The Kill Clause Read Online Free PDF Page A

now he was in the same room with his wife but could barely sense her through the darkness, which had grown soupy, infused with hurt and foulness and stopped-up grief.
    He struggled to find words, to reconnect. “I got the call. We were three miles away. I had to go, to see.”
    “Okay. So you went.”
    He took a deep breath. “And he confessed.”
    She was trying to soften her voice, but he could hear the frustration in it. “Tim, you’re the father of the victim. You were illegally called to the crime scene to commit a vengeance killing. Explain to me how him confessing to you is the least bit useful.” She lowered the bottle to the floor with a thunk. “That man took our daughter and violated her. Took her apart . And you went to him, you risked the crime scene and the arrest, and then you let him walk away.”
    “I think he had an accomplice.”
    Her eyebrows rose and spread. “Fowler didn’t mention that.”
    “Kindell said he wasn’t supposed to kill her, as if there had been some previous understanding between him and someone else.”
    “He could have just been saying he didn’t mean to kill her. Or that he knew it was illegal.”
    “Maybe. But then he started to refer to someone else—a he —but he caught himself.”
    “So why aren’t Gutierez and Harrison looking into that ?”
    “They weren’t aware of it, obviously.”
    “Are they looking into it now?”
    “They’d better be.”
    Ginny’s bedside clock emitted a soft chime, announcing the hour; the sound struck Tim sharp and unexpected, a stab to the heart. Dray’s face seemed to crumble. She quickly took another pull off the bottle. For a moment they’d indulged the illusion that they’d set aside the personal, that they’d been two cops talking.
    Dray wiped tears from her cheeks with her sweatshirt cuff, which she’d pulled over her hand like a girl. “So the crime scene is muddled up, and now there’s a possibility that the killer isn’t the only killer.”
    “That’s about right, unfortunately.”
    “You’re not even angry.”
    “I am. But anger is useless.”
    “What isn’t?”
    “I’m trying to figure that out.” He wasn’t looking at her, but he heard her take another gulp from the bottle.
    “All your training—Spec Ops and Combat Engineering and FLETC—you should have known to prioritize under pressure. You should’ve known not to go there, Timmy.”
    “ Don’t call me Timmy.” He stood and wiped his palms on his pants. “Look, Dray, we’re both wrecked right now. If we keep this up, it’s not gonna go anywhere we want it to.”
    Tim opened the door and stepped out. Dray’s voice followed him out into the cool hall. “How can you be so calm right now? Like she’s just another victim, someone you never knew.”
    Tim halted in the hall and stood, his back to the open door. He turned and walked back in. Dray’s hand was over her mouth.
    He ran his tongue across the points of his teeth and back, waiting for his breath to stop hitching in his chest. When he spoke, his voice was so quiet it was barely audible. “I understand how upset—how destroyed you are. I am, too. But don’t ever fucking say that.”
    She lowered her hand. Her eyes were shell-shocked. “I’m sorry,” she said.
    He nodded and withdrew gently from the room.
     
    •In the bedroom Tim spun the dial on his gun safe, then removed a Spec Ops–issue p226 nine mil, his favored .357 Smith & Wesson, a hefty Ruger .44 mag, and two fifty-round boxes of nine-mil and .44. He kept a broader ammo range on hand for his .357, as it was his duty weapon; he opted for the wad cutters over the copper-jacketed rounds and the duty 110-grain hollow-points. The service issued the S&Ws with three-inch barrels, as they were often carried concealed.
    When he entered Ginny’s room, Dray still had not moved. “I’m so sorry,” she said again. “What a fucking thing to say.”
    He knelt, placed his hands on her knees, and kissed her on the forehead. It was