The Hunters - Jason Pinter [16]
For some reason this stranger who shared my blood came to me for help…and I blew him off thinking he was just some junkie. Now I’m forced to question everything I ever knew…and figure out why this man was murdered in cold blood.
All I can do for Stephen Gaines now is find his killer—and with the help of Amanda Davies uncover the whole, hard truth. If it means tracking down a vicious drug kingpin—who may or may not exist—then so be it….
THE DARKNESS
A young man is found murdered, his bones crushed nearly to dust before his body was dumped into New York’s East River.
In New York there are hundreds of murders a year, but this one is different. Somebody is sending a message. And shockingly, the victim has ties to my brother, Stephen Gaines, recently murdered by an elusive drug lord known only as the Fury.
For years this kingpin has been shrouded in darkness. Stephen was executed just as he was about to shed some light. Working alongside my mentor, Jack O’Donnell, I’m going to find the truth behind this blood-soaked curtain. But the more we reveal, the more we realize just how dark the Fury’s plans are. And that no matter how brutal the violence has been, we haven’t seen anything yet….
Turn the page to read a special excerpt from THE DARKNESS…
THE DARKNESS
By Jason Pinter
Chapter One
Paulina Cole left the office at 4:59 p.m. Her sudden departure nearly caused a panic in the newsroom of the New York Dispatch, where she’d worked as a featured columnist and reporter for several years. Paulina was prone to late nights, though many argued whether the nights were due to a work ethic that was second to none, or simply because she was more comfortable spending her time among competitive, ambitious and bloodthirsty professionals than sitting on the couch with a glass of wine and takeout.
She had left that day after a particularly frustrating conference call with the paper’s editor in chief, Ted Allen. Paulina had spent the better part of two years becoming the city’s most notorious scribe in no small part due to her ambivalence concerning personal attacks, heated vendettas, and a complete refusal to allow anyone to get the best of her. When her instincts faltered, she called in favors. When she got scooped, she would trump the scoop by digging deeper. And she held grudges like ordinary folks held on to family heirlooms.
Which is why, after reading a copy of that morning’s New York Gazette, the paper Paulina used to work for and now wished buried under a paper landfill, she demanded to speak with Ted. She knew the man had a two o’clock tee time, but she’d seen him golf before and cell phone interruption might even improve his thirty-seven handicap.
That day’s Gazette featured a story about the murder of a young man named Stephen Gaines. Gaines’s head had met the business end of a revolver recently, and in a twist of fate that Paulina could only have wished for on the most glorious of days, the prime suspect was none other than Gaines’s father, James Parker. James Parker also happened to be the father of Henry Parker, the Gazette’s rising young star reporter, whom Paulina had as much fondness for as her monthly cycle.
Paulina had cut her teeth at the Gazette, and had briefly worked side by side with Henry Parker. But after seeing what the Gazette had become—an old, tired rag, refusing to adapt to new technologies or understand that hard news was essentially dead—she’d made it her business to put the paper out of its misery.
Nobody cared to read about the government or the economy—at least not on a grand scale. They only cared about what they saw right in front of them, day in and day out. Their mortgage payments. Their bank accounts. It was all visceral. You bought the celebrity magazine so you could make fun of the stars’ cellulite with your friends. You shook your head at the news program that exposed the foreman whose building was overrun with rats because he refused to pony up for an exterminator. You