Read Online Last Call - A Thriller (Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels Mysteries Book 10) by J.A. Konrath - Free Book Online

taking out an ad in the personals. Fleming’s a hacker. She monitors the net, no doubt has spiders looking for key terms. When she finds the names
Fleming, Chandler, Jack Daniels, Harry McGlade
, and the words
bugged
and
White House
all in one post, she’ll call me.”
    I cast a gaze at Katie, who was still entranced by the cat. “What if someone else is looking for those same terms, Harry?” I asked.
    “You mean the NSA? Hell, who cares? Those paranoid bastards already set up a video camera over my bed.” Katie glanced over at him. “It was the NSA,” Harry told her, “I swear.”
    I was more concerned about other, unnamed government organizations. Ones the NSA didn’t know about. Organizations that could make me, and everyone I know, disappear without a trace.
    I was having this obviously delusional paranoid fantasy when my cell phone rang.
    UNKNOWN NUMBER .
    I picked up, and with a hint of trepidation said, “This is Jack.”
    “The place we ate at, with the carrot cake,” said a female voice I recognized. “Tomorrow at 2 P.M. Bring the idiot. Make sure you aren’t followed.”
    Then she hung up.
    Harry read my face. “Told you so.”
    “We have to go to Washington,” I said, putting away my cell.
    “We?”
    “She told me to bring the idiot.”
    “Woo-hoo!” Harry said, doing a fist pump. “I’m in. She’s obviously been pining for me. Which one was it? Moodypants? Wheels? Both? They owe me a three-way.”
    I frowned. Because they were identical twins, the sisters sounded the same. I guessed the caller was Wheels—Fleming—because she was the one there when Harry ordered carrot cake at that diner in DC . But she could have told that to Chandler.
    “Book a flight,” I told Harry.
    “How about the cat whisperer over here?”
    Katie and I exchanged a glance.
    “I’m just going to follow you,” she told me.
    I sighed. “Book it for three.”



LUCY
    T he cardboard Amazon box clutched in his scarred hands, K pushed open the door to the playroom at the far end of the hotel.
    The smell was… strong.
    Death had many scents. Some good. Some not so good.
    The aroma of blood excited Lucy, stirring something in her similar to hunger or sexual arousal.
    Bile was more of an acquired taste, akin to enjoying a fine whiskey. The first few times, it was pungent. But then it began to develop nuances and different notes, and the complexity became appreciated.
    Lucy appreciated urine more as a side-effect than as an odor. Making someone piss themselves in fear and pain was fun, but the smell wasn’t something she salivated over.
    Rot and shit were just plain awful. That’s why there were two main rules when torturing someone to death. First, cauterize wounds to prevent necrosis. Second, don’t perforate the bowels.
    The playroom smelled mainly of blood. And body odor—a fragrance that had no place in a torture chamber, or anywhere else.
    There was also the gag-inducing smell of excrement.
    Lucy held what was left of her nose, and she and K approached the man on the rack. She couldn’t remember what the young man had done—he was a snitch or a rival cartel member or a witness. Or maybe Emilio—the drug lord who owned the compound—was simply as offended by the man’s BO as Lucy was. If being pungent was a crime, this guy deserved at least a dozen death sentences.
    And now, to add to his unpleasant stench, he’d crapped himself.
    It was a bad one, too. Eyes-watering, taste-it-in-the-back-of-your-mouth bad. Lucy had no idea how women could have babies. Wiping asses every day for two straight years seemed worse than any torture she could dream up.
    K seemed equally irritated. He handed Lucy the box, removed his folding knife from his pocket, and held it against the man’s throat.
    “I was going to give you a chance to go free,” he said. “But little boys who mess their pants don’t deserve freedom. This is what they deserve.”
    Apparently little boys who messed their pants deserve a Columbian