Read Online Blood Crimes: Book One by Dave Zeltserman - Free Book Online Page A

back here tomorrow at seven, give her twenty bucks also, and I’m sure she’ll tell you whatever she can, okay? In the meantime I have to get back to work.”
          Hayes gave the desk clerk his cell phone number, along with another twenty, and asked him to call him if he thought of anything else that could help. As he left he felt a skip in his step, and had to keep his jaw clenched tight to prevent a broad smile from coming over his face. He had been on this assignment for over a year and this was as warm as he had gotten to
Jim
. But as excited as he felt, he also had some trepidation. He was going to have to call his client and explain to her how he ended up in Kansas City. Thinking about that dampened his spirits.
          Up until this recent trip, she’d been calling him and telling him where to go next to look for
Jim
. After four or five months of that he started to make the connection about where she was sending him and recent murders of very bad men in the same cities, all of which were missing a good amount of blood. He had no doubt that Serena suspected
Jim
of these murders and was sending Hayes to these locations after scouring police reports. He also knew she was intentionally withholding this from him, and further, that she didn’t want him to make the connection. He knew she wouldn’t be happy that he figured it out, and knowing that made him nervous. As sexy as she was—as much as he longed to experience her in the sack, there was something about her that creeped the hell out of him. Big surprise, huh genius, he told himself, after all, all she’s doing is hiring you to track down a serial killer . But he knew that wasn’t it, at least not entirely. There was something else about her.
M
aybe it was the way he caught her a few times looking at him as if he weren’t even an insect. Those looks would be fleeting, nothing more than a shadow passing over her face, and it would leave him wondering whether he really saw what he thought he had or whether it was just his own insecurities acting up—after all, she was so damn sexy, and the best you could say about him was that he was an average-looking guy.
M
aybe he imagined those looks, maybe it was something else about her that gave him the willies. Whatever it was, he instinctively knew he didn’t want to get on her bad side.
          He waited until he was back in his car before calling Serena. She answered her cell phone after the third ring, her voice as always with a soft sing-song lilt to it.
          “Donald,” she half-purred, “this is a surprise.”
          “Yeah, I’d expect so,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I found that our target was in Kansas City four days ago.”
          She didn’t respond to that, instead she let a heavy silence hang between them while she waited for him to explain further. When he didn’t volunteer anything, she asked how he discovered such a thing.
          “I had a hunch.”
          “That’s not good enough.”
          Her tone had shifted from amused to something that sent a chill down Hayes’ spine. There was no longer a lyrical quality to her voice, more like the faint unpleasantness of glass breaking. Hayes found himself sweating.
          “Something happened recently in Kansas City that made me want to check it out,” he said.
          “Which was?”
          Hayes took out his handkerchief and wiped it along his neck and forehead. He felt shaky. Deep inside he knew this was a mistake letting her in on what he knew. As if his voice were coming from outside of himself, he heard himself tell her about the pattern of murders he had recognized, and about the latest murder in Kansas City. There was a cold silence on her end that she eventually broke by asking Hayes if he had mentioned his theory to anyone else.
          “You mean the authorities?” he asked.
          “I mean anyone.”
          “No, of course not,”