The Survivor Read Online Free PDF Page A

way open and swung inside the garage, keeping low and moving right, getting out of the ambient light and blending into the darkness as fast as possible.
    ‘Vancouver Police!’ he announced. ‘Make yourself known.’
    But no one responded.
    He moved the flashlight in large wide circles, hitting all four corners of the garage. The room contained nothing but a small car. One flash from the Maglite showed Striker the car was green. A second flash caught the stylistic H insignia of a Honda Civic.
    Striker shone the light inside the vehicle. Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat, their head tilted back at an unnatural angle. The body was completely still. And too short to be Red Mask.
    Striker stepped closer, looked.
    It was an old man. Small. With thinning white hair.
    His face had been shot off.

 
    Seven
    Fifteen minutes later, Striker stood ten feet back from the Honda Civic, where the driveway met the lane. The harsh fall winds had lessened, but they were just as cold, and went right through him as if his coat were nothing but porous cheesecloth.
    He dialled his daughter, put the cell to his ear and listened to a busy signal. His pulse escalated. It was the third time since the shootings that he’d tried to call Courtney, and the third time he hadn’t been able to reach her. He wondered if her voicemail was full.
    ‘For Christ’s sake, pick up.’
    Courtney hadn’t been at the school when the shootings occurred; Striker knew that. Principal Myers had already told him she’d skipped class – yet again – and he had little doubt she would be at one of her two favourite malls, Oakridge or Metrotown Centre. Striker didn’t know what he was going to do when he found her: hug her, or rant and rave. He’d already called his neighbour, Sheila, and she was now scouring the malls looking for Courtney.
    But so far no word had come back.
    He swore, and slid the BlackBerry into the pouch on his belt. He tried to focus, to get his head back into the game. Work was always the best diversion; it had gotten him through the worst of the last six years, and besides that, he was damn good at it.
    He assessed the scene.
    Inside the garage, the interior light was now turned on, revealing the true extent of the damage the Honda Civic had taken. The rear window was partially shattered. The rest was full of holes and spider-veined. The driver’s side window had been blasted right out.
    One of the bullets was still embedded in the frame of the windshield.
    The sight brought Striker a small sense of comfort. He would have smiled, if not for the bleakness of the situation, and also because a bad feeling gnawed away at the back of his mind.
    They were missing something.
    He could feel it. Sense it. Something important. Right here in front of them. The car itself felt like a puzzle, but one with a missing piece. He stood there like a statue, and studied the scene before him. The seconds ticked by slowly.
    Felicia walked into the garage from the yard.
    ‘Courtney’s not answering my calls,’ Striker told her. ‘Send her a text, will you?’
    ‘She probably won’t even read it if I send it,’ Felicia said. ‘Sometimes I think she’s got more anger at me than at you.’
    ‘I don’t think that’s possible.’
    Felicia offered him a grim smile. She sent the text, then put her phone away and looked at the car.
    ‘Good find, Jacob. Really. The alley was a good call.’
    He nodded half-heartedly. Breathed in. Coughed.
    The garage stunk. The death of the old man – now known as the deceased, Henry Charles Vander Haven – was fresh and not overly pungent. But the car itself reeked of gas and a combination of something else he couldn’t define. The fumes were overpowering, made his head light and his lungs heavy. The fumes were the only reason Striker had opened the garage’s bay door, instead of keeping everything secure from public view.
    Striker understood the significance of the fuel. Red Mask had been planning on torching the