Read To Die Fur (A Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Mystery) for Free Online

glass of twenty-year-old scotch. He drifted over to the conversation between Karst and Abazu and stood there with a slight smile on his face, listening attentively. Oscar was a bit of a social chameleon; he’d mastered the art of insinuating himself into the middle of conversations so smoothly and unobtrusively that it seemed as if he’d been there from the very start.
    His mother, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. She liked to make an entrance—and did so now, sweeping into the room in a vivid purple gown with a wide smile on her face. She greeted everyone by name, asked Oscar to fix her a drink, commiserated with Zhen over her dress, told me to put some music on, and somehow enticed everyone onto his or her feet without expressly saying so. ZZ could throw a party just by showing up, and on her own turf she was pretty much unstoppable.
    I did my part, chatting with each of them, talking about nothing in particular, doing my best to put them at ease. My first impressions didn’t change much: Rajiv remained formal, Karst was hearty, Zhen was uncomfortable, and Abazu was … well, intent but serene, somehow. More focused than the others.
    At exactly six o’clock ZZ ushered us into the dining room, where an enormous table of dark, gleaming wood was set with white linen napkins and polished silver. Three large flatscreens hung on the walls of the room, currently showing an ever-changing montage of art.
    Luis Navarro joined us as we sat down, taking a seat at the far end of the table. His suit was black, with silver pinstripes so thin they were almost subliminal, his tie a scarlet even more vivid than Rajiv’s turban. ZZ introduced him to everyone, and he smiled and nodded and murmured pleasantries in return. He seemed vaguely amused.
    ZZ took her seat at the head of the table. There was an electronic tablet on a silver stand there, and she used it to summon a device a former guest had built for her: a robotic drinks trolley, a machine that resembled a vacuum cleaner perched on a four-wheeled cart. She explained that there was a button beneath the edge of the table at each place setting that would summon it, and then it was simply a matter of choosing what you’d like in your glass by tapping a touch screen.
    “Very clever,” said Rajiv. “Most ingenious.”
    “I’m having it upgraded to a voice-recognition system,” said ZZ. “How’s that coming along, Foxtrot?”
    “Avery’s still tweaking programs,” I said. Avery Shubert was our tech guy, a freelance software-and-hardware genius we had on permanent retainer. “He says they’ve made amazing advances in the last few years, but he’s adding some refinements of his own. Something to do with regional accents and cross-language hybridization, I think he said.”
    “Ah, here’s the soup course,” ZZ said. A maid—Astoria, a bright young woman with short brown hair—brought out steaming bowls of lentil soup and set one down before each of us.
    Which is when I heard the scream.
    I gasped, an automatic reaction that I immediately regretted—because nobody other than Whiskey and me had heard it. Heads around the table turned in my direction. “Wow,” I said, trying to cover. “Lentil soup always makes me a little nuts.” I paused. “Because I love it.”
    The scream had been Tango.
    [Foxtrot. Should we be alarmed?}
    I don’t know. Go check on her, okay?
    Whiskey immediately got up and whined plaintively. “Uh-oh,” I said. “Excuse me—got to let my dog out.” I got up and hustled out to the front door, Whiskey right behind me.
    Tango! Tango, can you hear me? No response, but I wasn’t worried yet—I was still new at this braincasting thing and wasn’t sure what my range was. That’s the thing about telepathic conversations: You never quite know how far your “voice” will carry, or if someone else is within earshot—I mean mindshot—or if you’re “speaking”—braintalking?—too loud or too quiet, or even if you should be