Free Dark Time: Mortal Path by Dakota Banks

could already hear the crack of the man’s spine across his knee.
    After a lingering touch on her shoulder and down her arm, the red-suited man turned away. She’d rejected him. With a grunt of satisfaction, Watcher saw her fold up her towel and walk away. A couple of minutes later his erection had faded enough for him to be in public. Not that he cared, since his formidable equipment was a matter of pride, but he’d learned that it was easier to go along with the local taboos.

Chapter Ten
28 z 138
    2009-08-25 02:50

    M aliha paid cash at Los Angeles International, waited impatiently to board the plane, and checked in at an Atlanta hotel by 7 P.M. The evening manager opened the business center for her and soon she had the autopsy photos and reports that Amaro had emailed to her spread out on a table in her suite.
    There are prominent bloodstains on the front upper half of the undershirt and the right leg of the shorts. No belt or jewelry is present. The hands are tied behind the back with white cord approximately one-quarter inch in diameter using three successive square knots….
    The crime scene in both cases was unremarkable. The victims were killed near their own cars, with the driver’s door open as if they’d been persuaded to step out before being trussed. The locations were a half dozen miles apart but had a creepy similarity: dead-end alleys with several large trash receptacles clustered at the end.
    She went through the scene in her mind, focusing on Luis Fernando de Santos, the victim Amaro knew better. Not lovers of nightlife, these hackers turned pro typically would be home asleep, working, or gaming in the early morning hours. Nando lived in Tucson, though. He’d arrived in Atlanta less than a day before his death and stayed at a hotel near the airport.
    The dry medical language of the autopsy report created a powerful image for Maliha. The right side of Nando’s face had been hit with tremendous force from the inside, blowing out everything from his eye to his jaw.
    Maliha took a break, surprised to find it was already 11 P.M. She ordered dinner from room service, and while waiting for it, she sat quietly and looked out her window at the expansive view of downtown Atlanta. A two-day-old sliver of moon, a pale eyelash of light, rested on the orange pyramid atop the Bank of America tower. The stars were washed out near the horizon, brighter higher up, but nothing to compare to the spectacle overhead in the parts of the world far from the lights of modern cities. A sharp memory took her to the border between Mongolia and China, two hundred years ago.
    Lying on the cold ground wrapped in furs, she’d watched, mesmerized, as the bowl of the sky seemed to hover close over her, the stars floating inches from her face against a background as dark as the inner rooms of a cave. It was as if all sense of distance was gone, and she could reach out and touch the glimmering lights.
    Not so in Atlanta in the twenty-first century.
    Sighing, she turned from the window at the sound of a knock on her door. Dinner had arrived.
    Later, well after midnight, it was time to visit the scenes of the victims’ last moments. She might be able to learn far more there than she could from an autopsy report. She decided to run the miles to the first alleyway, letting her muscles grow warm and her legs stretch from the confinement in the airplane and hotel room. Dressed in a form-fitting black outfit, her long black hair in a heavy braid down the center of her back, she walked across the lobby. She waved to the night-desk clerk, who eyed her in disbelief, as though a fantasy had sprung from his head. Once out on the sidewalk, there were few pedestrians to avoid in the early-morning hours. She had no weapons in sight. Keeping to a steady pace, she reveled in the simple human pleasure of running. Although her surroundings were mundane, the exultation in physical activity was the same as she’d felt when she was Ageless, swimming the