Blood Dreams Read Online Free PDF

because she’d been holding on to those bags for dear life, and she was sure now that the ice cream was melting. She didn’t much care about either.
    Just in case she didn’t know.
    Just in case she didn’t know.
    Jesus Christ Almighty.
    She was still rattled when her cell phone rang, and it took several rings for her to dig it out of her purse. Making a mental note to get another damn purse or at least to better organize this one, she answered, knowing without the need for caller I.D. that it was Paris.
    “We have visitors,” Paris announced without preamble.
    Dani closed her eyes. “Don’t tell me.”
    “Afraid so. Miranda Bishop is here. With John.”
     
    D eputy Jordan Swain prided himself on his professionalism. His dedication and intelligence. His rapier wit. And his ability to look like a cool stud in his uniform, thanks to the kind genetics of blond good looks and a rigorous morning workout routine.
    He was also well known for his cast-iron stomach, and it was that which failed him late Wednesday afternoon.
    “Sorry about that,” he muttered, as he returned from his hasty visit to the bushes a few yards away and well outside the yellow crime-scene tape.
    With a grunt, the sheriff said, “Well, at least you made it outside the tape. I would have been pissed if you’d contaminated the scene, Jordan.”
    “How could I possibly have contaminated it any more than it already is?”
    “Funny.”
    “Actually, it isn’t.” Jordan swallowed and tried not to think about all the blood and viscera spattered and scattered around them. Which was more than difficult since it
was
all around them and pretty damn well impossible to miss.
    The house—vacant and with a FOR SALE sign in the neat front yard—was at the end of a long driveway and on considerable acreage, which was probably why nobody had noticed the butchery that had taken place in the well-maintained, previously very lovely and peaceful backyard patio/pool area.
    Nobody, that is, until the gardener had shown up for his routine maintenance work and rounded the back corner of the house, his wheelbarrow filled with the tools and implements he needed to begin getting the plantings ready for the coming winter.
    The wheelbarrow, overturned, lay where he had abandoned it just outside the pool area, when he had fled after his first glimpse of the carnage.
    And it was a scene of carnage. The comparison that had sent Jordan fleeing into the bushes to lose his lunch was that it looked rather like someone had fed a medium-size cow into a wood chipper.
    “Jesus, Marc, what kind of animal would do something like this?”
    “The kind we have to catch.” Marc held up a clear plastic evidence bag containing a very large, very bloody hunting knife with a serrated edge. He studied it with a frown. “How many places you figure sell these?”
    “Oh, hell, at least a dozen or more in the county. Not counting pawnshops.”
    Marc nodded. “That was my take. We’re not likely to get any kind of useful lead from this. Plus, leaving it right here at the scene marks the perp as either very stupid—or very sure we won’t be able to trace the knife back to him.”
    “I hate to think of anybody this vicious being smart too,” Jordan said, “but I think we’d regret assuming otherwise.”
    “Yeah. Still, we’ll find out what we can.”
    “Might get lucky,” Jordan agreed somewhat dubiously.
    Marc sent him a wry look, then summoned with a gesture one of his two crime-scene technicians and handed over the knife. “Shorty, you or Teresa find anything we can’t see for ourselves?”
    “Not so far, Sheriff.” Shorty, who in the grand tradition of nicknames towered over both other men and, indeed, most people, blinked sleepy eyes and appeared to stifle a yawn. “Might have to move the tape back a few yards, though; I think I’ve found a couple pieces of her right at the periphery of the area.”
    Jordan, who had been about to make a caustic demand to know if they were