The 3rd Victim Read Online Free PDF Page A

it here, especially at this time of morning when the sun kissed the horizon and the early ferries and fishing trawlers tracked snail trails across the surface of the slick blue expanse. Life was good, he thought as he lifted his hands from his knees and stretched tall – the adrenalin of his hour plus run, which started at his Washington Street apartment and took him on a full circuit of the city before ending east at Commercial Street near the US Coast Guard Station, still flowing fast through his veins.
    This was what it was all about, his thought continued as he checked his Tag and started walking west, back home, so that he could spend the morning with his two ‘best girls’. Family, friends, fresh air, good health – and for the first time in a long time, a career that was not pulling him in a million different directions. It had been over six months since he had returned from his home city of Newark, where he had defended one of his oldest friends in a case that had exhausted him – physically, mentally. Since then he had settled into a routine of defending smaller, less complicated cases, finding more time for Sara and his one-and-a-half-year-old, blonde-haired, green-eyed daughter, Lauren.
    Fifteen minutes later, Sara met him at their 23rd floor apartment door, immediately putting her finger to her lips.
    ‘Shh,’ she whispered before her face broke into that perfect, high-cheek-boned smile. She used her finger to beckon him toward their bedroom where, from the corner of the doorway, she pointed at Lauren who appeared to be in the middle of some sort of ‘fashion parade’ in the nearby walk-in closet.
    ‘What's she doing?’ asked David, Sara's smile contagious.
    ‘Go see,’ replied Sara, giving him the slightest of pushes into the bedroom.
    And so he did. ‘Lauren,’ he called. ‘What are you up to, honey?’
    ‘Daddy!’ she cried, turning to face him now, the widest of smiles on her pretty olive-skinned face.
    David laughed as he held his arms out toward her – his daughter was draped in an ensemble that included one of his business shirts, four of his ties, his baseball mitt, an old NY Yankees cap and a pair of mismatched loafers which swallowed her tiny feet whole.
    ‘Lauren Daddy,’ she said.
    ‘I can see that, and you make a very good me – a better me than me I think.’
    ‘Silly daddy,’ she smiled as he scooped her up and she wrapped her arms around him. ‘Lauren lawler.’
    ‘Three lawlers in one family.’ He pulled back to see her smiling face. ‘Sounds dangerous.’
    Lauren squealed again.
    ‘Okay, Laurel and Hardy,’ said Sara, moving around them and quickly crossing the bedroom to check her reflection in the bedside dresser mirror. ‘Mummy has to go, but she won't be long.’
    ‘You're going out?’ asked David, not recalling her telling him she had something to do this morning.
    ‘I'm sorry,’ she said, still looking at herself. ‘God, look at this mess.’ She tugged at her long chestnut hair. ‘I rang the salon, they said they had a cancellation and could fit me in as long as I was there within half an hour.’
    ‘Your hair looks fine,’ said David, half pleased she was doing something for herself and half disappointed at them not being able to hang out this morning. ‘I like it long.’
    ‘Long I can live with, but dry, shapeless …’ She moved across to kiss him before grabbing her handbag from the bed. ‘It won't take long, I promise. In the meantime, here …’ Sara grappled inside her bag to retrieve a pacifier, a drinking cup and a packet of wet wipes.
    ‘What else have you got in there?’ joked David, trying to juggle his daughter and the paraphernalia that seemed to follow her. ‘A submarine, a condominium?’
    ‘Wish it was. We could use a little more space around here.’ Sara smiled as she tickled a giggling Lauren on the tummy. ‘You're going to need supplies – and I left some cereal in her blue container in the refrigerator but you may