The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material Read Online Free PDF Page A

officers.”
    “I won’t be followed, then.”
    “Even if I’m doing the following?”
    I stood too. “Even then.”
    He shook his head. “Mule.”
    “‘Know thyself,’” I quoted, wanting to see if he’d take the bait.
    “‘Knowledge is power,’” he answered, an even more tired cliché than my own.
    One side of my mouth lifted. “‘All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death—’”
    “‘—than the animals that know nothing,’” he capped, shaking his head. “‘And a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’”
    We both smiled. We’d collected quotes as teens, dueled with them, and it’d become our own language, not unlike the silly, secret ones of very young children. It was anotherlove we’d once shared; the English language, and the way the masters could turn a phrase, and the world on its ear, in only a few words.
    “How’s your wife?” I blurted, then cursed silently, feeling myself color. I didn’t really know this Ben Traina. And we no longer belonged to one another. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”
    “No, it’s all right,” he said and, amazingly, slowly, smiled. “But you’d have to ask her new husband.”
    I blushed even more. Ben cleared his throat and picked up a crystal paperweight, flipping it in his palm. “Saw the article on your family.”
    I studied him for judgment or sarcasm but found none. I licked my lips slowly and watched him watching me. Interesting . “So you read how I’m a slacker with no ambition and few abilities or admirable goals?”
    He scoffed as he put down the paperweight, then skirted the table between us to take me by the hand, and led me to the window that overlooked the glittering Las Vegas Strip. His palm was warm and dry, and my own looked dwarfed inside of it. Even as a boy he’d had great hands. “They should have interviewed me. I have my own theory about the ‘prodigal daughter of the Archer dynasty.’”
    That quote stung. I withdrew my hand and turned on him. “Why? Because you know me so well?”
    “I think I do.”
    I folded my arms over my chest. “I can’t wait to hear this.”
    “Okay.” Ben mimicked my pose, leaning on the glass wall, looking as though he were reclining against the night. “First, it’s your birthday. Twenty-five years old. Happy Birthday.”
    He remembered. I glanced down at my watch so he couldn’t see the sudden moisture in my eyes. “You’re about twenty-four hours early, actually, but thank you.”
    “You’re welcome. Second, you’re not aimless, merely restless. You battle between a fleeting need for security anda constant one for complete freedom. You can’t lie about who you are, and therefore you can’t feign interest in your father’s business, or imitate your sister’s social grace, regardless of how successful they are.”
    He paused, brows raised, and I motioned for him to continue. In a quieter voice he added, “You think too much, and you’re haunted by things you can’t change. You have a strong sense of right and wrong, with little tolerance for the in-between, and zero patience for deception.”
    “Anything else?” I said, a bit tightly.
    “Just one. You’re a photographer, but not as a means of commerce or even as a form of communicating with the world. The lens is actually a barrier shielding you from the rest of us. It’s a way of distancing yourself from your subjects so you can study them. Or hunt them.”
    “That’s a bunch of crap!”
    Ben grinned. “You’re also quick-tempered.”
    Hunt them, I thought, shaking my head, annoyed. It was the same wording I’d heard earlier that evening. We’ve been hunting you for a long time , Ajax had said. He’d been trying to scare me, of course, but now Ben was saying it as if I were the predator, like some sort of skulking vampire, on the lookout for O-positive. “You’re reading too much into it.”
    “You’ve been out every night this week.”
    “Wait,” I said, holding up my