City of the Lost: A Thriller by Kelley Armstrong

Author:Kelley Armstrong [Armstrong, Kelley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, Police Procedurals, Women Sleuths, Thrillers & Suspense, Suspense
ISBN: 9781250092151
Amazon: B0166QEK7U
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 2016-05-03T05:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-FIVE

Dalton didn’t even shut the inside door—just the screen.

“You should get a good night’s rest,” he says.

Not even going to pretend you weren’t eavesdropping, are you? I suspect he didn’t mean to be rude—he was listening in case Diana gave me a hard time.

I nod. “I’m going to take off. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I start for the door again.

“Hold up,” he says. “I’m turning in, too, and we’re going the same way. It’s quieter walking the back route. No one to pester us about the case.”

I’m about to say I’ve never seen anyone even ask him about the case. I think they don’t dare. But this is the second death, nearly on the heels of the others, and people are going to start asking questions. And demanding answers.

We set out, taking his personal highway along the border. I ask how he’s doing, given what we found earlier. He gives me a shrug and an honest “trying to forget it.”

“Marginally successful?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Same here. I know Hastings wasn’t a good person…”

“No one deserves to die like that.”

I nod, and when I go quiet, he gives me that long, cool stare.

“Which doesn’t mean some people don’t deserve to die,” he says. “Just not like that.”

I squirm and veer a little to the side.

“Did you go there planning to shoot him?” he asks.

I realize he means Blaine. “Of course not,” I say before I can stop myself. I take a deep breath. “I’d rather stick to—”

“Blaine Saratori didn’t deserve to die. He deserved to be beaten within an inch of his life and spend weeks in hospital and months in rehab, and never really get over it, not physically, not psychologically. But that wasn’t going to happen. You didn’t plan to shoot him, but it’s bullshit to pretend you killed an innocent man. And it’s bullshit to even think about that in comparison to this.”

“I don’t believe I said I was thinking of it.”

“You were. But I’ll shut up about it. For now.”

“How about for good?”

His snort says, Not a chance. Then he points up. “That was a great horned owl.”

I peer into the night sky.

“It’s gone now,” he says. “I’m changing the conversation. But as long as you’re looking up, do you see that?”

I follow his finger to see a distant strip of swirling green through the clouds.

“Is that…?” I begin. “The northern lights? I didn’t think I’d be far enough up for them.”

“You are. It’s just coming into the right season, so you won’t get a lot of good views yet.”

“What causes it?”

As we continue walking, he explains that it’s electrically charged protons and electrons from the sun entering the earth’s atmosphere at the poles. I’m so engrossed in looking up that I nearly bash into a tree. He gets a chuckle out of that. When we reach my yard, he says, “There’s your fox,” and I see it slipping from the forest edge.

“It’s not mine,” I say, giving him a smile. “Because that would be wrong. A wild animal is not a pet.

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