Free Shrike (Book 2): Rampant by Emmie Mears Page A

curtains, if my guess is right. The way they hang suggests they cut out all the light from the street lamps, and I wonder if Strand works at night or just likes to live in a cave.
    I perch on the edge of the roof two houses down from Strand's building, leaning out over the edge to see his flat. It's not comfortable, but I don't care. One of the bonuses to my strength and speed and the fact that I have to eat a million calories a day is that my body heals kinks in seconds. I ignore the edge of the roof cutting into my ribcage and wait.
    It's the curtains I watch, because I have nothing else to do.
    When they twitch, so do I.
    I freeze where I am, fingers digging into the concrete lip at the edge of the roof. It could be a cat. Anything. I look down at the bobbies, but they're unmoving. I can't tell if either of them have binoculars or night vision goggles or anything at all that would allow them to see what I just saw. The curtain twitches again, then a shape presses against the window through the fabric.
    I'm moving before I can think.
    Cats aren't six feet tall.
    Reaching Strand's roof, I guess where the window is and drop down, catching myself on the protruding frame at the top. Without hesitation, I kick out the window and launch myself through it. The heavy blackout curtains tangle around me, but I wrench them to the side, stumbling into the flat's darkened salon. 
    I see the dark shape on the floor a split second before my foot hits it, and I trip, sprawling out over the parquet. 
    The body is warm. A triangle of orange light spills through the disrupted curtains and glints on broken glass and the open eyes of Timothy Strand. They say people look surprised in death. His face is calm and flat. Resigned. As if he saw it coming.
    Maybe he did.
    A crunch of glass sounds like an avalanche. I leap to my feet.
    "You." 
    One word from Granger and I feel like I've drank that fateful bottle of Irn Bru all over again. My blood burns in my veins as if my very arteries are heating elements.
    I can't see her clearly; she's lurking on the opposite side of a half wall that separates the salon from the kitchen. I launch myself laterally instead of aiming for her, skittering behind the wall. 
    "Me." I usurp her voice because I want her disconcerted. Then, on sudden inspiration, I mimic the voice of Andrew Granger, her dead son. "Another murder. More murder, Mum, why always more murder?" I let myself scream the final word in his frantic tenor, and the thud I hear from Granger's side of the wall makes me think she's jumped.
    She says nothing for a beat.
    "You understand nothing, Gwen Maule."
    I already knew she knows my name, but the sound of it still startles me as much as if she'd pulled off my mask. 
    "Don't I?" I move again immediately after I speak, edging toward the end of the half wall. She can pinpoint me by my words, but I can locate her by her breathing, which is smooth and unhurried, as if she were sipping a cuppa instead of wiping a bloody knife on her handkerchief. The even swiff-swiff-swiff I hear tells me she's doing just that.
    She doesn't care that I can hear her. She's either thicker than I remember or actually not afraid of me.
    Maybe those two things are the same.
    I leap onto the half wall and lunge for her.
    Something hits me full in the chest, and my muscles turn to steel all at once. I tumble to the floor, limbs akimbo and heart glugging. 
    It hits me again. My foot kicks out against a cupboard with a hollow thud.
    "We'll meet again," Granger says. Her voice sounds far away. And then she's farther away, even farther, with her last word snaking through my throbbing head, weaving through sputtering synapses until even that fades, and the glinting of light on glass and dead eyes is the last thing I see. 
     
     
    "She used a stun gun on you."
    The line between Trevor's eyes has deepened every time I've seen him since August, and I find myself thinking that if I were to put a bit of card stock there, the crease