Thief Read Online Free PDF

better part of the wine in the cellar.
    â€œWho are…?” she cried. “What is…?”
    Monarch smiled, raised the fake cigarette to his lips, and blew the last dart. It struck her dead center of her forehead. She squealed, stepped back, and raised her hands to swat at it. As she did, the thief grabbed her above her emerald and diamond necklace, plucked the dart from her skin, and threw her into the wine cellar. She crashed into the tasting table, and was going to the floor when he slammed shut the door.
    â€œFuck,” Monarch said.
    â€œWhat?” Barnett demanded.
    â€œIt’s not good,” he said as he began to jog back toward that arcade room and the stairs to the main floor. “Louisa got a good look at—”
    Monarch heard the door to the wine cellar open behind him. He slowed for a step, looked over his shoulder, and saw Arsenault’s wife holding Saunders’s Glock. The socialite was squared off in a combat stance, arms rising, but unsteady on her feet, fighting the tranquilizer.
    She won’t shoot, Monarch thought an instant before the gun barked.
    The bullet punched the thief in the gut, spun him around, and he crashed against the wall.

 
    6
    EARS RINGING, MONARCH THREW himself sideways toward the game room to avoid a second bullet. Glancing back, he saw Louisa succumbing to the drugs, dropping the gun, and pitching forward onto the hallway rug.
    â€œI’m hit,” he said, gritting his teeth, and struggling to his feet through the game room.
    Barnett came back all business. “How bad?”
    Looking down the thief saw that the cummerbund showed blood spreading. He set the champagne glass on a foosball table, and probed the wound in front and behind, finding no exit wound.
    â€œAbdomen, lower right ventral side,” Monarch replied, reaching the stairs. “It’s still in there.”
    â€œMayday?”
    â€œNot yet,” he said, though he felt like puking with every step.
    â€œCan you bind it?”
    â€œI’ll let you know,” the thief said, climbing the stairs.
    At the top he could hear voices and realized he was sweating hard. Still holding the bonds inside his tux jacket and up under his left armpit, Monarch opened the door, finding several guests and staff members staring back at him.
    â€œWe heard a loud noise,” one of the servers said.
    â€œA shooting!” Monarch squealed in that Mexican accent. “Big Beau shot Louisa! I saw it!”
    Gasps and screams went up, and he went on, “Call the police! Run for cover! The rich one, he goes insane!”
    Whether it was fear of a pistol-packing mogul gone haywire, or fear of getting caught up in a scandal sure to be plastered all over the New York Post, everyone in the hallway broke into a blind sprint toward the ballroom and the front door. Monarch slammed the basement door shut, and went in the opposite direction, toward a pair of closed doors he knew led to Arsenault’s library and private office.
    The thief was suddenly and wildly thirsty. It’s a common symptom of a gut shot. The body demands water to flush out the acidic digestive fluids seeping into the wound. There was a caterer’s cart there in the hall. It carried coffee cups, saucers, and cloth napkins. Monarch stuffed a wad of napkins inside the cummerbund as he tried to run, provoking a true blast of pain, the first agonizing spasm to break through the early shock, so strong it forced him to wonder if he had the strength to get free of the estate before the police arrived.
    Flashing on the interior of a prison cell—a common enough memory from Monarch’s past—he swallowed the pain, opened the door to Arsenault’s office, and stepped inside a room decorated like a British men’s club. The revelers in the ballroom seemed not to have heard about the shooting because all he could make out was laughter and the strains of a cello as he shut the door behind him.
    In