Read A Reason to Kill for Free Online

grinned. “It was delicious. I had it lightly sautéed with fava beans, and washed it down with a glass of Chianti.”
    Matt couldn’t suppress a tight smile. “Very funny, Lecter. I meant ¯”
    “I know what you meant. The answer is, you can function quite normally with one kidney. You just haven’t got a backup now, so you’ll have to take care of it.”
    “How long will I be in here?”
    “I should think we’ll be able to throw you back out on the street in about a week, maybe less. But you’ll be convalescing for a couple of months. Initially, just lay back and let the healing process do its job. No getting out of bed for a few days, until I give the okay. I’m sure the indignity of nurses bearing bedpans will encourage you to get well with all due haste.”
    “Thanks, Doc, you’re a prince.”
    “I try to please,” Sam said, nodding, and then moving off to another bed, where a woman on a ventilator was passing blood into a colostomy bag that was suspended below the level of the sheet covering her. Matt looked away and thanked God for small mercies.
    A few minutes later, Tom came in, by himself. Matt thought he looked ill, more like a patient than a visitor.
    “You look how I feel, Matt,” Tom said, parking himself in a chair.
    “You don’t look too hot yourself, Tom. Did you get the shooters?”
    “To the best of our knowledge, there was only one.”
    “ One ?”
    “Yeah. And he spent some time in the house next door. Left the couple for dead, but the woman is still hanging in. If she makes it, we might learn some more. Did you see the perp?”
    “For an instant. He was young, in his late twenties at a guess. Maybe five-eight or nine. And he was thin. He had weird eyes, black like a fucking white shark’s. Wore a baseball cap and a red top, a fleece, I think.”
    “Did he say anything?”
    “No, Tom. He came to kill not chitchat. What’s been recovered from the scene to make you think he was alone?”
    “Just slugs. Ballistics is working on them, and Ray Baxter over there says preliminary tests point to them all coming from the same silenced 9 millimetre. He thinks the shooter used home-made baffles of steel wool to suppress the sound. The striations bear that out.”
    “So Santini sent a pro?”
    “Looks that way. The hitter had some balls. He walked up to Keith and Tony in the van and took them out with head shots. Their weapons were still holstered, so they didn’t see it coming. And then he entered the bungalow through the garage and offed everyone but you. He had all the intel.”
    “Which means we’ve got a leak. One of our own sold out.”
    Tom looked pained, but nodded.
    “When I’m back on my feet, I’ll ¯”
    “You’ll do nothing, Matt. You’re off this. You know the score. This is up front and personal to you and that gets in the way and clouds judgement.”
    “You really believe I’m going to sit back and let Santini, his hired gun, and whoever served us up on a plate walk away from this?”
    “Nobody is going to walk away from anything, Matt. And you’ll be kept up to speed. Whatever I get to know, you’ll know. But you aren’t going to work it, and that’s set in fucking stone. Just concentrate on getting back on your feet. You’re going to be laid up for awhile.”
    “Okay, Tom. Will you ask Linda to come in?”
    “You telling me to go?”
    “Yeah. I think we’ve covered it. And I’m hurting. I lost four men that I was close to.”
    “You couldn’t have stopped it, Matt. We were set up. So don’t waste time on a guilt trip. How do you think I feel, for Christ’s sake? It was my case.”
    The DCI’s words hit home. He realised that Tom was also suffering. “Next time you drop by, bring a bottle of Scotch, huh?”
    “In your dreams, Barnes,” Tom said, standing up and heading for the door.
    Linda came back in and they talked for a long time. When she left, he knew that it was the beginning of the end for them, as a couple. It was sad, but not