Deliver Us from Evil

He rose, placed another small log on the fire, sat back down in his armchair, and opened his book. "What are you reading?" Reggie asked. "On a wild night like this? Agatha Christie, of course. I still feel compelled to see if Hercule Poirot's 'little gray cells' will do their job one more time. It seems to often inspire my own brain, however inferior it might be to the diminutive Belgian's.

This surprised him, her turning down his invitation to dine with him, and his face showed it. "Katie." She rose. Their gazes locked for an extended moment. "Good luck, Shaw." She hesitated for another second, long enough for him to say something to keep her there. Yet he remained quiet. She turned and left. Shaw sat there for several beats, a massive struggle going on inside his mind. Finally, he threw some euros on the table, hustled from the restaurant, and looked up and down the crowded street. But Katie was already gone.

That's because superstition has it that the first person who gets up from a party of thirteen will die?" "Precisely. I believe Agatha Christie even wrote a mystery about it.

Katie James kept waking up. It was nothing unusual; it was just how she was. A noise here, an internal thought there, a nightmare that seemed so real she could touch it, kept hammering away. She finally rose, got some water and settled in an armchair, flicked on a reading light, and picked up the latest Lee Child thriller.

Shaw didn't answer, He didn't know anything, not for sure. But what he did have was an instict that almost never led him down the wrong path. And every inner warning signal he had was blaring away.

They rode in a cab to the rendezvous spot. It was a warehouse, which didn't surprise Shaw. "It's usually a damn warehouse," he said to Reggie.

And he has guns and dogs that would make the Hound of Baskervilles seem like a bleeding Pekinese.