Read Online The Survivor by Gregg Hurwitz - Free Book Online Page A

one?” Abara checked a black leather notepad. “Twenty-six.”
    Nate wondered about the next of kin. Who would answer the door to the death notification? Sickly mother? Pregnant girlfriend? Nine-year-old son, home from soccer practice? Gazing at the bodies sprawled on the tile, Nate was all too aware of how the loss of these lives would ripple out. Awe settled in, a sense of the enormity of what he had done, but he expected to feel something more, too. A hint of remorse, perhaps. But no. There were too many other parts to this equation. Those bullets riddling the bank manager’s stiff pantsuit. The cool white hand he’d gripped through the window. A young girl’s earlobe, darkened with her mother’s blood.
    The security director had been pulled away, but Abara was still at Nate’s side, asking a question: “You said the sixth man had an accent?”
    “Eastern Europeanish,” Nate replied.
    “Russian? Polish?”
    “More Russian, I’d say. But I don’t know.”
    Abara gestured at the bodies. “Local dirty white boys, all five. Accent no makee the sense, hoss. You sure you weren’t hearing things?”
    “I’m sure. Do you know who they were? The dead ones?”
    “Yup. They’re an Inland Empire team. Been on our radar a little more than three years. But a few things don’t add up. One: What the hell were they doing in Santa Monica? They’ve never even made it west of Victorville for a job. And two: What’s with the sixth man? They’ve always run jobs as a five crew.”
    “Maybe they recruited,” Nate said.
    “I don’t know. Five men’s generally the most you see in a job like this. Six is the tipping point for logistics—more trouble than help.”
    “The sixth man seemed to be the crew leader.”
    “So you said. In that case why would a new recruit run the show?”
    Nate closed his eyes, put himself back in the vault. The scuff of that boot behind him—Number Six, lying in wait with the letter opener. The whistle of movement, steel through air, and the hot pain in his shoulder. He heard the voice, a low rush of menace— He will be greatly angered by you —and couldn’t ward off a shudder. “They were working for someone.”
    “Right,” Abara said. “‘He’ from ‘He will make you pay.’” They’d been through this as well. Stepping past the teller gate, the agent gazed at the blasted drywall of the ceiling and ran a hand over his utilitarian buzz cut. “AKS-74U assault carbine.”
    “You can tell from the bullet holes?” Nate asked.
    “No.” Abara grinned. “Crime-scene report. Now can you walk me through it?”
    “I already have. Several times.”
    Abara pressed his fingertips together. “I got this wife, yeah? She loses her damn birth-control pills. I’m talking two, three times a week. Not a good thing to lose. And I always tell her, I say, ‘Honey. Retrace your steps.’ And she argues and argues—Puerto Ricans, right? But when she finally listens? There they are. So what do you think. Can you do that for me?”
    Nate said, “Find your wife’s birth-control pills?”
    No smile. Instead Abara pointed at the window, still cranked open as Nate had left it, swath of blood across the pane. Nate took a moment, chewing his lip. Then he walked over, set his hands on the sill, and leaned out into the cool dusk air.
    “Whoa, cowboy.” Abara’s voice sounded distant behind him. “Want to reel it back a little?”
    Nate pulled himself in. Nothing was left of the teller with the pretty green eyes but a collection of evidence cones at his feet. He set about retracing each move, starting with his tumble through the window over her lifeless body. One detail at a time. The tiny puffs of drywall. The relentless screech of the saw. The bullet sailing past, so close it trailed heat across his cheek. Recounting all this now in relative solitude made it more real, and with every step he took, a black tide rose in his chest, threatening to choke off his words. He had shot two men on the main