Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) Read Online Free PDF

stood between her and him.
    I saw her notice and flinch. She looked more startled than offended.
    “What the fuck do you want?” Black said.
    All three of them jumped, backing off instinctively.
    Glen looked up at Black like Black had just threatened him with physical violence. He didn’t reach for his sidearm holster, much less the grip of his gun, which I happened to know was an HK45, but something in his posture suggested he might have thought about it. It occurred to me that Glen probably wasn’t used to facing off with people his size, much less men even taller than he was. Glen was probably six-four or six-five himself and built like a football player. Nick jokingly called him “the Viking.”
    Black was taller.
    I didn’t know precisely how tall, but I guessed his height at six-six or six-seven. His frame was somewhat more compact than Glen’s, but roughly the same size as well, including his arms and shoulders, which were hard with muscle, like a boxer’s or a gymnast’s. He had a lean build, not an ounce of excess flesh anywhere, his muscles rope-like and well-defined but not bulked out like a bodybuilder, either.
    Black carried what my martial arts teacher would have called “functional bulk.”
    He looked like what he was, a fighter.
    Nick stepped back instinctively too, but immediately stepped forward a beat later. He didn’t come close to either Glen or Black in height, but he wasn’t exactly short at six feet even, and his own background in martial arts and every other sport imaginable made his shoulders almost as broad as Black’s, if not quite Glen’s.
    “You forgetting we’re police again, Black?” Nick said.
    Black’s voice and eyes were cold. “I didn’t forget... ‘Nick.’”
    “Great. Then you wanna back that shit down a little?” Nick’s anger flashed hotter as he looked up at Black, then back at me. I saw him trying to control it, but something about that anger seemed almost animal-to-animal with him and Black.
    “We need Miri to come down to the station,” he said then, his voice flatter.
    Black shook his head, once. “No.”
    “No?” Nick clenched his jaw. “You wanna give me an excuse to drag you down there, too? Only in handcuffs? Because that might just make my day, psycho-boy.”
    I stood more directly between him and Black.
    “Nick.” I pushed lightly at his chest and felt Black stiffen behind me. I removed my hand at once. “You need to back off. Now.”
    Nick returned my stare, jerking his eyes off Black’s. I saw him trying to control his anger, to calm down, but he was reacting to something about me and Black that he didn’t seem to be able to process. I saw him look up at Black again, right before his dark eyes returned to me. When he looked me over in the T-shirt and boxers, I felt Black tense behind me even more.
    I could feel that thing between them start to amplify.
    Black opened his mouth to say something, when Angel abruptly inserted herself.
    “Can we come in?” she said.
    She spoke to Black, not to me, her voice soft and carefully polite. Black’s expression relaxed somewhat when he returned her gaze.
    He liked Angel.
    Normally I was glad of that, but now, not so much. After a pause where I felt Black thinking about reasons why them coming inside may or may not be a good idea, he surprised me, stepping backwards into the penthouse apartment.
    “All right,” he said.
    He released the door, then turned away from all of us, padding silently into his living room. The dragon tattoo with its dramatic, deep blacks and shockingly jeweled colors that covered most of his back moved precisely under his otherwise perfect muscles and skin.
    I blinked, following him with my eyes, then glanced back at the other three.
    Angel barely hesitated. She walked past me into the apartment, following Black towards the white leather furniture that lived at the bottom of the stairs in his sunken living room. Nick and Glen followed behind her, entering the apartment in