Free Stalker's Luck (Solitude Saga Book 1) by Chris Strange Page A

contracts. The club was under her name. But she wasn’t the true owner. She wasn’t the one who called the shots.”
    “Then who was?”
    “The same man who calls all the shots on Temperance. Feleti Leone.”
    The name tugged something in the depths of his memory. “White Hand syndicate?”
    Palmer pressed her lips together and said nothing. Eddie thought it through. The White Hands. Roy Williams’ ex-gang. Now that he thought about it, he remembered reading somewhere that the White Hands were still operating on Temperance. Was that why Roy Williams came here? Was he back in charge? But why here, on this dying station?
    And Cassandra. Why would she be working for a man like that? He turned back to his book lying on the shelf, touched the cover. It was because of Cassandra he’d discovered the kinds of tales he now wrote. Absentmindedly, his hand drifted away from the book, back towards the almost hidden crack in the wall.
    Why was she dancing for this Leone? It made no sense. But if Leone had killed her….
    His fingers touched the panel.
    His tab beeped in his pocket, snapping him out of his thoughts. He turned away from the wall and answered the call. Palmer was still staring at him, but he couldn’t read her expression.
    “Yeah?” he said into his tab.
    “You need to get back to the Solitude ,” Dom said. “We have to regroup.”
    “I’m kinda in the middle of something, Freckles.”
    “I just killed three people for sure. Maybe four.”
    He paused. “You’ve had a busy afternoon.”
    “This isn’t funny, Eddie. Get back to the ship. Now. We’ve got a lead on Williams.”
    “All right, all right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
    He ended the call and returned his tab to his pocket. He directed a smile at Palmer.
    “Thanks for your hospitality. But I have to get going. No rest for the wicked.”
    She was silent as he went out the door. She knew more than she was saying, that much was obvious. Half of what she said was rubbish. But the bit about Leone, something in that rang true. Not the whole story, maybe. He wasn’t willing to accept that Cassandra was dead. Not yet. But there was a connection there. Someone knew something. And he’d find out what.
    He started whistling again as he strolled towards the stairs.

    Roy Williams watched silently through the peephole as the stalker passed. His whistling faded as his footsteps echoed lightly in the stairwell. Finally, when silence returned to Green Acres, Roy allowed himself to breathe. The tension drained out of his shoulders. He put his gun down on the bed, gave the bound Hudson a cool glare, and eased open the panel connecting his apartment to Victoria Palmer’s.
    She was waiting for him, a glass of vodka in her hand and a cigarette between her lips.
    “Is he coming back?” he asked.
    Victoria blew twin streams of smoke from her nostrils. “I don’t think so.”
    “He was a stalker, wasn’t he?”
    “A writer, he says.”
    Roy glanced towards the door. A writer?
    Victoria pointed her cigarette at the shelf behind him, next to the hidden panel. “That’s his book, so he says.”
    He picked it up. A cheap dime novel with a big-titted woman on the cover. “Eddie Gould.” The name didn’t ring a bell. “You’ve read this?”
    She shook her head. “It was Lilian’s.”
    He shot her a look, then dropped his eyes back to the novel. Lilian. What was she doing with that man’s book? And why did a writer need a gun?
    “He’s looking for her,” she said.
    “What?”
    “Gould. He’s looking for Lilian.”
    A cold hand wrapped its fingers around Roy’s heart. He tossed the book down on the shelf. “Find out everything you can about him. Who he is, why he’s here, how he got to Temperance. Everything.”
    She sneered. “I’m not your secretary.”
    He straightened, hands curling into fists at his side. “You will be if you want your next fix. You’re exactly what I want you to be until this is over.”
    She brought her cigarette