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

raised his hand to his head and begun running his fingers through his hair. “Put the gun down, Bear.”

“FUCK YOU.”

“This is not going to end well for you.”

“For me? I’m the one about to pull this trigger.”

“Take a look at your chest.”

A red dot twitted about the center of Bear’s chest. His eyes jumped to find the source, the barrel of the shotgun drifting in sync with his gaze.

“Drop the gun.”

“The hell I will.” As he swung the gun back around toward Andreas, Andreas dropped his hand to his side.

Bear’s chest imploded a microsecond before the crack of the sniper rifle reached the terrace.

Bear nearly toppled, and he struggled to turn his gun on Andreas, but Tassos leaped across the terrace and tore it out of the injured man’s hands.

“Call an ambulance!” Andreas yelled to Yianni.

“This guy isn’t going to need one,” said Tassos. “That bullet took out his heart. He’s been running for the last few seconds on pure venom.”

“Shit.”

“Why are you complaining? This dirtbag was about to kill you and all of us.”

“He’s the last witness we had who could tie the publisher to the murders.”

“Shit.”

Five other voices said the same.

* * *

It was dark by the time the ambulance drove off with Bear’s body.

Lila stood with Andreas by the terrace doorway looking down at the bloodstains on the marble. The others sat on the terrace, waiting for local police to complete their investigation.

“How am I ever going to explain to my family’s friend what happened in her lovely home?” asked Lila.

Andreas put his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry; we’ll get someone here first thing in the morning to take care of cleaning all this up and to fix the window he smashed to get in.”

“How can you be so calm?” She rested her head on Andreas’s chest. “I’m still shaking. He was going to kill you.”

“But he didn’t. So I put it all behind me. No reason to dwell on it. Just learn from it.”

“And what did you learn?” said Dimitri, stepping out onto the terrace.

“That it pays to go with my instincts.”

“What instincts?” asked Lila.

Dimitri answered for him. “He told me to arrange to have two men assigned to watch the house until you all left.”

“That’s what you were talking about with those two cops outside town hall?” asked Yianni.

“Yeah. Dimitri brought them there so we could meet. He introduced one as a former Greek Special Forces sniper, and I told him to bring along his rifle, just in case.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” said Nikoletta.

“I get somewhat paranoid whenever my family is involved, and I didn’t want to send everyone else off the deep end based on my hunch.”

“How did the sniper know when to shoot?” asked Toni.

“We’d worked out three signals. If I brought one hand up to my head and began running my fingers through my hair, it meant dot him on the chest with his sight. If I brought my other hand up so that both my hands were running through my hair, it meant stand down. But if I had only one hand in my hair and dropped it to my side…well, you know what that meant.”

“You do realize,” said Dimitri, “that there’s no way to keep this from the press. A total of five killings in one week in all of Greece would be front-page news. Five on one island…” He spun his hand in the air.

“Should do wonders for tourism,” said Tassos.

“I can already hear the mayor’s spin,” said Dimitri. “‘Through the keen investigative skills and bravery of our Naxos police, our nation has been cleansed of a murderous network responsible for the death of four men.’ He’ll play that tune long, loud, and often.”

“At least you’ll get some credit,” said Andreas.

“Only because he has no choice.”

“Excuse me, but I thought Bear only killed three,” said Lila.

“Knowing our mayor,” said Dimitri, “he’ll add the death of Peter Zagori to his tally rather than leaving open the possibility of the public thinking another killer might still be at large on the island. Besides, it will give him a better excuse than the one he’s been using for not keeping his promise to the press to turn over Zagori’s name. He’s been saying, ‘We’re waiting to hear back from the Americans.’ Now he’ll say he didn’t want to jeopardize a far more significant investigation.”

“Do these guys ever tell the truth?” said Toni.

“Actually, the mayor may be correct in saying Bear killed four,” said Andreas. “If not more.”

“Who’s the fourth?” asked Dimitri.

“The project manager. Bear was Honeyman’s natural go-to guy for that kind of thing. If the publisher told Honeyman to get rid of the manager, my money’s on Honeyman hiring Bear to do the job. It would have made everyone happy because Bear could arrange to conduct the investigation of his own hit.”

“But Bear said Honeyman liked the manager and disliked the publisher,” said Dimitri.

“And the mayor said the project manager was a blackmailer,” said Yianni.

“Putting aside that Bear was a pathological psychopath and the mayor is a pathological politician, all of that could be true,” Andreas paused. “Or not. But my sense of Honeyman is that he was the sort of man who’d be loyal to whoever kept the easy money coming, and that meant the publisher. So, bye-bye, project manager, no matter what he thought of him personally.”

“What goes around comes around,” said Yianni. “Bear did away with his buddy Honeyman for the same reason.”

“And on the orders of the same man,” said Maggie.

“For twenty-five years, maybe more, Bear was on easy street, collecting money through Honeyman for doing nothing except possibly listening to Honeyman bitch about his boss.”

“Something cops are used to hearing a lot of from their buddies,” said Tassos with a smile.

“It wasn’t until Honeyman’s botched efforts at getting rid of Nikoletta, Popi, and me that the publisher panicked and reached out to Bear directly, offering him Honeyman’s gig if he took out Honeyman and the two who’d run Popi and me off the road.”

“The