Read Prey for Free Online

a cell, albeit one without a bed or a toilet. In fact it was worse than a cell. It was more like limbo. If things went south he was heading to hell. If they played out how they should then he would soon be a free man again. The uncertainty was like torture.
    His father had been in prison for two decades before he was executed. Winter had occasionally wondered how he’d kept going for all those years. If their roles had been reversed, he doubted he would have survived. He might have managed a couple of years, but at some point he would have taken matters into his own hands. A life without freedom was no life at all.
    The door finally opened and Mendoza came back in carrying a laptop. He expected her to sit in the same seat as earlier. She didn’t. Instead, she put the computer down on the table and came around to his side. He gave her a quizzical look, but she wasn’t giving anything away.
    ‘Show me your hands.’
    He answered with another look, and when she didn’t respond he lifted his hands up. She produced a key and unlocked the cuffs. Winter rubbed his wrists and watched her walk back around to the chair on the other side of the table. He waited until she was seated then gave her a smile. ‘Thanks. You have no idea how good it is to have those things off. So what happened to change your mind?’
    Mendoza answered him by opening the laptop and hitting a couple of keys. She turned the computer around so that he could see the screen. The video that was playing had the low definition of a cheap CCTV camera. The picture wasn’t great, but it was good enough.
    According to the time stamp, the film had been shot at eighteen minutes after one this morning. The screen was taken up with a distorted blurry wide-angle shot of a store that was on the same street as the diner. A couple walked past, arms wrapped around each other. They were laughing and clearly having a good time. Nothing for almost a minute then a woman appeared. She was walking fast, her eyes fixed on the sidewalk ahead. Nothing for another thirty seconds then the blonde walked into the shot. Because of the angle, Winter could only see part of her face, but he recognised her from the way her shoulders rolled as she walked.
    ‘That’s her,’ he said.
    ‘That’s what we figured.’
    Mendoza leant over the top of the laptop and hit another couple of keys. A new video started playing. The time on the screen had jumped forward to three minutes to two, but everything else was almost identical to the first film clip. Same street, same store, same angle. One second passed, two, three. A man walked in front of the store.
    ‘And that’s me.’
    Mendoza hit another couple of keys and a third film clip started playing. The clock in the corner of the screen had jumped forward to twenty-one after two. The woman walked past the store again, this time in the opposite direction. Mendoza hit pause, freezing her in mid-stride.
    ‘On the basis of this Lieutenant Jones thinks we should give you the benefit of the doubt.’ Her voice was flat and lifeless, her face tense.
    ‘And you clearly disagree with his decision. So, what? You’d rather I was a murderer? Then again that wouldn’t reflect well on you, would it? It would mean you missed that one the whole way through the Ryan McCarthy case.’ He smiled. ‘You’re not going to Vegas, are you?’
    Mendoza glared at him. ‘The good news is my forced leave has been cancelled. The bad news is that until we have this woman in custody, I’ve been ordered to assist you in apprehending her.’
    ‘That’s good to hear.’
    ‘No it’s not. There’s nothing good about this situation whatsoever.’
    ‘You get to go to Hartwood.’
    ‘I’d rather go to the dentist.’
    ‘And just so we’re clear here, that’s a joke, right? You don’t really want to go to the dentist. I mean, nobody in their right mind wants to go to the dentist.’
    Mendoza shot him a dirty look. ‘Okay, you need to tell me what happened again,