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

Lila, Tassaki, and Sofia, you damn well know what you’d better do.”

Andreas reached behind his back and squeezed the butt of his gun. “As a matter of fact, I do.” Andreas stood. “I think now would be a good time for you to leave.”

* * *

Following his conversation with the publisher, Andreas arranged private security for his family and warned Nikoletta, Tassos, Maggie, Yianni, and Toni, of his threats. Yianni passed along the warning to Popi and her husband, now both back on Naxos.

The day after the publisher paid his visit to Andreas’s home, prosecutors charged him and members of his family with crimes relating to their illegal antiquities activities, tax evasion, and fraud. They also announced a continuing investigation by Greece’s Special Crimes Unit into five murders potentially linked to the publisher himself. As predicted, the charges set off a second worldwide media explosion and triggered verbal attacks by the publisher on Nikoletta, Tassos, Andreas, and everyone in Andreas’s family.

In Nikoletta’s new column, granted to her by her new publisher as thanks for his paper’s booming boost in sales and growing international reputation as Greece’s crusading publication of record, she gave no quarter to her ex-boss, starting with an online column titled, “I Defend My Friends.”

When asked by the press for a comment on the war raging all around him, Andreas would only say, “This, too, shall pass.”

“So, how do you feel this morning, Mr. Media Star?” said Yianni, sticking his head through the doorway of Andreas’s office.

“I’d feel a lot better if we had even the scent of a lead on some way to pin the bastard to one of those murders. There’s gotta be something out there.”

“Hey, guys, turn on the television!” Maggie raced into the office and straight for the TV remote. She tuned to a news channel, catching a reporter in midsentence. “No explanation yet for what went wrong, but the tragedy couldn’t have come at a worse time for the family. Its patriarch has been engaged in a protracted battle to salvage the family’s reputation, but now this.”

“What the hell is this?” yelled Yianni at the TV.

Maggie pointed. “It’s there on the chyron running across the bottom of the screen.”

PUBLISHER OF LEADING ATHENS NEWSPAPER DIES IN HELICOPTER CRASH.

“Can’t be,” said Yianni.

Andreas stared at the screen. “I hope no one else died.”

“I heard it was just him. He had a helicopter-pilot license.”

“Where did it happen?” asked Yianni.

Maggie pointed at the TV as the reporter continued. “We’re here with the Naxos chief of police, who’s taken personal charge of the investigation. What can you tell us?”

“Hey, it’s Dimitri!” said Yianni.

“We know,” said Maggie, putting a finger to her lips.

Dimitri spoke directly into the camera. “The matter is currently under investigation by the U.S. military. What we know so far is that a United States drone based on Crete unexpectedly locked on to the victim’s helicopter as it flew from Naxos to Crete and launched a missile that destroyed the helicopter in midair. As yet, the United States has offered no explanation for how such a tragic accident could have occurred.”

“Seems poetic justice, doesn’t it?” snipped Maggie. “Dimitri reporting on the investigation of the publisher’s accidental death.”

“Turn it off,” said Andreas.

“Why? He’s not done yet,” said Yianni.

Andreas barked, “I said turn it off.”

Maggie turned it off. “What’s bothering you, Chief? Were you wishing he’d die, and now that it’s happened, you feel guilty?”

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe what else?” asked Yianni.

Andreas ran his hands through this hair and ended by rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes. He looked at them and exhaled. “Maybe I could have prevented this.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, but with so many people angry at this guy, I should have done something to dampen down their rage.”

“Bullshit,” said Yianni. “You always took the high road.”

“While letting everyone else take the low,” mumbled Andreas.

“STOP. Enough already,” said Maggie. “This guy had more people wanting to kill him than lined up to murder Samuel Ratchett on the Orient Express. No way you could have stopped them all.”

“Not to mention that one of us would have had to do the job that drone did if that piece of shit had ever tried hurting your family.”

Andreas rubbed at his eyes some more.

A message ping came through on Andreas’s mobile. He looked at the screen. “It’s from Nikoletta. Just after the publisher’s death was announced on the news, she received an anonymous comment to one of her online columns. The one titled, ‘I Defend My Friends.’” Andreas cleared his throat. “It reads, ‘As you see, I also defend my friends. Your fan, Soter.’”

Read on for an excerpt from Island of Secrets

Book 10 in the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery series.

Available now!

Chapter One

He never wondered about the purpose of life or how he turned out as he had. It all just sort of happened. He became a cop because he saw it as the surest way for a kid born into Greece’s working class in the tumultuous early 1960s to make a living. He got lucky when, after the fall of the Military Junta in 1974, he joined the youth movement of a left-wing political party that came to power in 1981 and remembered to reward its loyal friends.

As he rose in rank, the more friends and money he made, the more power he amassed. He kept careful track of where the bodies were buried and possessed an uncanny instinct for digging up the ones he needed to achieve his purposes. An effort by the opposition party to paint him as corrupt failed when the prosecution’s main witness died in a boating accident. An investigation into the witness’s death faded away soon after he announced his decision to retire from the Hellenic Police force with the rank of colonel.

That’s when he began to make truly big money, capitalizing on his contacts and former position as head of police for the South Aegean Region, home to Greece’s most popular tourist islands for the rich and hard-partying