I Kill

I KILL ANDRÉ WARNER, MANHUNTER BOOK 2 LEX LANDER I Kill Kindle Edition Copyright © 2023 (As Revised) Lex Lander Rough Edges Press An Imprint of Wolfpack Publishing 9850 S. Maryland Parkway, Suite A-5 #323 Las Vegas, Nevada 89183 roughedgespress.com This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews. eBook ISBN 978-1-68549-194-9 Paperback ISBN 978-1-68549-195-6 CONTENTS Join the Rough Edges Press Mailing List I. Belfiore Prologue II. Clair Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 III. Liza Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 IV. Annika Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 V. Nobody Chapter 36 A Look At Book Three: The Man Who Hunted Himself Join the Rough Edges Press Mailing List About The Author JOIN THE ROUGH EDGES PRESS MAILING LIST It’s no secret that you love books as much as we do. If you join now you’ll stay up to date on our newest releases, news and sales. I KILL PART 1 BELFIORE PROLOGUE She comes to torment me in the night, as unwelcome as a bad dream. But I’m not dreaming. I’m wide awake when her image takes shape on my ceiling. Wide awake, sane, and sober; pulse fibrillating, eyes staring, drawn by an irresistible impulse towards the lifelike hologram as it begins to scroll across the plain of white plaster. The girl first. A glorious fifteen maybe sixteen years old, hair falling in a golden cape; on the threshold of serious beauty. Across the paved piazza she runs, her gait slightly knock-kneed, her shadow sharp-etched in the Sicilian sunlight. Into the arms of her father, a man called Luigi Pavan. At this point in my nightmare that is not a nightmare, dreading the events that follow, I try to reject the images. In vain. They continue with cruel inevitability towards the final act, my own private tragedy on my own personal stage. “Papa! Papa!” the girl cries, unleashing a spate of Italian; unintelligible to me, but faithfully lodged forever in my subconscious. “Chi è quest’uomo? Cosa vuole?” And her papa hugs her, keeping her back towards me as he murmurs in her ear. The gun is already in my fist. A Beretta Storm, mated to a sound suppressor. Slide racked, awaiting only the command from my forefinger. But the girl is not part of the plan. Nor is backing out. Now that my intent has been revealed, the next step must be forward. The piazza is deserted. From a nearby tangle of bougainvillea, the lazy drone of a bee pursuing its life’s work. The windows of the encircling buildings are blind, shuttered against the furnace of the afternoon sun. Only the liquid outpourings of Pavarotti through a gap in the shutters on the top floor of Pavan’s taverna signal the presence of other humanity. Yet he shows no fear, this big, sandy-haired Italian with a taste for the luxuries of life, funded by trade in heroin, crack, and worse. A man no laws have been able to touch. At this point, as it was in the reality, I see why he holds my gaze without flinching: to gain time. As his left hand caresses his daughter, the other is out of sight, up to no good… I jump up, kicking the plastic chair clear while simultaneously extending the Beretta two-handedly to sight on his head. “Let the girl go, Pavan!” I yell. I don’t speak Italian, but his English is good enough to get my drift. As the startled girl squirms round in his arms to face me, his weapon comes into the open—a snub-barreled revolver. I stay confident in my ability to take him out without harming his daughter, even as her presence, shielding all but his head, makes me hesitate, almost fatally. In that micro-second he pumps two fast shots at me, the first parting my hair, the second gouging into my shoulder, sending me stumbling. Somehow I manage to convert the stumble to a dive. My belly meets the ground and a third bullet ricochets off the paving inches from my face, the gunfire overlaid by a squeal from Pavan’s daughter. I am already rolling onto my back, lining up the Beretta on his head. A single shot will be enough. But at the very instant the hammer comes down he clasps the girl to him, effectively protecting his head with hers. Maybe he still hopes to deter me and simply underestimates my speed of reaction, or maybe it’s no more than a reflex from someone whose life is perpetually under threat. Or just maybe he really is prepared to sacrifice his flesh and blood to save himself. The sequence is compressed into a fragment of a moment: the girl’s mouth popping open, her eyes widening—they are blue-grey, I notice. Her pretty, immature features, contorted more by surprise than fear, are impressed on my memory like a stored image in a smartphone camera, before the soft-nosed bullet ploughs into her temple, a fraction below the hairline. The top of her skull bursts apart, spraying bright blood and brain and chips of bone over the table and over me. Even lying on my bed, knowing that the scene is no more than a re-enactment of history, I flinch as the slender body in its blue T-shirt and yellow biker shorts seems to deflate like a punctured ball,