The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) Read Free Page B

from the pressure of his arms being laced together.
    “Two that we know of,” Kamanski said. “There could be more. Law-enforcement agencies aren’t admitting there’s a pattern yet.” They were still two hours from the airfield, and he wouldn’t feel sure the Ferryman was with him until their plane took off for Connecticut.
    “Tell me about those two.”
    “Not as puzzling as the murder of Jordan Lime but just as effective,” Kamanski said. “The first was Benjamin Turan.”
    “Experimental metals. Steel with the weight and texture of plastic and all the resiliency of iron.”
    “I thought you were out of touch.”
    “Not entirely.”
    “Turan did plenty of traveling abroad. Brought the importance of security home with him. He employed round-the-clock guards and even had a dummy car.”
    “So what happened?”
    “Grabbed the latch to open the rear door of one of his limos one morning and got fried by fifteen thousand volts.”
    “Interesting. Chauffeur around?”
    “In the front seat. Got fried too. That kind of voltage doesn’t discriminate.”
    “Okay, how was it done?”
    “A separate battery was installed in the trunk to supply the power source, and the car was wired with superconductive fusing. The killer didn’t waste an inch, either. The only terminal we found was the one plugged into the latch Turan grabbed for. Thing was, the car was locked in the garage all the time. And the dummy limo wasn’t wired, just the one Turan planned to use that morning.”
    “He would have used it eventually.”
    “You miss my point. Turan’s use of a dummy car included using a double for himself. The odds were fifty-fifty that it would’ve been the double that got fried instead of him. I can’t accept that. The killer wired the right limo because he knew it was right even before Turan made his choice.”
    “Psychic maybe?”
    “I wouldn’t dismiss anything.”
    A few moments of silence passed before the Ferryman spoke again.
    “What about the other?”
    “Adam Rand.”
    “Rand Industries?”
    “You do surprise me, Jared.”
    “News reaches even the backwoods of Vermont. Rand Industries revolutionized the auto industry with their hypersensitive transmission. A whole new way of driving. The fuel injection of the nineties. Rand had to be worth a billion on his bad days in the market.”
    “Which puts him in the same league as Turan. And Lime. You can see what I was getting at back at the cabin. We’re facing the ultimate serial killer here.”
    Kimberlain looked at him across the seat. “That’s a pretty strong statement considering the last time we worked together.”
    “With good reason. Jordan Lime ordered twenty-five thousand-dollar-a-day security from Pro-Tech after the Rand murder two weeks ago. And in spite of that, this killer still found a way through, impossible as it seems.”
    “How’d Rand buy it?”
    “In his sleep.”
    “Really?”
    “His bed was blown up.” Kamanski hesitated to let his point sink in. “Our killer likes a challenge and takes on a greater one each time. He’s proving that nobody’s safe. He’s rendered all levels of security impotent.”
    “How can you be so sure it’s one man?”
    “Simple. A group would have an aim, a purpose. Someone would have heard from them by now with a list of demands. But there’s been nothing. This is sport for our man. I can feel it.”
    Kimberlain was nodding. “So what we’ve got so far are a new kind of steel and a revolutionary transmission. What’s Lime’s claim to fame?”
    “Most recently, a transistor coupling that resists burnout. Since these couplings had such a high breakdown rate, that discovery would have placed him above Turan and Rand before too much longer.” Kamanski realized what the Ferryman was getting at. “You think our killer is keying on the product, not the people, in choosing his victims?”
    “Probably a combination of the two. Anything’s possible with the kind of mind we’re facing here,