Free Dead South (A Bryson Wilde Thriller / Read in Any Order) by R.J. Jagger Page A

her up the street. She resisted, pulling back.
    “Where are you taking me?”
    He gave her a long, hard look.
    Then he released her, lit a cigarette and blew smoke to the side, deciding.
    Suddenly he didn’t care.
    He didn’t care why she was still alive.
    He didn’t care why she tried to kill him.
    He didn’t care why nothing in his life ever went right.
    “You know what?” he said. “Just get out of here.”
    He turned and walked away.
    “I’ll be back,” she warned. “It’s not over. It will never be over.”
    He stopped and turned.
    “Stay out of my life,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of a sick game you’re playing but I’m not interested in it.”
    “You killed Sudden Dance,” the woman said. “You’re going to pay for that.”
    The words landed with the force of z tire iron to the side of his head.
    You killed Sudden Dance.
    He focused harder on the woman.
    She looked like Sudden Dance, but maybe not a hundred percent. At first he thought it was just because she wasn’t dolled up and was out in the sunlight instead of the smoky dark of the Bokoray. Plus, he wasn’t drunk now; he was a man with the charge of adrenalin in his brain. The more he focused on her, however, the more he wasn’t sure it was her.
    “Who are you?”
    “I’m the person who’s going to kill you.”
    She spit on the ground and walked away.

21
    Day Six
    August 8, 1952
    Thursday Morning
     
    Wilde watched the woman as she left. Her attire was simple, her body was curvy and her stride was strong. She stopped long enough to light a cigarette, tossing a match to the sidewalk, and then kept going, never looking back. Wilde pried his eyes off her and headed in the opposite direction. Ten steps later he stopped, wondering if the thoughts that just wedged into his skull were the best or worst he’d ever had.
    He didn’t care.
    He ran back, grabbed the knife off the ground and caught up with the woman, tapping her on the shoulder as he got to her.
    She turned.
    Her eyes were the sexiest things Wilde had ever seen.
    He held the knife out and said, “You forgot this.”
    She focused on it but didn’t reach.
    “I didn’t kill Sudden Dance,” Wilde said.
    The woman searched his face, looking for lies or tricks. She must not have found any because she said, “The word is that you did.”
    “Well, the word’s wrong. I’m going to go have a drink. You can join me or not, your choice.”
    She hesitated, took the knife and searched his eyes.
    Wilde said, “I have a theory who might have killed her. We can talk about it.”
     
    They ended up in a dark corner of the Ginn Mill with Wilde’s personal bottle of whiskey out from behind the bar and on the table, joined by two almost-clean glasses, his filled with ice. He poured alcohol into both, tapped his against hers and said, “To the truth.”
    He took a hard swallow.
    “Given your resemblance to Sudden Dance, I’m going to take a wild guess and say you’re her sister.”
    The woman pulled a photo out of her purse and passed it across the table. It was a black-and-white, aged, depicting two Indian kids leaning against a horse fence, holding rifles. They looked identical except that one was slightly shorter.
    “That’s me and Sudden Dance,” the woman said. “I’m the one on the right, the taller one. I’m eleven there and she’s ten.”
    “So you’re not twins.”
    “Not in date of birth,” she said. “We came out the same, though. It’d be more accurate to say we’re copies rather than twins.”
    “Interesting.”
    “My name’s Jori-Rey, by the way.”
    “Is that Indian?”
    She shook her head.
    “I don’t go by my Indian name anymore. You said you had a theory who killed her.”
    Wilde shrugged.
    “It’s just a theory,” he said. “I don’t have any proof.”
    “Tell me.”
    He tapped out two cigarettes, handed one to the woman and stuck a match.
    She leaned forward for the fire.
    The top two buttons of her blouse were open.
    When she came