Winter Moon Read Free

off the handle every time an unwanted can of Pepsi dropped into the dispensing tray.
    The customer turned away from the machine and from them, as if he might walk off and leave his Lexus. He seemed to be shaking with anger, but it was mostly the blustery wind shivering the loosely fitted suit.
    “What’s wrong here?” Luther asked, heading toward the guy as thunder tolled across the lowering sky and the palms in the south planter thrashed against a backdrop of black clouds.
    Jack started to follow Luther before he saw the suit jacket billow out behind the blond, flapping like bat wings. Except the coat had been buttoned a moment ago. Double-breasted, buttoned twice.
    The angry man faced away from them still, shoulders hunched, head lowered. Because of the loose and billowing fabric of his suit, he seemed less than human, like a hunchbacked troll. The guy began to turn, and Jack would not have been surprised to see the deformed muzzle of a beast, but it was the same tan and clean-shaven face as before.
    Why had the son of a bitch unbuttoned the coat unless there was something under it that he needed, and what might an irrational and angry man need that he kept under his jacket, his loose-fitting suit jacket, his roomy goddamned jacket?
    Jack called a warning to Luther.
    But Luther sensed trouble too. His right hand moved toward the gun holstered on his hip.
    The perp had the advantage because he was the initiator. No one knew violence was at hand until he unleashed it, so he swung all the way around to face them, holding a weapon in both hands, before Luther and Jack had even touched their revolvers.
    Automatic gunfire hammered the day. Bullets pounded Luther’s chest, knocked the big man off his feet, hurled him backward, and Hassam Arkadian spun from the impact of one-two-three hits, went down hard, screaming in agony.
    Jack threw himself against the glass door to the office. He almost made it to cover before taking a hit to the left leg. He felt as if he’d been clubbed across the thigh with a tire iron, but it was a bullet, not a blow.
    He dropped facedown on the office floor. The door swung shut behind him, gunfire shattered it, and gummy chunks of tempered glass cascaded across his back.
    Hot pain boiled sweat from him.
    A radio was playing. Golden oldies. Dionne Warwick. Singing about the world needing love, sweet love.
    Outside, Arkadian was still screaming, but there wasn’t a sound from Luther Bryson.
    Luther was dead. Jack couldn’t think about that. Dead. Didn’t dare think about it. Dead.
Wouldn’t
think about it.
    The chatter of more gunfire.
    Someone else screamed. Probably the attendant at the Lexus. It wasn’t a lasting scream. Brief, quickly choked off.
    Outside, Arkadian wasn’t screaming anymore, either. He was sobbing and calling for Jesus.
    Hard, chill wind made the plate-glass windows vibrate. It hooted through the shattered door.
    The gunman would be coming.

CHAPTER TWO
    Jack was stunned at the quantity of his own blood on the vinyl-tile floor around him. Nausea squirmed through him, and greasy sweat streamed down his face. He couldn’t take his eyes off the spreading stain that darkened his pants.
    He had never been shot before. The pain was terrible but not as bad as he would have expected. Worse than the pain was the sense of violation and vulnerability, a terrible frantic awareness of the true fragility of the human body.
    He might not be able to hold on to consciousness for long. A hungry darkness was already eating away at the edges of his vision.
    He probably couldn’t put much weight on his left leg, and he didn’t have time to pull himself up on his right alone, not while in such an exposed position. Shedding broken glass as a bright-scaled snake might shed an old skin, unavoidably leaving a trail of blood, he crawled fast on his belly alongside the L-shaped work counter behind which Arkadian kept the cash register.
    The gunman would be coming.
    From the sound the weapon made and