The Prey Read Online Free PDF Page A

carts spilling over with an array of colorful carnations, red roses the color of fresh spilled blood, ferns newly misted, dripping dew like tears.
    Perfect, down to the red roses and misted ferns.
    He opened the glass door, a bell ringing overhead. The fragrant aroma of flowers, soil, and plants greeted him, along with a cheerful, “Hello, may I help you?”
    He breathed in the earthy scent, looking at a display of bright spring arrangements just inside the door while he waited for two chatty women at the counter to finish their order and leave.
    One arrangement in particular caught his attention: a brilliantly designed triangular piece with majestic pink and purple larkspurs framed by bright yellow daffodils, white and pink mums, and purple lilies, quivering in the air-conditioned store.
    It would have been perfect for her on any other occasion, but not for a funeral. Too bad.
    He turned to another worn page in the book. Though he had the passage memorized, he liked to look at the words. They gave him an almost giddy sense of pleasure, as if he were leaning over her shoulder as she typed them into her computer.
    Casa Blanca lilies, carnations, roses, moluccella, snapdragons and gypsophila, all in pure white, framed the funeral wreath, soft trailing plumosus lending a green backdrop, making the white even brighter. The fragrant flowers, so alive, should never have hung next to the closed casket, a casket that held the dead, dismembered body of a life taken too soon.
    “May I help you?”
    He turned, smiling at the young clerk who leaned forward to wait on him. Under thirty and blonde. Thankfully, there was no other description of her in the book. Even though there were hundreds of florist shops in Los Angeles, it might have been difficult to get both the setting and the victim just right had there been more detail. It had taken him six months to track down a waitress named Doreen Rodriguez in Denver.
    And he had a flight to Portland in less than two hours.
    “Yes, I’d like to purchase a funeral wreath.” He watched as the other customers left the store, chatting, ignorant. They had no idea they’d brushed shoulders with a god. Energized by his duplicity, he smiled at the pretty clerk.
    “I’m sorry for your loss,” the pretty young woman said. Her name badge read Christine.
    Doreen hadn’t been much of a loss. In fact, she hadn’t put up much of a fight, but he wasn’t about to tell his next victim that small tidbit.
    Closing the book, he described the flowers he wanted in the wreath. Christine attempted to make suggestions, showing him other exquisite arrangements, flowing greenery, and explaining that wreaths had become passé. He politely demurred. “This is what she would want,” he explained.
    “I understand.” The florist smiled warmly, with just the right hint of sympathy in her pretty blue eyes.
    A shame he would have to kill her.
     
CHAPTER 3
     
    “Have you been threatened?”
    They sat at the dining room table, Annette providing most of the details, but Michael still had many unanswered questions. He glanced at Rowan, but couldn’t get a fix on her. She’d put on small wire-rim glasses with a gray coating so he couldn’t see her eyes. They weren’t sunglasses, but had the same shielding effect. She sat at the far end of the table, looking out the window.
    “Not directly,” Rowan said in time. Summarizing what the police had told her yesterday, she was careful to leave out the detail about her book being left at the scene. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” she said, glancing at him. “What exactly would you do to protect me?” Her condescending tone irritated him.
    Of course, she had been a Fed. All Feds thought they knew best, Michael thought with derision. Still, she needed protection. Some lunatic had used her book as a blueprint for murder. The killer might have his own agenda, or he might be coming for her. Increasing security around this place was a good