Read Online Dying for Her: A Companion Novel (Dying for a Living Book 3) by Kory M. Shrum - Free Book Online Page B

help, he didn’t have to take it.
    It wouldn’t make sense to try and trace the money. I’d have to start with Jerome. Though the facility was closed, hopefully, there was still enough there to point me in a direction.
    I’d just handed the darts to one of the boy’s friends when I got the distinct feeling I was being watched.
    A black woman sitting alone at a table across the room wasn’t blinking. She had a pint in one hand and an unreadable expression on her face. It wasn’t friendly. Certainly not the kind of look a woman gives you across the bar, if you’re lucky.
    I held her gaze for a moment. I wasn’t trying to intimidate her. I was just wary. She looked damn capable of trouble if that was her prerogative. So I let her look, but I had no intention of letting her come closer.
    The blue collar boy said something and I turned to respond. When I looked back, the woman with the close cropped hair was gone. Her pint, still full, rested on the vacated table.

Chapter 16
    Tuesday, March 25, 2003
    A fter getting my file from Peaches, I headed home. Only I didn’t make it that far. Charlie called me from his cell when I was about two miles from Blackberry Hill.
    “I need you to come to Lafayette Square. Down here off of 18th. Do you know the Square Root Brewery?”
    “Yeah,” I said and hooked a U-turn while the road was clear. Some bastard still honked though he had plenty of room.
    “Head that way,” he said. “You’ll see the lights. Black and whites are all over the fucking place.”
    Charlie ended the call without saying goodbye and I pressed my foot down on the accelerator. He didn’t say I found your girl . He would have if it was Maisie or Rachel. But there was definitely a body.
    No other reason would have a bunch of cops and agents standing outside the pub.
    I was still two blocks away when I first saw the lights. Great blue and red flashes bouncing off the brick buildings lining the Lafayette square district. The district is what I liked to call ghetto chic. This was one of the nicest areas in the city. Even the brick buildings had fancy molding and big picturesque windows. The landscaping helped to give it an upscale look, but the architecture smacked of row houses no matter how you packaged it.
    I parked at the edge of the scene and climbed out of the car. Immediately, my breath fogged in front of my face and the ice in the wind chapped my knuckles. The cold air creeping into my jacket and those flashing blue-red-blue lights woke me up a bit, chasing back the edge of my last Blackberry pint that I shared with the Bobby George wannabe.
    The wide, empty avenues running along each side gave a sense of foreboding, but dark empty streets always did.
    I walked a few yards past the brewery, past the rubbernecking lookie-lous straining against the yellow tape, until I found my first uniformed officer. I flashed my badge so he’d lift the tape for me.
    “Thanks. Can you point me toward Agent Swanson?” I asked.
    The officer jabbed a stubby finger toward the edge of the park across the street. I saw a thinner crowd, only a few guys standing between a row of park benches. The white magnolia blossoms glowed like ghostly spectators in the flashing darkness above them.
    I crossed the road.
    “Swanson,” I said, loud enough so he could hear me.
    Charlie turned and waved me closer. It was him, another FBRD agent, and the CSI guy taking photographs of the body.
    Because there was a body.
    A girl lay dead on the sidewalk near a park bench. A large dark puddle of blood and brain spreading out from the back of her head. She wore jeans, sneakers, and a nice sweater—or at least it must’ve been before chunks of her brain hit the sidewalk.
    “What happened?” I asked Charlie, who’d finally finished talking to the other FBRD agent.
    “Witnesses say the girl is Kaitlyn Green. The girl over there in the white jeans is her cousin. She confirms they came together. They met a couple of guys, were having drinks.