Read Online The Mortality Principle by Alex Archer - Free Book Online

panic.
    The source of the movement was much closer than she’d expected.
    A body swathed in streaming rags of shadow barreled into her, slamming Annja back against the wall.
    The air was driven from her lungs by the impact. Even as she gasped for breath, she grabbed out with one hand, her fingers snatching at the material of herattacker’s sleeve. Annja hung on until the owner of the coat lost his footing, and she used her weight and his momentum to help him stumble and fall.
    The man stared up at her. Blinded by the light of the camera he threw his hands in front of his face. Annja looked down at him. He was babbling, pleading. She couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but the meaning was obvious: please don’t hurt me. She released her grip. This wasn’t the killer. This was one of his potential victims.
    Annja held her hands up in apology, trying to help him to his feet as she said, “Sorry. Sorry. My mistake.”
    The man didn’t take her proffered hand. He scrambled away, the soles of his feet pushing him along on the ground as he grabbed for his precious few possessions, which had spilled out of his pockets as he charged her in fear. She felt nothing but pity for the man, unable to imagine what it would be like to walk a mile in his shoes.
    The world was cruel, that much was undeniable. She’d seen more than enough of that cruelty to last a lifetime, but she was lucky. She also got to see the amazing stuff, too, the stuff that made life worth living.
    Did he? she wondered, and then hated herself for so immediately patronizing the man without knowing a thing about his life or what had driven him to this desperate end.
    â€œPlease,” Annja said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a neatly followed twenty-euro note. The look of fear and panic in his eyes was replaced with one of surprise, then avarice, as he reached out and took the money from her. He spirited it away in a heartbeat like the greatest magician to walk the streets of Prague,then scrambled to his feet without a word of thanks and backed away from her, nodding over and over as he pushed his way past Lars, who had stopped taping the events.
    The man hurried along the street, clutching a plastic bag that she assumed was stuffed with his tattered sleeping bag.
    â€œI’m thinking we need a better plan,” Lars said, deadpan.
    Annja didn’t argue.
    As plans went, it had been pretty thin, anyway.
    â€œMaybe we should just head back to the hotel and wait to see if your man gives you a call?”
    â€œAre you chickening out on me, Lars?” she asked.
    â€œJust checking.”
    â€œWe need to get this right. I haven’t told you what’s going on back at the network, but basically, if I screw this up, no more Chasing History’s Monsters . I really don’t want to screw this up.”
    â€œWe don’t even have a story to screw up. Not really. We’re just wandering the streets at night.”
    â€œNow you’re making me sound a little bit too much like a hooker for my liking,” Annja said, shaking her head. He was right, though. That’s pretty much what they were doing. “What else can we do?”
    The question was rhetorical.
    Lars pointed his camera back into the gloom of the alleyway and shot some footage of the place where the body had been found. The spotlight from the camera gave the dark stain a macabre cast. Annja pointed out the strands of police tape, making sure that he got them in the shot, as well. She didn’t want him to linger on the stain. She didn’t want the viewers making the mentalconnection between it and the reality that they were looking at the last vestiges of the poor man’s spilled blood. Showing the police tape would be enough. It would pull the heartstrings of their audience and show that this was real. She didn’t even want the stain in the footage that went back to the network. She knew all too well what those