A Deadly Twist by Jeffrey Siger (free novel reading sites .txt) 📕

folks like her, hiking along the path with light from their mobile phones to guide them. She dismissed her earlier pangs of anxiety, lit up the flashlight on her mobile, and struck out on the path.

The wind had come up, and she could hear the sea crashing on the rocks below. It was a bit trickier a walk than she’d imagined, but somewhere up ahead, others were headed the same way, and from the sounds she heard coming toward her, likely even more intoxicated than she. In a matter of minutes, she’d be safely in her bed. She had nothing to fear.

* * *

Ring, ring.

The phone rang four more times.

A grasping hand knocked a book off the nightstand before finding the mobile phone.

“Hello.”

“Nikoletta, I must see you right away.”

She looked at the time. “It’s four o’clock in the morning. Who is this?”

“The storyteller who bought you several bottles of wine a few nights ago.”

She sat up in bed. “What do you want?”

“Trust me, it’s important. Very important. Meet me outside the lobby of your hotel in ten minutes. Don’t be late.”

He hung up before she could say another word.

How did he know I was in this hotel? How did he get my mobile number? Did I tell him? Those were the first questions running through her mind. But…he was a skilled professional. She pulled on her jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers; grabbed her room key; and hurried down to the lobby.

“The game’s afoot” is what Sherlock Holmes would say at a moment like this, she thought.

Ah, the joys of the reporting life…even at four in the morning.

Chapter Two

Conventional wisdom holds early summer in Greece to be a beautiful time of year. The water is warm, the winds are mild, and the tourists are better behaved. But as far as Andreas Kaldis’s workload was concerned, he saw little difference from season to season. The nation’s criminal underbelly never seemed to go on holiday.

Ring, ring.

Nor do the phones.

He waited for Maggie to answer.

“It’s the managing editor of your favorite newspaper,” Maggie bellowed in from her desk outside Andreas’s open office door. “And he’s in his usual foul mood.”

“Great, just what I need to make my day.” Andreas picked up the phone. “Hi, Gio—”

“Kaldis, it’s Pappas here.”

Andreas wondered if Giorgos Pappas had purposely patterned his abrupt telephone style after the curmudgeonly stereotypes popularized in film and TV. Though it could be grating, Andreas viewed it as an act—like the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz—and liked the newspaperman.

“What a pleasant surprise, Giorgos. To what do I owe the honor of this call?”

“I need you to find my reporter.”

“I beg your pardon? What reporter?”

“Nikoletta Elia. She should have been in my office hours ago, but isn’t.”

Andreas wanted to ask Pappas if he’d been drinking but decided to play along for a bit longer. “Do you think something’s happened to her?”

“Of course I do. Otherwise why would I be calling you to find one of my reporters?”

“What do you think happened?”

“Damn it, man. If I knew, I wouldn’t be calling you.”

Andreas counted to three. “Giorgos. If you want my help, back off.” He paused for Pappas’s response. None came, so he continued. “Why do you think her being a few hours late for work involves something that would interest the police?”

“Five days ago, we published a story she wrote about a mysterious computer pro operating on the Dark Web. It sent cops all over Europe scouring through their closed files, looking for clues to who he might be.”

“Yes, I recognized her name. But what makes you think something’s happened to her?”

“We agreed that she’d stay on Naxos until today to finish up a story on the push to expand tourism there. When she didn’t show up in the office this morning, I tried calling her, but my calls kept going into voicemail.” He paused. “So, I called her hotel to see if she’d left yet. I was told she’d not checked out, and when I asked to be put through to her room, again there was no answer. I convinced the manager to check if she was there. He said she wasn’t, but her things were.”

“Please excuse the indelicacy of this question, but perhaps she spent the night elsewhere?”

“I thought the same thing, but her mobile was next to her bed, and she’d never go anywhere without it.”

“I’d like to help you out, but frankly, this still doesn’t sound like a police matter.”

“I’m not done yet. I haven’t told you about the body?”

Andreas sat up in his chair. “What body?”

“The hotel sits on a bluff high above the sea. According to the manager, a body was found early this morning on the rocks just below the hotel. Police have been there all morning looking for evidence.”

“I take it the body was not your reporter’s.”

“Correct. Police haven’t identified him yet, but their thinking is he was a tourist unfamiliar with the terrain who lost his footing in the stiff winds that came through there late last night.”

“Sounds plausible.”

“Yeah, just like Nikoletta’s hacker made his handiwork look like accidents.”

“Are you suggesting that the body somehow ties into your missing reporter?”

“According to the manager, a hotel security guard saw Nikoletta leave the hotel a little after four in the morning to meet someone over by the edge of the bluff.”

“And was that someone the body they found?”

“The security guy never saw who she met, but she never returned.”

Andreas picked up a pencil and began drumming its eraser on his desktop. “So, what do you think happened to her?”

“Not a clue. But I’m worried her disappearance is somehow tied into the hacker.”

“If you’re suggesting he had second thoughts about talking to her, or was worried that she could identify him, I’d think she’d be the body they found on the rocks.”

“That’s why you’re the detective, and I’m just the hysterical editor.”

“There’s another obvious angle,” said Andreas, “but it, too, doesn’t explain why a tourist ended up dead instead of your reporter. Nikoletta must have alarmed anyone who’d