Devil's Due: A Thomas Caine Thriller (The Thomas Caine Series Book 0) by Andrew Warren Page A

ears as he drove his legs faster across the pavement.   It might have been a bad connection, or it might have been a dead battery....
    In his heart, Caine knew it was neither of those things.   The people they were investigating had set off a bomb in a public market and killed dozens of people, simply to discourage the police from investigating them.   They were ruthless and willing to act.   Satra had been turning over rocks, questioning anyone he could find about them.   If word had gotten back, if just one of his contacts had squealed...
    Satra was in terrible danger.
    Caine was panting as he raced around the corner onto Satra's block.   His apartment building was just ahead, on the left side of the street.   Caine ducked behind a battered red pickup truck that was parked on the side of the road.   As he caught his breath, he peered around the rear corner of the truck.   The street was dark and quiet.   A couple of streetlights pierced the sweltering darkness with their hazy glow, but there was still more shadow than light.
    Caine moved out again, walking at a normal pace.   He jammed his hands in his pockets, trying to like a lost tourist.   His eyes glanced left and right, but he saw no signs of movement.
    He made his way to the front of Satra's building.   A few squares of light were shining from apartments that faced the street, but most of the building was dark.   Either it was empty, or the majority of the tenants were early sleepers.   Caine scanned the premises one last time, but still saw no signs of a disturbance.   No movement of any kind.   Walking up to the outside gate, he slipped a small lock pick from a pouch under his belt.
    He had picked the lock before, the first time he had visited the detective.   It did not take him long to pick it again.   A few minutes later, the door creaked open on its rusty hinges.
    Caine took a step forward.
    The air around him ignited in a blast of heat and fire.
    BOOM!
    The explosion was deafening.   Caine felt the hot air scald his skin, as the force of the blast threw him backwards.
    He closed his eyes and forced his body to go limp.   He hit the ground ten feet back and tumbled away from the burning building.   As he rolled, he raised his hands and covered his head.   Shards of wood and glass pelted the ground around him like shrapnel.
    A huge chunk of burning timber slammed into the ground less than a foot from his head.   The pavement crumbled beneath it as it rolled to a stop.   Caine leapt up from the ground and sprinted as far from the burning rain of debris as he could.
    The telltale patter of objects striking the ground subsided.   Caine stopped, and turned around.
    Satra's building was gone.   A skeletal framework still stood, but the center of the apartment complex had collapsed into crumbling rubble.   Wreckage was strewn about the ground, as if the entire structure had been thrown into the air and slammed back to earth upside down.
    What little remained was engulfed in fire.   Thick, gray clouds of smoke rose up from the flames and blotted out the stars in the night sky.
    There was no way anyone inside the building could have survived.   Caine had seen enough explosions to be certain of that.   Whoever had planted the charges had done their work well.
    Pisac's death toll had just increased.
    The moaning wail of sirens rose in the distance.   Caine stared at the flames.   For a moment, he wondered if Satra had been dead or alive, conscious or mercifully numb when the burning, hungry flames had consumed him and everyone else around him.   Was he forced to listen to the screams of the other tenants, over the loud crackling of burning wood and super-heated metal?
    The sirens grew louder.   Closer.
    Caine could barely hear them over the turmoil of thoughts that raced through his head.   What if he had agreed to help Satra sooner?   What if he could have stopped these people before they had taken Naiyana, before they got wind of