cared enough to make sure the spotlights still worked.
    Oppression hung heavy in the air. Terror seeped from the walls: years of abuse cradled by the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-absorbing building. It had the makings of a great haunted house.
    I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, then opened them fast, making the atrium blur; an old habit. Reality blurred into a functioning calmness.
    â€œSupervising Special Agent Conway?”
    The voice belonged to a tall, broad-shouldered, brown-haired police officer not much older than me. He stood about four feet from the external doors, bathed in an eerie, orange