Free To Snatch a Thief by Hazel Cotton Page A

school today, keep everything normal for him, but after that, I don’t know what I’ll do.’
    He leaned forward, his forearms resting along his thighs, his hands loosely clasped. ‘Have you thought maybe it would be better for both of you if you let the authorities take him? Do you get any time for yourself, Skye?’
    A rap on the door spared her from giving Hunter her opinion. She doubted he would have liked it.
    He stood to open it. Dawson was outside.
    ‘Lieutenant,’ she said, acknowledging Skye with a curt nod. ‘The landlord’s not happy about us questioning his tenants. Says having snatchers all over his premises gives the place a bad name, and he’ll sue if he loses rent through it. He’s kicking up quite a stink, sir, actually. Wants to talk to you personally.’
    Skye watched Hunter’s face darken. ‘Dawson, go back and tell him we’re not happy about having to investigate multiple suspicious deaths,’ he ordered. ‘Remind him they occurred on his miserable premises. Tell him until cause is determined, everyone is a suspect - including him. Oh, and tell him,’ Hunter added as the private turned to leave. ‘I’ll be contacting environmental heath about the state of this place. If he wants to talk to me about that, he can do it at HQ.
    ‘You can’t stay here,’ he said, on closing the door. Although his face was blazing with anger, Hunter lowered his voice. ‘Not with what’s happened downstairs. Up until now the victims of this…whatever it is, have been further to the west with a handful in the north where conditions are truly pitiful. But it looks like its spreading.’
    ‘We’ve nowhere else to go.’ It was the simple truth. ‘I’m struggling to pay the rent as it is.’
    He paced to the window, running a hand over the stubble on his chin before turning to face her. ‘You need to know some things,’ he said.
    ‘Okay, but I have to sit. My legs feel kind of wobbly.’
    ‘Look, this isn’t for public knowledge,’ he began, taking the seat opposite. ‘We don’t want an all out panic on our hands, but I think you should be aware of the facts.’
    Kid’s programmes finished, Lexie wandered over. ‘Have Mitch and Tommy finished the game yet?’ he asked, giving Hunter a long hard stare. ‘Are we going to school?’
    ‘Soon, Lex. You can play with your toys for a while. I have to talk to the lieutenant about something first, okay?’
    For once he didn’t argue. ‘Kay.’
    When he was settled she rounded on Hunter. ‘What are the true facts, then?’
    ‘With the first few terminations, natural causes were assumed; they didn’t send up any flags to alert us to anything untoward. No autopsies were performed, the pods collected the bodies and they were disposed of in the normal way. Then they started piling up. We got interested. What the media weren’t told is that forensics found minute particles of a totally unknown substance in each of the victim’s throats.’
    ‘Were they druggies?’
    Hunter shook his head. ‘At first we thought that, but whole age groups were involved. Kids, oldies; it didn’t fit, and drug squad had no intelligence of any new illegal on the market. And anyway this was something way, way different. Toxicology on food and legal medication samples in the victims homes came up negative. So how were those people ingesting a deadly toxin?’
    ‘They breathed it in? Oh, God. Is it here… in the air?’ Stupidly, she covered her mouth with her hand and started towards Lexie.
    ‘No.’ He waved her back down. ‘Obviously we took air and dust samples but also we ruled out airborne pathogens because nothing was found in the nasal passages or airways. It entered the throat through the mouth.’
    ‘So, how did they get it?’ Her heart thumped unevenly as a second, colder chill ran down her back. ‘You think somebody gave it to them?’
    ‘If their food source wasn’t contaminated, that’s the obvious conclusion. But did they take it willingly, unaware