The Cain File Read Online Free PDF

There was sensitive information on it, not to mention photos taken with the webcam at the meeting before things went bad.
    Kacha pulled the dress over her head and straightened the damp garment over her curved hips. Her face broke into a grin.
    Maggie said, “I know it’s beautiful, girlfriend, but don’t hang onto it.”
    Kacha touched her midriff. “I suppose.”
    “Doesn’t quite go with the sneakers, anyway.” Maggie studied the black high tops next to Kacha’s bare feet. “I left my shoes back at the mansion . . .”
    Kacha gave a sigh. “Take them.”
    Maggie slipped into Kacha’s warm Keds, lacing them up. Without socks they were a bit loose, but beat the hell out of bare feet. She now felt like the world’s oldest teenager. She wished she had a jacket, but she wasn’t going to ask for any more clothes from these poverty-stricken girls. They’d done more than enough. She pulled her long hair back with her fingers, tied it into a quick loose braid, Indian style. It was as different as she could muster up on short notice. Walking around with a laptop wouldn’t work. “Do you have anything I can hide this thing in?”
    “Here.” Kacha handed her a thin blue lliq carrying blanket from the floor, the size of a large square scarf. “It needs a bit of a wash.”
    Maggie took the blanket. It smelled of baby barf. She tied her laptop up in it, slung it over her shoulder. She flipped her ring around on her finger so that the stone didn’t show. Now she was an Indian girl, on her way to wherever.
    “If anyone asks anything, you know nothing.” Maggie drank the last of her coca tea. It might be the only thing she would have for the foreseeable future. A warm, mild narcotic glow began to seep into her. It had served her people for centuries as they fought fatigue and hunger and now it would serve her. “We never met.”
    “Why are you flying out of windows in the first place?”
    “It’s a long story.” Maggie set her cup down, glancing at Suyana, comatose against the wall. “What is your sister on anyway?”
    Kacha shook her head in disgust as she hugged her niece. “Devil’s Breath.”
    Scopolamine. Many of the working girls and thieves in this part of the world used it on unsuspecting clients, putting the powder in their drinks in order to liberate them of their wallets, not to mention their memories. But rarely did they use it themselves. “You’ve got to be kidding. That stuff is mighty dangerous.”
    “It grows wild back home in the jungle.There are borrachero trees everywhere. We brought some Breath with us. When things are tight, well, sometimes we need to get by—you know?”
    “And your sister’s taking a liking to it herself,” Maggie said, shaking her head sadly. “We have to put a stop to it.”
    “It’s not easy for Suyana. She needs to get away from it all sometimes.”
    Maggie cleared her throat. “Do you think you could see your way to giving me a dose or two?”
    “What for?” Kacha squinted. “Do you have someone you need to knock out? Follow you around like a helpless puppy? Give you the card and number to his ATM machine?”
    “You never know.”
    Kacha let out a sigh. “My sister doesn’t need it anyway. We can always get more. But don’t let it touch your skin. You’ll end up walking the streets in a daze.”
    A few minutes later, Maggie had a folded paper packet of white powder safely in the pocket of her—Kacha’s—jeans. Before she turned to leave, one hand on the opening of the hovel, Maggie said, “Why can’t you and your sister go back home?”
    Kacha nodded sagely for such a young woman as she swayed her niece to and fro. “Sis is no longer welcome in my village—not since she came back with a swelling in her belly and no man to own up for it.”
    Things hadn’t changed much in this part of the world. Maggie’s own mother had gone through the same ordeal with Maggie in her womb, almost thirty years ago. “So you came here to the big city to