Read Silent Night (Sam Archer 4) for Free Online Page B

Microbiology .
    'Bull's-eye,’ Josh said.
    Archer didn’t respond.
    Josh looked over his shoulder. ‘Let’s head-’
    He stopped mid-sentence.
    Archer's head was tilted back and he was staring up at the building in front of them.
    There was something wrong.
    ‘Arch?’
    ‘ Look ,’ he said.
    Josh frowned and stepping back to join his partner, tilted his head to see what had caught Archer’s attention. The building was about twenty storeys high, but he immediately saw what Archer had spotted.
    ‘ What the hell?’ he said.
    The two men backed up quickly, moving out onto the street beside the car to get a better look.
    They could see a man standing on the edge of the roof.
     
    Eleven blocks uptown, a man in his early thirties was just finishing cooking a late breakfast, some eggs and bacon sizzling in a pan. He lived alone in an apartment on the Upper West Side . He wasn’t a social guy and had never been particularly comfortable around women, so he much preferred his own company in his own private place to having people around. It had been a long week and he was looking forward to relaxing all day by himself, just the way he liked it.
    But suddenly, the doorbell rang.
    It made him jump. He wasn’t expecting a guest. Maybe it was a delivery, or someone from downstairs.
    ‘One second,’ he called, tipping the frying pan and sliding his breakfast onto a plate. Turning off the cooker and wiping his hands on a cloth, he walked over to the door and pulled it open.
    There was a man and woman standing there.
    The man had bleach-blond hair, with a sharp jagged scar across one eyebrow. In contrast to his hair, he had dark, emotionless eyes that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a shark.
    The woman was dark-haired with a harsh face, her hard eyes emphasised by thick black eyeliner.
    They stared at him, expressionless.
    The man had a roll of duct tape in his hand.
    And the woman was holding a silenced pistol.
     

SIX
    The lift inside the building on 66 th and Amsterdam dinged, opening on the 20 th floor.
    Before the doors had fully parted, Archer and Josh sprinted out. The door to the stairwell was straight ahead. Archer wrenched it open and the two men raced up the stairs that led to the roof, bursting through the last door and running out onto the rooftop.
    Fifteen yards away, they saw up close what they’d caught a glimpse of from the street.
    A man was standing on the edge of the rooftop.
    Ten feet behind him was a young woman, her hands covering her mouth.
    Both of them were in lab coats.
    The woman turned when she heard the two newcomers arrive. She looked distraught and terrified. She was standing beside a smoking oil can, bits of burnt paper swirling around her, catching the wind and whipping off into the air.
    Archer pulled his badge and showed it to her silently, walking forward. She nodded, eyes wide with fear. As he moved closer, Archer saw that they were also filled with tears. Josh motioned for her to walk over and join him. She passed Archer as he walked past her slowly, approaching the man on the edge of the roof.
    He was completely motionless, his back turned, staring down at the Manhattan street far below.
    Apart from the whistling of the wind, it was quiet. All the street noise down below was a distant murmur. But the situation was highly dangerous. There was no building or windbreak cover and the gales blowing in from the Hudson were strong, rifling through Archer’s hair. Looking down, he saw the roof under his feet was icy and treacherous. At any moment, the man on the edge could be blown off or slip.
    As could he.
    Moving towards him ten feet to the right, Archer didn’t say a word.
    The man didn’t react or respond when Archer came into his peripheral vision. The wind was snapping through the folds of his white lab coat as if it was a sail.
    Archer came to a stop, his hands up in a non-threatening gesture. Standing there in silence, a few feet from the edge, he looked at the man.
    He had