Read Parker 05 - The Darkness for Free Online Page A

was
    visible. When she completed the rest of the word, and the
    apartment was sufficiently coated, they left the building and
    waited for Detective Sevag Makhoulian to report the crime.
    5
    Amanda Davies arrived home at eight o'clock. She
    called it home even though it was anything but. The
    reality was it was the home of her friend and coworker
    Darcy Lapore, and Darcy was campaigning for most altruistic human being on the planet by allowing Amanda
    to stay there.
    Living here wasn't what she'd expected after coming
    to New York for law school. She figured she'd graduate
    from NYU near the top of her class, which she did, then
    find a cushy job in some high-profile firm and become
    one of those high-powered career women who had brassy
    blond hair (hers was auburn, so this would be tricky),
    wear smart Hillary Clinton pantsuits, get married at
    thirty-six, kids at thirty-nine, realize by fifty that you
    never really spent much time with your family, sixty
    before you realized you were never really happy in your
    marriage and my, didn't life go by fast?
    Instead, she met a guy named Henry Parker who changed
    her world. Well, part of it was her own doing, choosing the
    not-for-profit sector of legal aid rather than one of those
    cushy jobs. She didn't make the money most New York
    lawyers did, but she was pretty sure she slept better at night.
    The Darkness
    43
    It took a few years, but looking back Amanda realized
    how much of her life she'd missed. It was as if she'd taken
    her expected life and turned it around. Her parents had
    died when she was young, and after being shuttled back
    and forth for years, she was adopted by a kind couple
    named Lawrence and Harriet Stein. The Steins were everything foster parents could be. Except for real parents.
    Amanda went through the first twenty years of her life
    without knowing a real relationship of any kind, and she
    didn't figure that would get any better.
    Then she met Henry in extraordinary circumstances,
    literally picking him up on the side of the road, later to
    find out he was wanted for murder. Thankfully he was
    innocent. That would have been a deal breaker.
    They'd leaped into a relationship faster than either of
    them knew what they were doing, and for a while it was
    good. Really good. Then just as they met under extraordinary circumstances, so were they torn apart. Henry
    broke up with her for reasons that he believed were noble,
    but devastated them both. And after some tentative patchwork, they'd decided to give it another go. Slowly this
    time. They were starting like they should have from the
    beginning. Movies. Dinner. Holding hands while walking
    through Central Park, picnic lunches on the Great Lawn.
    She'd moved in with Henry too quickly last time. For
    now, Darcy would do, but every night spent in that cold
    guest room, with the hard mattress that was meant more
    for show than for use, with the artificial orchids everywhere and paint so white that it seemed to have been
    bleached of all personality, she couldn't wait for the day
    when she could feel his warmth next to her every night,
    where she could lean her head on his chest whenever she
    felt like it and listen to the beating of his heart. She craved
    44
    Jason Pinter
    that intimacy, that security. He needed it, too, she knew
    it. But if it took a few extra months to build protection
    for the rest of their lives, she supposed she could wait.
    The alternative would have been unbearable.
    When she used her spare key to open the apartment
    door, she had to fumble around in the hallway for the light
    switch. It wasn't by the door like it would be in a normal
    apartment. The hallway light was part of some intricate
    module by the entrance of the atrium that controlled all
    the lights in the house. That was one of the things she
    loved about Henry's previous apartments. There were no
    modules, and definitely no atrium.
    Once she found the panel and turned on every light in
    the house before finding the one to her