Read Online Rebel Island by Rick Riordan - Free Book Online

for a conviction. If things went his way, Brazos would gain national attention. He could write his own ticket—a job with the state attorney’s office. Maybe even a federal appointment.
    On New Year’s Eve, two weeks before the trial, Brazos sequestered himself at his weekend house in Port Aransas to prepare his case and collect his thoughts. This was his habit. He was well known for going on such retreats. The fact that it was New Year’s Eve meant nothing to Brazos. He did not celebrate such things. He had no time for anything except his work and—as time allowed—his family.
    Brazos’s weekend house was in a bayside community of million-dollar homes with a boating channel between every block. There was no security. No gate, no surveillance. Island mentality. Most of the residents didn’t even lock their front doors. Brazos left his retreat only twice that day, once for a jog on the beach, once for groceries in the afternoon. During one of those times, the assassin must have set his trap.
    Around sunset, Peter Brazos was cooking a quiet supper for himself when he was surprised by his wife, Rachel, and their two daughters, ages nine and seven. A spur-of-the-moment decision. Daddy should not spend New Year’s Eve alone. Brazos was irritated at first. Rachel knew better than to interrupt him while he was on retreat. But he couldn’t stay mad at her or the girls, so he set aside work. Plans were changed. They shared a dinner of shrimp and filet mignon, chicken strips and sparkling cider for the girls. The clock ticked toward midnight. The girls tried to stay up for the television broadcast from Times Square, but they fell asleep in the master bedroom, curled between their parents. Peter Brazos kissed his wife and asked her if it would be all right if he snuck away to study his case notes one more time.
    Rachel Brazos smiled. She knew her husband too well to argue. She wished him a happy New Year, and Brazos took his laptop out to the back deck.
    The winter air was cool and pleasant. Across the channel, a few of the neighbors’ houses were lit up for parties. That didn’t bother Peter Brazos. He read through his notes and thought about how much better South Texas would be when the men he was prosecuting were finally put behind bars.
    He was proud that he hadn’t bowed to the pressure from nervous politicians, reluctant police, death threats from the mob. So what if these drug barons were well connected? Brazos knew the cartel had several rural sheriff’s departments on their payroll, possibly a few Corpus Christi cops and city council members, too. That didn’t matter. Brazos was doing the right thing.
    He was relishing the idea of a conviction when the fireworks started down at the beach.
    In the flickering of red and blue starbursts, something caught Peter Brazos’s eye. At the edge of his dock was a small white lump that looked like an ice cube.
    He wasn’t sure why, but he set down his computer and went to see what the thing was. A tiny skull made from rock candy—a
calavera,
like children got for treats on the Day of the Dead. Brazos picked it up and stared at it, baffled by what it was doing on his dock.
    Then something began nagging at the back of his mind—stories he’d heard. A hired killer. A calling card at the scene of a crime. But those kinds of hits happened to Mafia informants, people on the other side of the law…
    Later, he would blame himself for those precious seconds he wasted, paralyzed by disbelief, before he ran toward his house and shouted his wife’s name.
    As his house erupted in flames.

    By the next afternoon the overwhelmed Port Aransas Police Department had turned the arson investigation over to the FBI.
    Lab techs found evidence of six incendiary devices in the house. The wiring was consistent with the type of device used by the most notorious hired assassin in South Texas—a man known only as Calavera. High-grade materials, completely un-traceable, timed to explode precisely