The Guilty
The Guilty
Jacob Striker [3]
Sean Slater
Canada (2013)
in a steel barn down by the river, he is propelled into an
investigation that leads to two mysterious bombers. Every few hours,
another victim is targeted, located - and then blown to smithereens.
obvious question remains: Why? With people dying at an alarming rate,
Striker desperately searches for an answer to this question. When he
discovers it, a stark coldness fills him. For he begins to understand.
The reason leads back to a police file that is now ten years old. To a
dark and dangerous place across the seas. And to one of Striker's oldest
mentors and dearest friends.
catch the two bombers before they finish the job and complete their kill
list. Otherwise there will be little left for Jacob Striker to save.
Little left, but dust and bones.
Sean Slater
is the pseudonym for Vancouver Police Officer Sean Sommerville. As a police officer, Sommerville works in Canada’s poorest slum, the
Downtown East Side – an area rife with poverty, mental illness, drug use, prostitution, and gang warfare. He has investigated everything from frauds and extortions to homicides. Sommerville
has written numerous columns for editorials for the city newspaper. His work has been nominated for the Rupert Hughes Prose Award, and he was the grand-prize winner of the Sunday Serial Thriller
contest. His debut novel,
The Survivor
, was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award.
Also by Sean Slater
The Survivor
Snakes & Ladders
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013
A CBS company
Copyright © Sean Slater, 2013
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Sean Slater to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-47110-136-6
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-47110-138-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
This book is dedicated to two people who shared my childhood and helped make it such a magical time.
To
Billy
,
who I gave an airplane ride into a tree.
I am sorry for that (not really).
And to
Cindy
,
whose Barbie dolls I drowned in the bathtub too many times to count.
I’m sorry for that, too (again, not really).
Saturday: One Hundred and Twenty-Eight
Fuse
Wednesday
One
The bomb may have been set to go off in three hours, but the fuse had been lit nine years ago. They had been long years. Hard years. And the notion of it all brooded in the
bomber’s mind like a nuclear winter haze.
He knelt on the concrete floor of the steel barn and stared at the woman who was strapped to the chair in front of him. She was attractive. Middle-aged. Dark-skinned. And she was crying softly
– had been for damn near an hour now. Mascara-thick tears stained her ebony cheeks.
Her sorrow meant nothing.
He turned his eyes away from the woman. Ignored her sobbing and waffling and suffering. Instead, he focused on the burlap sack, for it was what mattered now. As he opened the bag, the orange
light of the barn lamp tinted his face, making his damaged skin look like a dried-up peel. It was a sight to behold, and the gobsmacked woman tied to the chair could not help but stare.
He focused on the strange motley of items he was removing from the bag.
Yellow sponge . . .
check
.
Micro-tape recorder . . .
check
.
Red file folder . . .
check
.
And of course, the toy – a hand-crafted wooden duck, dressed in a policeman’s uniform. That was the essential piece . . .
BIG check
.
The bomber stared at the toy. The wooden duck was roughly the size of an iron, and had been personified with arms and legs, so that it somewhat resembled a Daffy or a Donald Duck, and not a real
one. Painted on its chest was a bright red number
6
. The sight of it made the bomber smile sadly. He stuck his finger through the steel O-ring, gave it a pull, and listened to the
bird’s voice-box come to life:
‘These criminals are making me quackers!’
The recording ended, and he looked at the duck for a long moment. His smile slipped away, but he did not frown. He did not show any emotion. He just knelt there looking at the wooden duck and
feeling overwhelmed by memories – ones which were slanted and out of order.
Like a row of freight train cars that had gone off the tracks.
When his thoughts derailed, he stared at the woman. A strange mix of emotions distorted her face. Confusion. Fear.
Pain
.
She choked back her tears. ‘Pl-please. I’ve told you
everything
. You don’t . . . you don’t have to do this.’
In an instant, his expression changed. Turned dark. And his blue eyes looked like ice under the jagged rim of black hair. When he angled his head to see her, his face looked maniacal in the
strange orange hue of the barn lamp.
‘
I’m
not doing anything,’ he said. ‘You’re the reason for all of this. And you bloody well know it.’
The woman broke down.
He barely heard her sobs. Already he was looking at his watch, going over timelines, analysing strategy. So far, the operation was going well.
Battle One of this long war had started.
Were it not for the fact that he really didn’t
want
to do this – hell, he didn’t want to hurt anyone – the bomber would have smiled. Because everything was going
perfectly well. Spot on without a glitch.
And then the teenage girl stumbled through the first-floor doorway.
And everything went to hell.
Homicide Detective Jacob Striker sat in the driver’s side of the undercover Ford Fusion and sipped from a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee, black. The brew was hot
– too hot for the summer heat wave which had moved in late June and was still residing like a bad tenant, halfway through July.