Read Online Red Snow by Michael Slade - Free Book Online Page A

piece of wood, metal, glass, and Swiss electronics had its official kickoff, protestors had stormed the podium to shout what sounded like “4Q—2010!” into the microphone. Scruffy-looking people wearing bandanas booed, jeered, and waved placards stating “Stop the Clock!” “Bread, Not Circuses!” and “Smash the Wrecking Balls of Gentrification!” The officers sent to suppress that mini-riot were pelted with balloons filled with paint and papier-mâché balls stuffed with rocks. To thwart vandals from wrecking the clock, security cameras watched it night and day over the next three years. Because the cops in the Special X office in Whistler Village faced the same deadline, a digital image of the Countdown Clock was beamed via satellite to a screen mounted on the wall above Sergeant Dane Winter’s head.
    “It’s freaking me out,” said Corporal Jackie Hett.
    “What is?” Dane asked, glancing up from his half of their partners’ desk.
    “The Countdown Clock. I chose the wrong side of the desk. Every time I look up, I see seconds slipping away. And the shrinking numbers remind me of the odds against.”
    “Against what?”
    “Doomsday,” she said frankly. “I can’t shake the feeling that something wicked this way comes.”
    “By the picking of my thumbs,” Dane said, crossing himself. “I’m partnered with a witch .”
    Actually, Dane was the envy of every male cop in Special X. Who wouldn’t want to be teamed with this Amazon? With her flaming red hair, hypnotic green eyes, and statuesque figure, Jackie was a fantasy female right out of Greek myth. Like the legendary warriors, she was also armed to the teeth. A blue Kevlar vest protected her chest, and the belt buckled around her waist held an armory: a nine-mill on one hip, a Taser on the other, and the whole thing backed up by pepper spray, extra magazines, a portable radio, an extendable baton, and a set of handcuffs. Unlike the Amazons, she hadn’t cut off her right breast so she could shoot a bow more freely. But that was okay with the men of Special X.
    Ooh-la-la.
    As far as Dane was concerned, Jackie could slap her cuffs on him any day of the week.
    All of which stayed unexpressed, since he was her boss.
    But dreams are free.
    *     *     *
     
    Jackie Hett had a crush on her boss. As likely as not, when she glanced up from her work, it wasn’t to look at the Countdown Clock but to feast her eyes on Dane.
    But for the chevron on his shoulder—three stripes, plus crown, not her two—they were dressed like twins. Sandy-haired and cobalt-eyed, he stood just over six feet. Beneath the blue vest and long-sleeved gray shirt with blue tie, Dane was athletically slim. Basketball or soccer—not hockey or football—would be his game. The sexual balance at Whistler tilted Jackie’s way. At 53.6 percent male, the town was the most testosterone-charged in B.C. Boy toys came up for a few years to ski and have fun, making it a woman’s hunting ground. So why was Jackie attracted to the one guy she couldn’t bag?
    No sex, please, we’re Mounties.
    She was one Mountie who wouldn’t get her man.
    Sex with your boss was a snake, not a ladder.
    “It’s like playing with alphabet soup,” Jackie complained.
    “What is?” asked Dane.
    “The number of acronyms in VISU,” she said, waving the security report in her hand. “We’ve got CSIS and CSOR and JTF-2, and Christ knows how many more. Acronyms within acronyms fill every document. When I’m commissioner, we’ll go back to labels with meaning. Scotland Yard, flying patrol—that sort of thing. When I was a girl, at least I could rearrange letters to spell words .”
    “In your alphabet soup?”
    “Yeah. Didn’t you?”
    “Spoon around for letters to make words?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Who didn’t?”
    “So what’s the answer?”
    “To what?”
    “The obvious question.”
    Dane shrugged. “Obviously, the obvious question isn’t so obvious to me.”
    “A, B, C, D,” Jackie