A Fine Specimen Read Online Free PDF

hammering heart. “A Code Seven! Oh
my gosh, that’s so exciting! Thank you!” She was hastily gathering her things,
including the book that nearly lamed him. A pen fell out of her bag and she stuffed
it back in. “What’s a Code Seven? An emergency? No, that’s in hospitals, I
remember that from ER and Scrubs . Is a Code Seven a robbery?
Arson? A kidnapping?”
    “No.” The lieutenant
strode out of his office and she rushed to catch up with him.
    Caitlin tried to thread
her way quickly through the desks and past the officers loitering and laughing
in the large squad room. As she hurried past a desk, her book bag caught a pile
of CDs. They spilled to the floor with a clatter. “Sorry,” she mumbled as she bent
down. The lieutenant had stopped at the door on the far side of the room,
waiting while she scrambled to pick them up, red-faced.
    “That’s okay, honey.”
Kathy Martello bent to help her. “It’s much too crowded in here. I’m always
bumping into things.”
    Caitlin looked around
furtively, hoping the lieutenant wasn’t watching her too closely. Those dark
eyes were far too observant. Her hands scrabbled to pick the CDs up.
    “Quick,” she whispered
to Sergeant Martello behind her hand. God forbid he hear her. Ray had described
the lieutenant as having preternaturally acute hearing.
    Actually, his exact
words had been, “Alex can hear a fly fart in the next room.”
    Sergeant Martello looked
at her kindly, brows raised, as Caitlin asked, “What’s a Code Seven? I’m going
out on one with Lieutenant Cruz.”
    Kathy Martello
straightened suddenly, eyes wide, hands full of CDs. “You’re going out…on a Code
Seven ? With the Loot?” she repeated, looking stunned.
    “Yes,” Caitlin hissed,
fairly dancing with impatience. God! This was so exciting! “What is it? What’s
a Code Seven?”
    “Whoa, I am sooo not
going there.” Kathy looked over to the lieutenant, standing with his arms
crossed, then looked back at Caitlin. She shook her head with a grin, miming
zipping her mouth. “You’ll have to ask the Loot himself what a Code Seven is,
honey.”
     
    Caitlin Summers
approached him gingerly after picking up the mess she’d made. Alex watched her
as she made her way toward him, weaving gracefully among the desks. The usually
noisy squad room grew quiet as she walked by, heads swiveling, phones on
shoulders, fingers lifting from keyboards. When she finally reached him, she
stopped, clutching her book bag with white knuckles.
    Fuck, but she’d thrown
him. Ray said to tell you that you owed him.
    Oh yeah. He owed Ray.
And how.
    Well, looked like Ray
had finally called in his chips.
    Ray was absolutely
right, no question. Alex owed the man, big time. Twenty years ago Alex had been
a worthless punk, a piece of shit running with a gang like a rat in a pack,
with maybe a year or two left to live, if he was lucky, before he got wasted in
a shootout or in a revenge killing by a rival gang.
    For some reason known
only to himself and God, Ray Avery had seen something in him. Something Alex
himself had taken years to see.
    Certainly neither his
alcoholic mother nor his drug-addled father had ever taken the time or the
energy to look beyond Alex’s size and strength and toughness to see whether
there was anything else there.
    Ray had. Ray had singled
him out, roughed him up and generally knocked some sense into him. And then Ray
had hounded him until he had joined the Police Academy. Where Alex had
surprised himself and his instructors—but not Ray—by being a natural.
    Alex would have given
anything he possessed to Ray, anything at all—certainly his life. That was
nothing. His life was Ray’s for the asking. But Ray had refused everything he
wanted to offer him, even thanks. All he said was that one day he would
collect.
    Well, looked as if that
day was finally here, in the form of a very, very pretty woman who was going to
fuck with his schedule and his head and his dick for the next week. A