Net Force--Kill Chain by Jerome Preisler (e book reader txt) 📕

chuckled. “Don’t mind me, Mr. Brooks. I’ve been catching bugs since high school. My boat’s moored about thirty yards down that path you mentioned.”

Tai gestured around them. “And this building...what’s it for?”

“Back in the day, it was part of the town fishery. The men cleaned and packaged the catch here. But I bought it years ago to use as a workshop.” Stimson nodded his chin at the table. “That’s all my mess. Nobody else would set foot in this wreck. I build and repair my own traps.”

Tai nodded. Nobody else. His eyes drifted back to the fish on the wall. It was resting across two large metal wall pegs.

“OK I ask a question of my own?” Stimson said.

“Sure.”

“Bryan only had a single kayak with him. One of those tandem jobs. But I just noticed you don’t have one on your roof,” he said. “Don’t mean to be nosy, but how were you planning to get out to the island? There isn’t a rental shop for miles that opens before summer.”

“Easy, mate,” Tai said. And smiled. “I won’t need a kayak. I’m going to kill you and steal your boat.”

Stimson looked at him. It took a second for the words to register. His body’s threat reaction would take another seven-tenths of a second.

That was all Tai needed to step within reach of the scale.

He snatched it off the wall, grabbing it near the hooked end of the rod. Then he stepped in on the old man, swinging the rod in his enormous fist, using its counterweight as a bludgeon.

The weight was four pounds of rusty, pear-shaped lead. He aimed high and back behind Stimson’s left temple, wanting to strike the soft spot there. But he saw Tai coming and turned his head away at the last instant, reflexively bringing his hands up to protect himself. That was just enough to deflect the swinging weight so it smashed into the orbital socket of his eye.

Tai swore under his breath as the eye popped out of the shattered socket. He didn’t want a struggle. He didn’t want to waste time screwing around with the old fucker. He wanted to do the job fast. He swung the weight at his head again, savagely.

This time it struck right on target, smashing into the weakest part of the old man’s skull, where the cranial sutures joined the frontal, parietal, squamous, and sphenoid bones. The side of his head caved in with an audible crunch, the weight sinking into his brain.

He groaned as his legs folded underneath him. The weight pulled free of his skull and hung, red and wet, from the chain. He hit the floor with a crash, landing on his stomach.

Tai stepped in for the kill, sliding his fist down the rod to the shank of the hook. He knelt over the old man, clamped a hand over his shoulder, and flipped him over onto his back.

His head was a bloody ruin. The dislodged eye had slid halfway down his cheek. He looked up at Tai with his other eye and made a gurgling sound, a tiny red brew of saliva on his lips. Maybe he was trying to say something. Maybe he was just trying to breathe. Tai didn’t care. He just wanted to finish him off fast.

He sunk the hook deep into the old man’s throat, working its point in under the windpipe and out through the skin on the other side. Then he gave it a hard jerk.

Stimson flopped and gasped in his death throes, his trachea a pale whitish-gray tube hanging out the middle of his throat. When he stopped moving, Tai put the scale down on the floor and hastily patted him down. He found his wallet in one pocket of the bib pants, a key ring in another. He shoved them into his jacket, started to get up from his crouch, then hesitated and eyed the old man’s knee waders. Deciding they looked about the right size for him, he tugged them off and set them aside. Finally, he rose, grabbed the corpse by its ankles, and half dragged, half pushed it under the worktable.

After that, he paused to catch his breath and look around. There was a large pool of blood on the floorboards from Stimson’s head and throat. There were blood and tissue splatters everywhere. Nothing he could do about it, though. He certainly wasn’t sticking around to tidy up.

Putting on the knee waders, Tai lifted the hook scale from where he’d dropped it on the floor, went over to the entrance, and flung the scale into the bay. There was a chance the tide would carry it off, but it was a pretty heavy object, and might well stay submerged right where it landed. If so, someone was eventually bound to dredge it up.

He wasn’t concerned. Fingerprints and DNA were highly soluble in salt water, and all traces would be washed away long before it was found.

Tai stood above the ladder another second and took a quick, assaying look back over his shoulder. Then he scrambled down into the water and splashed over to the parked vehicles. When he reached the Civic, he stopped to get his rifle and kit bags out of the trunk, shouldered into their straps, and walked on to the dirt path leading off through the brambles to the old man’s boat.

His brother would arrive at any minute, and he wanted to get ready to sail out.

Bryan led their way into the forest along the well-worn, rambling dirt trail. It was bald and packed and too narrow for them to walk side by side, so they went in single file, Natasha a few paces behind him.

They had gone only a short distance when she noticed a mild, familiar taste in her mouth—and this time it was thankfully pleasant. She needed only a second to identify it as peaches. Plump, sweet, ripe peaches. The glow came into her vision moments later...a warm pink light that seemed to radiate softly off the