The Prophet Read Online Free PDF Page A

examiner would find a large and ragged exit wound. The eyes were blank and lifeless.
    Marcus put his arms around the girl. She tried to pull back, but he held firm. Eventually, she fell against him, gripping a handful of his shirt and burying her face in his chest. He placed a hand on the back of her head and said, “You’re safe now. We’re going to get you home.”
    Even as he spoke the words, he realized that she no longer had a home to return to. Her parents were gone. Her old life was gone. The person she was and would become had been forever changed.
    His gaze drifted down to the body of Ty Phillips. Maybe these men deserved to die for what they’d done, but was it his place to carry out their punishment? He caught sight of his reflection in the office’s many windows. He looked into the eyes of his doppelganger and wondered what he had become, what he was becoming. There was no one to blame for his choices other than himself. He was a killer. He was a monster.
    Marcus wondered what separated him from men like the Bank Crew. Was he any better than them? Was he any better than Ackerman?

Day One - December 15 Evening

3
    Sandra Lutrell felt a pinch on her arm and awakened from a horrible dream. She felt strange and groggy. Her head ached. She tried to reach up to rub the sleep from her eyes, but she couldn’t move her arms.
    Her eyes fluttered as she tried to pull herself into full awareness. At first she didn’t recognize her surroundings. The space around her was small with gray metal walls. There was a Coleman lamp on the floor that cast a sparse puddle of illumination onto the concrete. The room was longer than it was wide, and eventually she recognized it as the interior of a storage container like the one she had used to store some extra furniture when she had first moved to Chicago from Nebraska. The job had been an upgrade, but the apartment had been a downgrade. She hadn’t been able to find a house she liked right off and had used a storage facility outside Jackson’s Grove for six months until she found the perfect place. She had fallen asleep in that same house last night.
    Sandra tried to move her head but discovered that it was restrained as well. She felt cold and glanced down to find that she was still in her pajamas. Her mouth opened to scream for help, but then she saw the man in the shadows at the opposite end of the container. The darkness obscured his face, but she could see that he was dressed all in black. A syringe dangled from his right hand.
    She remained completely still, her eyes wide and her muscles frozen with fear.
    His words cut through the cold, moist air and sent shivers through her body. His voice was soft and lacked confidence, as if he were vying for her approval. “I just injected you with a small dose of adrenaline to counteract the other drugs that I gave you and speed up your recovery.”
    Other drugs? Awareness of the implication of those words came slowly. Sandra’s thoughts were still scattered and only semi-coherent. But when realization struck her, it hit with the force of a freight train. She had been kidnapped. A man had come into her home while she slept and had stolen her away. But what would happen now? What did he plan to do with her?
    She opened her mouth to plead with him, but the words wouldn’t come. Fear gripped her tongue.
    He stepped forward into the light. A pair of oval wire-rimmed glasses rested on his nose, and his face was thin and pale. His brown hair was short and combed neatly to the side. All of which gave him a bookish appearance betrayed only by the above-average muscle tone showing beneath his tight black clothes. He had one of those ageless faces where he could have passed for early twenties or late thirties without anyone questioning him. He could even have passed for a teenager if it hadn’t been for the thick shadow of stubble that covered his cheeks and chin. He didn’t appear angry or insane in any way. In fact, if Sandra had passed