Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

windows they passed were lavishly decorated for Christmas. Many of the displays showed more than a touch of a black humor: steampunk-dressed mannequins trimming a tree with grotesqueries, a skeleton in a Santa costume driving a team of skeletal reindeer. That was the Haight: flaunting convention, finding beauty in the outcast, the outré, the unacceptable.
    Beside Roarke, Mills tunelessly hummed “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” as he looked out the passenger window at the street.
    As usual, a clutch of ragged, homeless teenagers hung out, seated cross-legged, on the sidewalk below the stopped clock on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. There were similar groups congregated up and down the street. And as always,Roarke cringed inside at the number of obvious minors. Throwaway kids, following some hopeful dream of a more colorful, more liberated, even slightly magical lifestyle . . . and finding instead drugs, despair, and the most vile abuse by sexual predators.
    It was here that Cara had encountered Jade and apparently had taken enough interest in the girl to stalk and kill her pimp. She had also interrupted a john soliciting a prostitute even younger than Jade and had beaten the john nearly to death in an alley just a block away. It was what Cara did.
    Roarke made the turn on Belvedere toward the shelter, an old Victorian painted a garish shade of purplish pink . It was a rare and vitally important haven, a nonprofit halfway house providing shelter and services for the Bay Area’s rapidly growing population of exploited teenagers. Trafficking was a vast and virulent problem, far exceeding the capacity of law enforcement to control. Nonprofit organizations like the Belvedere House were left scrambling to take up the slack.
    Roarke realized that Mills had spoken and was now looking at him, perplexed.
    “Sorry, what?” Roarke asked blankly.
    “At least the media’s been distracted by the election. The Lindstrom story is out there, but they haven’t sunk their teeth into the particulars yet.”
    They will, though. Roarke could feel that storm coming.
    He parked the fleet car illegally in front of the historic old Belvedere building and put his “Official FBI Business” placard on the dash. He found his palms were sweating as he and Mills mounted the steps of the shelter. He had not seen Rachel since they’d fallen into bed together one night two weeks ago, after a long, ambiguous interview with Jade in juvenile detention. Roarke had been moved by Rachel’s fierce protectiveness of the troubled girl.
    The hookup had been a disastrous misjudgment on his part. Not that judgment had been any part of the equation.
    Now, at the same time that his stomach was roiling, he could feel his groin muscles tightening, and he had to turn his mind toward business. He forced himself to look at Mills. One glance at the scruffy detective was enough to put a damper on any illicit thoughts.
    The porch was gated and the lawmen were buzzed in after announcing themselves into a speaker on the wall. The rope of Nepalese bells on the doorknob jingled as the door closed behind them.
    In the front hall, crystal light catchers strung in tall bay windows cast rainbows on the walls. A lounge to the left was filled with battered and overstuffed furniture, some mismatched tables and chairs, a massive old television. A set of stairs in the hall led up, and another set led down. Roarke could hear the chatter of young, feminine voices on the lower floor and the ever-present thump of street music. There was a sweet, clean scent to the air—a faint layering of perfumes and bath and hair products.
    He glanced at the wall of photos hung in the hall: teenage girls captured in snapshots, printed-out candids from camera phones. Not just dozens but hundreds, rows of them, a photo gallery of lost girls that Rachel was doing her best to save every day.
    Just as Cara was, in her ownmercilessway.
    Roarke led the way down the hall toward Rachel’s office and