Read Online The Sketcher's Mark (Lara McBride Thrillers Book 1) by Chris O'Neill - Free Book Online

perform as well when someone she was close to and cared about was the victim.  She was perfectly confident in her abilities as a Detective, she knew what she was doing and she had had the best training and the experience of doing it in one of the most dangerous cities in America.  But, when it was personal, she feared she would doubt her abilities, second guess herself and crumble under the pressure.  She didn’t want that.  She couldn’t let that happen.  She knew this tease of a panic attack was just her subconscious fear of failure kicking in.
    “Well, fuck that…” she said to herself, opening her eyes and taking a deep breath, sucking in the taste of the city and opening herself up to it, surrendering every sense she had to the hunting grounds around her.
    “I’m gonna find you.  You don’t know I’m here.  Maybe I say should hello.”  Sometimes talking out loud to herself gave her the best ideas and the simplest plans.  Now she had one.  She had to find a way to make contact with the man who had her sister.
     
     
    Chapter Eleven
     
    Guillotine looked at the missing posters stapled to the tree by the river, tour boats slowly moving over the river behind him like fat beasts migrating south.  It was Janelle. Someone had come looking for her. He looked down at the contact details beneath Janelle’s picture.  It implored whoever may have seen her to call “Lara”. The woman who had called Janelle’s phone repeatedly.  The woman he had chosen to talk to, something he had never done before. This Lara had wasted no time creating the missing posters and getting them out all over the major tourist spots.  Guillotine knew he should feel uneasy.  He was being hunted.  But he felt a thrill.  It wasn’t the first time someone had come looking for one of his Angels and put up flyers appealing for help but he had never made contact with them before.  They had all gone home empty handed.  There had been something pathetic and desperate about their attempts.  They had waited weeks, sometimes months, for their daughters and sisters before they had come out here looking. Lara’s dedication and tenacity piqued his interest. She was driven and wasted no time.  She was not playing by the rules and that excited him.  Clearly, she was not working with the Police, either- and that encouraged him further.
     
    Ironically, she had nailed one of her missing posters over one of those for his gallery show next week, “Les Arts d’Guillotine”.  Had she not put her flyer on his poster, defacing it, making him come over to remove it, he may have missed it entirely.  Fate worked in mysterious ways, he mused.  People looked at him as he stood holding the poster in his hands, chuckling to himself.
 
    He checked his watch and saw he was already five minutes late for his meeting with Claude, the gallery owner and manager of new artists who had taken him under his wing to make him the toast of the Paris art scene.  A pretentious, peacocking fop, Claude was useful only to Guillotine in that he could bring his work to the world’s attention.  In that respect, Claude was a necessary evil.  He represented the money and business side of art and Guillotine detested that.  Art and commerce were two different species and their offspring could only be a bastard mutation.  However, Guillotine knew he needed Claude to bring more attention to him.  For the bigger piece.  He started walking, headed for the café where they were to meet.

 
    Bald little Claude sat at his regular table wearing his most expensive suit with a purple handkerchief peeking out of his breast pocket. For Claude, it was a unique signature that he confidently felt gave him some artistic kudos and personal expression. Guillotine hated the purple handkerchief.  It offended him every time he saw him wearing it. Sometimes he had to struggle with the urge to use the cheese wire he kept in his pocket to sheer off Claude’s face, wrap it in that