Read Online The Julian Secret (Lang Reilly Thrillers) by Gregg Loomis - Free Book Online Page A

Nazi. But why would photographs that old be worth killing for, particularly pictures that looked like those some soldier might have had made to send home like any other tourist?
    He turned off the computer and headed back to the room.
    Gurt was watching what appeared to be a Spanish soap on the room’s TV. A man with sideburns that would have rivaled Elvis’s was shouting something at a sobbing woman. It was the first time he had seen her watch television.
    “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” Lang said.
    “I don’t, but the story on these programs is much the same everywhere.”
    Apparently, she was more of a television watcher than she admitted.
    Lang put the envelope with the disk in it on the room’s desk. “Any luck getting a line on our friend?”
    Gurt aimed the remote at the TV. It clicked off. “Luck? No. I intended to get the information. The man is a little-time criminal, has attended prison for pursesnatching, picking pockets, that sort of thing. He has been out less than a month.”
    “And the cell phone?”
    “Someone else’s, stolen.”
    Something Spain and the United States had in common: the effectiveness of the corrective function of their respective penal systems.
    Lang sat down on the bed. “Penny-ante crooks can’t afford automobiles in Europe. Unless those two stole the one they got out of, somebody hired them to follow us. Or worse.”
    “Or they wanted to scare us away.”
    Lang hadn’t considered that possibility. “From what?”
    Gurt glanced at her purse, no doubt wondering how much grief she’d get if she lit another cigarette. “From whatever they think we are doing. Or whatever they think we might find among your friend’s papers.”
    They looked at each other without speaking for a full minute before Gurt broke the silence. “That knife. He could have intended to kill you.”
    “And the one that followed you?”
    “I on the lighted streets remained. He had no chance to harm me before I walked the two or three blocks back here.”
    Another pause.
    Gurt decided to risk it. She pulled her cigarettes out of the purse. “Lang, what are we doing?”
    “I’m not sure I understand the question. What
you
are doing is setting yourself up for cancer, emphysema, and tobacco-stained teeth.”
    Like her favorite fictional character, Scarlett O’Hara,Gurt apparently decided she would worry about that tomorrow. “I mean, why are we getting involved in this? Huff may have been a friend, but he was not close. I never heard you mention him before the other day. Besides, what can we do the police cannot?”
    As usual, she had looked right in and seen his soul. Or at least part of it. The truth that Lang really didn’t want to admit to himself or Gurt was that he had gotten bored. You could defend only so many wealthy embezzlers, stock manipulators, and flimflam artists before they all became the same. Likewise, the ever-growing list of mendicants seeking funds from the foundation were assuming a tedious similarity.
    Last year, he had set out to find the killers of his sister and nephew. It had very nearly cost him his life as well. But he had succeeded where the local authorities had failed, and the danger inherent in the enterprise had been exhilarating.
    Settling a score for a man who had saved Lang’s life was only part of the reason.
    And Gurt knew it.
    Sometimes he thought he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her only because he dared not have someone who knew him that well on the loose.
    “I care more than the police, and I owe it to Don.”
    Gurt shrugged, not buying it but not willing to argue, either. “As you say. Now what?”
    Lang looked at his watch. “We still have a couple of hours before dinnertime—Spanish dinnertime, anyway. I’d like to go back to Don’s house, where I can spread out these papers the inspector gave back to us. I’d also like to take another look at those index cards.”
    It took less than five minutes to walk to the house on Calle