Sean Cregan - The Levels
Here you can read online Sean Cregan - The Levels full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2010, publisher: Headline Book Publishing, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:The Levels
- Author:
- Publisher:Headline Book Publishing
- Genre:
- Year:2010
- Rating:4 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
The Levels: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Levels" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
Making for an explosive debut, this dark, urban gothic-punk thriller is set in the Levels, an abandoned housing project on the outskirts of NewportOn the East Coast there lies an abandoned housing project called the Levels. Inhabited by Newports homeless population, the Levels are run by the all-powerful Sorrow. While ex-CIA agent Nate Turner is in the Levels to find out who has just tried to kill him, he meets a 14-year-old girl named Ghost. Ghost is a Fury, one of Sorrows trained teenage assassins, looking for a way back to her normal life. Kate is a suspended cop who has been told that she has only days to live after being attacked, and infected, by the Beast, a serial killer working the streets. The Beast is out for revenge on Kates new employer, who he believes created the infection thats killing him, an infection that has also been released into the Levels. Now Ghost is trying to escape Sorrow, Kate is looking for the Beast, and Turner is looking for answers. One things for suresome people arent going to survive the fallout.
Sean Cregan: author's other books
Who wrote The Levels? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Sean Cregan
Howard Partridge
Sylvia Browne
Ashe Arthur
Burton Kate
David R. Hawkins
Dodson
Leigh Wilder
Kate Poole
The Levels — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Levels" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
The Levels
SEAN CREGAN
headline
www.headline.co.uk
Copyright 2010 Sean Cregan
The right of Sean Cregan to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2011
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN : 978 0 7553 5810 6
This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
An Hachette Livre UK Company
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
www.headline.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
Table of Contents
For Aidan
ONE
T urner died in the hot, still night air of 15 July, some time between the hours of 2 and 3 a.m., outside the apartment hed leased for the past six months. Someone planted two bullets in the back of his head, then robbed his corpse and disappeared into the darkness. The shots woke one of his neighbours, and he called the cops. By the time the emergency services arrived, Turners body was already cooling in a sluggish pool of blood, long past any medical aid.
Someone said Turner had once worked for the CIA, though the Agency claimed hed been no more than a data analyst, a desk jockey writing geopolitical reports. The police refused to say if they thought this might have had anything to do with his murder. They wouldnt couldnt say why someone had emerged from the dark, blown Turners brains all over his front wall, then vanished straight back into the shadows again. They wouldnt couldnt say why hed been out at that time of night in the first place.
Nor could Turner himself, watching his own death play out on the TV news. Sitting on motel sheets stiffened by too much laundry detergent, a foil carton of awful Vietnamese food forgotten by his side.
Call the information line.
Your tip could catch the killer.
Dial this number.
Alone, in a town he didnt know, he listened to his own soundbite obituary. To the pat trotting out of stock newsreader phrases used for serious, sombre stories. How sense less it was, how the otherwise peaceful neighbourhood was still reeling from such a terrible event. A fifteen-second segment of grainy sodium-lit footage recorded at the scene, a few choice words from a tired guy in a suit at a press conference. Now heres Tom with the scores from tonights games.
Two days out of town and he was a dead man. He sat there, numb, and idly wondered what he might have done to deserve it. Who it was whod taken the bullets instead of himself. Whether theyd earned it too. Why the dead guy had been there at his apartment in the depths of the night. And if hed been innocent, whether hed had a family, people who were now wondering where he was and why he hadnt come home. Family who couldnt know what had happened until Turner came forward and corrected the mistaken identification.
He thought about his own few friends, acquaintances, people who knew him hearing the news for the first time. His sister, probably, would have been alerted by the cops after they found the body. He hadnt spoken to Clara in nearly four years, and that had just been an argument. A pointless, bitter row over their mothers funeral and why he hadnt come. Turner wondered whether shed been upset at the news of his death, or angry with him for coming to the very end shed always predicted. If she thought hed had it coming. A deserved end at forty-three. She knew he hadnt been a data analyst, even if she didnt know exactly what it was he had done for the Agency. The urge came on him, impulse boiling through him, and without even noticing it he was reaching for the phone. To make the call, to tell the world that he wasnt the man whod died, that he was OK.
He froze, then, with his thumb over the first digit. The initial shock had burned away and he was thinking clearly again. Those fleeting, indistinct TV shots of the scene surfaced in his mind, every detail locked in ice, clean and clear. Killed in his front yard. Muggers didnt wait outside peoples houses; if this had been a robbery, he would have died in the street, on the sidewalk. Burglars didnt shoot people in the back outside their own doors either. When a burglary went wrong, it went wrong inside . And if the owner came home while they were turning the place over, most burglars, he knew, would cut their losses and run for the back door.
People who waited for a man to come home then shot him twice in the head did it because they wanted that guy, and only that guy, dead. And they wanted them dead for a reason. Get up close, wait for the targets back to turn, optimum moment.
BAM.
A second round through the skull, just to make sure. Execution.
BAM.
And they were gone.
So was Turner. He grabbed his bag, swept his things back into it and burned out on to the highway, leaving the motel and its rows of identikit prefabricated cells behind. He could feel the old buzz running through his arteries. The mundane falling away, unimportant. Neurons tingling, thoughts like spun glass, wrapped around the hard, sharp form of the need . He needed to know more if he was going to figure out a plan of action. What exactly had happened at his apartment, who the dead guy was, how someone had screwed up the identification of the corpse; not easy, his prints were a matter of record.
If the mistake hadnt been a simple error, it suggested some kind of official involvement in either his death or its aftermath. Stick his head over the ramparts again without knowing exactly who he should be watching for and for all he knew someone would cut it off. He needed to know exactly what it was hed done to get himself shot before someone caught up with him and did it right, and that meant moving fast because he was behind the game. Sit around waiting, and you were lost.
And he needed to make sure they realised their mistake. His dad might have been an asshole, but hed set great store in the belief that if someone took a swing at you, you hit them back, and harder, until the lesson was learned. His son knew now that it wasnt always the best course of action, but most of the time it still made a good starting point.
For a moment the red glow from the taillights of a big rig ahead of Turner glimmered from Will Parkhams face. The laminate surface of his photograph, peeking partway out of the envelope on the passenger seat. Unsmiling eyes and mouth curled and twisted, caught in mid-sentence. Parkhams father a week ago, telling Turner, I dont care how he takes it. I want him to know not to come back, no matter how sick she gets. I want him to hear it directly, not over the phone. You tell him I said that.
I cant do it, hed told the old man. I cant find someone with a trail this cold. Not someone like your son. I know his record. This isnt my kind of work, anyway. Call Ingram. This is the sort of thing he does all the time.
You can do it, Nathan, Parkham had said, eyes full of reptile hate. Turner loathed his given name. Dont put yourself down. And you will do it.You dont have any choice in the matter, do you? Im calling in your marker.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Similar books «The Levels»
Look at similar books to The Levels. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Howard Partridge
Sylvia Browne
Ashe Arthur
Burton Kate
David R. Hawkins
Dodson
Leigh Wilder
Kate Poole
Reviews about «The Levels»
Discussion, reviews of the book The Levels and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.