Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2) by Jack Lively (reading well TXT) 📕

the bike onto the asphalt and let it roll downhill, coasting around the ridges until I got to the edge of town. There, the last buildings faded out behind me and the road was a gray line in the growing darkness. It was all Pacific rainforest. I got into a rhythm with the pedalling and breathing. Just me and the bike in the middle of nothing. Maybe a couple of bears were watching. The chain and wheel bearings made only the slightest purring sound. Joe Guilfoyle was a meticulous man.

A mile down the road, I turned up a logging path. The trail cut north across the island, above Port Morris and over to Beaver Falls. My plan was to get there the back way, through the woods. I wanted to take a good look before committing. The logging trail veered off in the wrong direction, so I stashed the bike and walked through the rainforest. An hour later night had fallen. I was up on one knee looking over the Beaver Falls Lodge.

The lodge was an isolated resort in the southeast Alaskan style. All rustic wood with First Nation stylings. The place was a set of connected wood structures looking across the water to Gem Cove on the other side of the channel. The main building had an elevated deck with huge picture windows. The lights were on. Clean smoke came out of the chimney. I could see down to the parking lot. The Chevy Suburban was parked in the guest spot.

I walked down and got under the deck. No lights on downstairs, just upstairs. I went around the corner and down toward the water. The lodge had a dock that pushed out into the channel. A weathered zodiac boat was tied up and waiting. I came around the other side. Still no lights on downstairs. The walkway to the entrance was lit and lined with thick rope connected to wood posts every five yards or so. I walked in the ferns below it and looked up at the deck. Lights on, jazz music playing.

I looked up at the walkway. I was not interested in making an appearance on a security camera video. So, I came around again to the side where I had started and shimmied up the thick deck support until I was able to fold myself over the balcony. I crouched in the dark corner, listening. A few yards away was the picture window and a set of wide sliding doors.

Didn’t hear anything besides the music coming from inside, so I moved over and looked in the window. Nothing to see, just embers in the fireplace and an empty room. Nothing moving except the smoke from the hot coals going up the chimney. The sliding door was not locked. I pushed the left side open and stepped in. The volume went up on Nat King Cole singing "Autumn Leaves". To my nine o’clock, polished wood countertops formed a horseshoe-shaped wet bar.

I stepped around the counter. Jane Abrams lay on the terracotta tile floor. Blood had pooled beneath her head. She looked very dead; her right eye was open. Her left eye had been punctured by a bullet, so was neither open or closed really. There were two more entry wounds at her chest. A whiskey glass had shattered where it impacted in the corner. The place smelled of bourbon and cordite. The ice had melted and the water was running up against the blood and starting to swirl in with it.

Ten

I held a palm a half-inch above Jane Abrams’ mouth. The lips were slightly parted, showing the tops of even white teeth. There was no breath, but there was warmth. Her internals were cooling down, but that would take time. Eventually the body would be room temperature. Then the decomposition would begin and she’d heat up again. Except by then she wouldn’t be a she, she’d be an it. The sound system was controlled from a little box on the counter. I used my knuckle to press the stop button.

Abrams stared up at the ceiling with her one good eye. Good in terms of it being in one piece, but not good in terms of seeing. The unseeing eye stared sightlessly into the burning core of a recessed halogen. I was crouched over the body. The rest of the lodge house made only small and subtle sounds, like the embers in the fireplace, like the sound of the wind outside and the creaking of wood joists.

I stayed still and silent. Counted off two minutes. Which is a long time when you’re counting. I eased up out of the crouch and stepped carefully back from the blood. Jane Abrams had been wearing white leather ballet flats. The one on the right foot had come off, revealing painted toenails. The chosen color was black.

I made my way across the open space of the lounge area. By then I had my knife open and held loosely in my hand. Knife against gun does not make a good equation for the guy with the knife. But then it’s better than nothing. The fireplace was modern. A big circular pan in the center of the room, with the flue pipe traveling up to the vaulted ceiling and punching through it. The seating was arranged around the hearth, a couple of different areas with appropriate furniture choices for the place and the context. Beyond that was another open space and further on I could see a pool table. I figured that was a games room.

As I crept silently forward I noticed a hand on the floor beneath the pool table. The hand was attached to an arm in a sleeve, and none of it was moving. That was for damn sure. More than that, I couldn’t see. There was a doorway off the corridor. It had a sign on it that read ‘Sauna’. The door had a little window made of tinted toughened glass. I pushed the door open with my boot.