Read Online Blood Moon by A.D. Ryan - Free Book Online

made my toes curl. “Now,
why don’t you let me take you home so we can pick up where we left
off before breakfast? No distractions.”
    David opened the passenger side door just as
I was just about to answer with a resounding “Yes!” when, behind
me, static blared over the police scanner before the dispatch
officer’s voice filled the air. “All available units to Chaparral
Park for a reported one-eight-seven.”
    Turning abruptly, I looked at David before
he ran around to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. After
turning the car on, he flipped the siren, alerted dispatch that we
were on our way, and the red and blue lights flashed in my rear
window as we peeled out of the parking lot and raced up N Hayden
Road for Chaparral.
    When we arrived, there were several other
cars already there. We saw O’Malley off near the edge of the park
with two young women whose eyes were wide and terrified as they
looked at him with their arms wrapped tightly around themselves. It
wasn’t hard to see they were in shock, and it was probably pretty
safe to assume that they were the ones who reported the
homicide.
    David’s hand on the small of my back
refocused me as he guided me to where the medical examiner and
several of our colleagues hovered over a body that lay
approximately fifteen feet off the cement path. As we approached, I
noticed the victim was a woman in her mid-to-late twenties. Her
skin was pale, and her body seemed twisted disproportionately,
almost as if she’d been dumped here by her attacker in a hurry.
    “What do we have here?” David asked the
medical examiner.
    “Twenty-three-year-old female named Samantha
Turner, according to her license. Nothing seems to be missing from
her purse—cash, credit cards—it’s all here,” Detective Keaton
announced, handing the woman’s wallet to David. “CSU is walking the
grid, but so far they’ve found nothing worth reporting.”
    “Cause of death?” I asked, crouching down
next to the body, being careful not to interfere with Dr. Hobbes,
the medical examiner.
    Her black hair was pulled back into a tight
ponytail as she continued to take notes, and when she looked up at
me from behind her thick-rimmed glasses, she shrugged her
shoulders. Her hazel eyes met mine, and her unease was palpable,
affecting me as well. “I won’t know for sure until I examine her
further, but she’s been dead at least an hour based on her liver
temp.”
    I examined this poor woman from a distance,
noticing her designer clothes—from her cashmere sweater, right down
to her expensive jeans and the leather shoes that had mostly
slipped off except for where the straps held them around her
ankles. Upon closer observation, I noticed something that really
popped out to me: a spot on her neck mostly covered by her long
brown hair.
    Curious—for a reason that niggled at me in
the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint—I turned to
David and held out my hand. “David, can I have a pen?”
    Without question, he reached into his jacket
and retrieved a pen to give to me. I took it, keeping the cap on,
and slipped it under her hair to lift it. Unfortunately, before I
could get a good look at it, I heard something to the right of us
rustling in the sparse brush there. Something about this entire
situation felt a little…off, and I stood up, my eyes focused on the
trees across the park.
    “What is it?” David asked, gently placing
his hand on my arm.
    I narrowed my eyes, trying to decipher if
the movement I saw was from the wind or a possible suspect. The
foliage was thin, but it was dark outside now, making it hard to
see.
    “I’m not sure…” I said hesitantly, taking a
careful step forward. “I thought I heard something.”
    Through my periphery, I noticed David train
his eyes on the trees ahead, but nothing happened. No sound. No
movement. Nothing.
    “I’m going to check it out,” I informed him.
“If someone’s out there, we have to stop them.”
    David nodded