Infected 1: Prey by Andrea Speed

Author:Andrea Speed [Speed, Andrea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2013-11-13T14:00:00+00:00

2

The Best Revenge

ROAN felt he had waited long enough for a punch line. “You want to hire me?” he repeated, not bothering to hide the disbelief and contempt in his voice. “For what exactly? Piñata?”

“I have a serious matter that needs looking into, and I believe in hiring within the community,” Eli replied, without a hint of facetiousness.

Paris rolled his eyes, and Roan had to restrain the urge to do the same thing. Eli was comparing himself to Roan because they were both infected, huh? “I’m not your community.”

“Oh, I know you don’t like it,” he said, with a patronizing smile. “But we have much more in common than we have in difference.”

“Take that back and I’ll give you five minutes.”

“You this nice to all your clients? I’m surprised you’re still in business.”

Roan turned and walked back into his office, leaving the door open. Eli followed, closing the door behind him. “All this hostility,” Eli said, as he looked around his office, as if appraising its worth. “It can’t be good for your chi.”

Roan sat behind his desk, closing the browser on his computer screen. “You’re wasting time.”

Eli sighed expansively, like a balloon deflating, and took one of the metal and leather chairs before his desk. Eli had a “messenger bag,” aka a man purse (Seriously, was he trying to look as gay as possible? Was this some sort of obscure shot at him?), slung over his left shoulder, and as he sat down, he swung it onto his lap. “Did you see the paper this morning?”

“Yes. Why?”

He rummaged in his bag for a moment, and pulled out the local section of the paper. “You see this?” He tossed it on Roan’s desk.

The paper was folded so the story that was facing up was a tiny column on the mysterious shooting of a nineteen-year-old girl at the Wildwood Apartments, which he knew from his cop days was a tenement. Nothing good ever happened at the Wildwood, so he couldn’t say he was surprised by a homicide—they probably had about three to five a year, mostly drug- and gang-related. “Yes. And?”

“Did you know she was infected?”

He scanned the article rapidly, but there was no mention of that. It only mentioned she was nineteen-year-old Ashley Cryer, originally from Corpus Christi, Texas, and a barista at the Starbucks on Third and Grant. Dead from a single gunshot wound to the head, which probably meant she was killed almost instantly. Not likely to be a gangbanger, so what was the deal there? Robbery gone wrong? Mistaken identity? Psychotic ex-boyfriend? “It doesn’t say that.”

“I have sources, Roan. And do you know what? She’s the fourth infected who’s been mysteriously killed in a month. They’re all killed by gunshot wounds, usually to the face, usually point-blank.” He rummaged in his bag again and pulled out what looked like a computer printout, which he slid across his desk. “Look at them. On top of that, they’re just kids.”

The computer printout was a collection of different little articles—and

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