Read Online The Cathar Secret: A Lang Reilly Thriller by Gregg Loomis - Free Book Online Page A

 "I hope it's okay."
         Reilly hitched up his pants. "Sure. Send him home the minute he gets overly obnoxious."
         With a word, the dog followed Reilly back around the house and out of sight.
         Wynton walked behind as Manfred skipped to the front door. There was something else about the kid's father he was just now remembering. There were stories, unsubstantiated but persistent, around the Atlanta Bar that Lang Reilly had some sort of mysterious past, something related to secret government work, that his frequent trips out of the country had not all been business related.
         Then there had been the one time Wynton had been in the Reilly house, a cocktail party shortly after Reilly had finished some lengthy, if less-than-obvious, renovations. First, Wynton had noticed multiple locks on the doors, locks that were unlike any Wynton had ever seen before. A set of keys on a table in the hall had also been unique: they had been full of holes and indentations like Swiss cheese rather than the sort you had cut at the local hardware store. Paige had taken a wrong turn—at least that was what she claimed—on the way to the powder room and wound up in what must have been the master bedroom. Steel shutters, a door that was iron painted to look like wood. She swore she had seen surveillance cameras hidden in the shadows of the ceiling.
         So the man liked his security.
         Or made kinky movies.
         Manfred had been in the house only minutes before Wynton sensed something between the little boy and his son. It wasn't exactly that Wynn-Three

seemed to dislike his visitor. More like he was wary of him, an elk watching a distant pack of wolves. Wynn-Three made an obvious effort not to come within a couple of feet of his guest nor did he take his eyes off him.
         If there was a problem, Manfred was oblivious to it. In Wynn-Three's room, he surveyed the contents of his host's toy chest with proprietary interest. Soon, Curious George's fire truck was going head to head with Bob the Builder's yellow earth mover with the moveable front scoop. Wynton watched the action, accompanied by the whirr of battery-powered motors.
         It was too pretty a day to play inside, mechanical toys or not.
         "Guys, why don't you go outside? There's a swing set in the backyard and Wynn got a pedal Jeep for Christmas you can take turns in up and down the driveway. Don't get in the street, though."
         Reluctantly, the two small boys trooped out into the backyard.
         Wynton returned to his pruning to the sound of children at play. From the intermittent attention he paid, the two boys were engaged in some sort of game that involved furious pedaling of the small replica Jeep up and down the pavement followed by a dash to the slide attached to the swing set. Whatever reservations Wynn-Three had about his playmate seemed to have vanished.
         He had been working for a while when he heard the back door open. Stopping, shears in hand, he watched Paige walk across the yard with a tray carrying two plastic glasses and a pitcher.
         "I made you guys some Kool-Aid," she announced, carefully balancing the tray on a swing. "Who wants some?"
         The game forgotten, Manfred and Wynn downed one, then another glass before Manfred returned his to the tray. "Thank you very much."
         Paige stooped to bring her face close to his. "I understand you speak German."
         He nodded slowly with a child's reluctance to be any different from others. "Yes, ma'am."
         "How do you say 'thank you' in German?"
          "Danke schön."
         "And how would you say, 'I like Kool-Aid'?"
         Manfred shifted his weight, uncomfortable at the attention. "Ich habe Kool-Aid gern."
         Paige was about to ask another question when something made Wynton's gaze shift to Wynn-Three. His son's eyes were wider than he had ever seen them, comically so, were it not for the terror on his face that froze