Read Online Life in Shadows by Elliott Kay - Free Book Online

Bronco, stopping himself against its hood with his free hand
while he fired off two more shots. Even at such close range, there was plenty
that could cause a man to miss.
    He
didn’t.
    The
Bronco sat still, its rear bumper now stuck up against another car and its
driver slumped over to one side in a bloody mess. The engine idled. Cars around
the vehicle ground to a halt while pedestrians looked on in shock.
    “Kevin!”
Tyrone shouted, hurrying out of the alleyway. His leap from the side of the
patrol car had taken him off of his feet. It made him only a few heartbeats
slower. Blood trickled down from a gash on his head. “Kevin, you alright?”
    Kevin
tried the passenger side door. It was locked, but the window was down. He
reached inside to get the door open, then hopped in over the bloody, expired
occupants to throw the Bronco into park. He lingered just long enough to pull
the keys out of the ignition.
    Neither
occupant would ever move again.
    Kevin
slipped out to find his partner waiting for him. At the Bronco’s rear, a
stunned and frightened couple came out of their Honda Civic to look at its
smashed front end. The sirens drew closer.
    “Hey,
man,” Tyrone repeated calmly, “you alright?”
    “I’m
okay,” Kevin nodded.
    “You
can put your weapon away,” Tyrone said.
    Kevin
blinked, glanced around, and nodded. He holstered his pistol as he stepped back
from the vehicle. Third Street was already a mess of honking horns and shocked
witnesses. Tyrone paused to clap his hand on Kevin’s shoulder, looking his
partner in the eyes to make sure he was still there with the rest of the world.
A moment later, Tyrone turned to take control of the immediate scene.
    Kevin
looked up to the cloudy early summer sky. The drizzle quickly picked up into
full rain. Not for the first time, his light blue Seattle Police uniform—itself
barely two years old—was covered in blood.
    He
turned thirty-two that day.
     
    *   *   *
     
    “You’re
uncle’s hot, Molly.”
    “Oh,
Jesus,” Molly grumbled, pulling the car off 105 th onto the darkening
side street. “How much of this am I gonna hear out of you?” She looked good
tonight, her fire-engine red hair cut short and spiked just the way she liked
it. Her torn-up VNV Nation shirt was almost a work of art, and it was finally
warm enough to go without jackets or long-sleeve shirts.
    “Probably
a lot,” confessed Onyx, “because your uncle’s fucking hot.” She sat in the side
passenger’s seat of Molly’s beat-up old car with her hands folded in her lap
and her dark curls dangling down in front of her face. As usual, she went for
darker yet more girlish clothes of black silk and lace. She made for a very
pretty Goth.
    The
pretty redhead’s eyes narrowed. “Never any parking around this place anytime
after eight,” she muttered. “Feels like it’s still late afternoon, too. Sun
stays up later than a—”
    “I’ll
bet he fucks like an animal ,” Onyx mused. “All fierce and powerful and
possessive, y’know?”
    Molly
stopped the car in the middle of the narrow residential street. Her head turned
to stare at her girlfriend with daggers in her eyes. Onyx said, sheepishly,
“I’m just sayin’ I bet it runs in the family.”
    “I’d
better never hear a firsthand account,” replied Molly. “Things I don’t want to
know about my blood relatives. Ew. And let’s not bring up the rest of my
family, okay? Kevin’s the only one who didn’t bat an eye over me being pagan or
being into girls. Seriously, any one of my relatives who didn’t freak when I
came out about being one flipped over me being the other. Kevin’s the only one
who supported me.”
    “I
could keep my mouth shut,” Onyx teased.
    “You
do not get to fuck my uncle!”
    Onyx
sighed. “Fine… not even a little bit?”
    “No!
Jesus!” Molly got the car rolling again, soon finding a spot to park. “Look, if
we want a guy to play with, let’s find one together and go in on it