Read Online Let Me Go by Chelsea Cain - Free Book Online Page A

rotated a finger in the air, and two other men in suits looked up and started to make a beeline for them.
    â€œI’m a friend of Leo’s,” Archie said quickly. “Maybe you should check with him.”
    Archie had a brief fantasy of the man with the clipboard calling Leo down from the house and then Archie and Leo jumping into a car and driving away together. Could it be that easy?
    The other two suits arrived on either side of Archie. They looked like they’d come out of the same Humvee that the first guy had—same body type, same general facial structure, same military bearing.
    â€œStay with him,” the first suit told the other two, and he gave Archie a skeptical look and stepped back, already lifting a cell phone to his ear.
    The two new suits crossed their arms in unison. Party guests streamed past them, jewelry glinting in the torchlight. They were all wearing masks. Archie was pretty sure his tux hadn’t come with one. Maybe he could cut two holes in his sock and tie it around his head. He thought about making that joke out loud, but he had the feeling it would go unappreciated.
    â€œSo,” Archie said. “Nice place, huh?” The island was over five acres. Archie wondered how many bodies were buried on it.
    They didn’t answer.
    â€œHave you seen Leo around?” Archie asked. Just an old friend, dropping by for a visit.
    Nothing.
    The first suit returned. “You’re wanted inside,” he said.
    *   *   *
    Jack Reynolds was waiting in his office for them, wearing a tuxedo and puffing on a cigar. Music from the party was a distant thrum through the textured stucco walls.
    It had been over a year since Archie had seen Jack. When they’d first met, almost fourteen years before, Jack had been leaner, almost hawkish. He was one of those men who seemed to get better-looking as they aged. Though he was sixty-five, the lines around his eyes and mouth, the silver in his dark hair, only made him look more dashing. He looked like one of those grinning silver-haired men in Viagra commercials who were always getting off motorcycles and heading inside to get it on with their waiting wives.
    Now Jack sat on the edge of his desk, the desk lamp behind him the only light on in the room. Cigar smoke hung like a cloud over his head.
    Archie had been in this room before. It was a masculine lair, the stucco walls hung with photographs of Jack’s sailboats. A built-in bar sparkled with crystal glassware and expensive liquor bottles. Leather chairs and a leather sofa created a sitting area in the middle of the room under a massive wrought-iron light fixture. Behind Jack’s desk, the room’s leaded glass windows looked out into darkness.
    Jack grinned and rolled the cigar between his fingers. “Do you know who this guy is, Karim?” he asked. He wasn’t talking to Archie. He was talking to the caramel-skinned man sitting next to Archie.
    â€œNo, sir, I do not,” Karim said in a British boarding school accent.
    Archie eyed Karim. He had a knife-cut part in his dark hair and perfectly erect posture. His tuxedo fit him well. He didn’t look like Jack’s usual muscle. Archie had a feeling that he did something more important.
    Jack stood up and walked over to them. “This is Archie-fucking-Sheridan,” he said. “He ran the Beauty Killer Task Force. That bitch took him hostage and tortured him for ten days. Took his fucking spleen out and sent it to his partner. So Archie here is strapped to a gurney in a basement in Gresham and he convinces Gretchen Lowell to let him go. She calls 911 and turns herself in. Saves his life.”
    Archie wished it had been that simple. “That’s not exactly how it happened,” he said.
    Jack put his arm around Archie’s shoulders, like a proud father showing off his son. “A few years later the bitch escapes from prison, and you know what this motherfucker does?”