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

pushed through the door into a round room with built-in bookcases and a worn love seat. Behind a battered antique desk, Rachel waited for them.
    He didn’t know her well enough to know her age; he thought mid-thirties, about what he was. Her hair was a natural red-brown and curly, past her shoulders; her body was slim and curvy and toned. But it was her anger that had drawn him. She simmered with a crusading rage. The same rage that set Cara on fire.
    He couldn’t help but glance at the inner door behind her, cracked open to a small side room with a single bed. The bed that they’d shared just weeks before.
    He saw from Rachel’s face that she’d caught his glance toward the inner room. She didn’t spare him by looking away. Her eyes locked with his for an electrifying moment, crackling with sexual tension.
    Then she shifted her glance to Mills, taking in his outfit. “Mills, you’re a fashion plate as always.”
    “Born this way,” Mills answered, unflappable. “The kid still here?”
    Rachel rolled her eyes. “I would actually let you know if that changed.” She stood. “Let’s do this.”
    “It’s the light of my life.” Jade greeted Mills sardonically as Rachel pushed open the door of the front lounge to let the men enter. The teenager slouched in one of the worn lounge chairs—a beautiful girl, with a wild blond mane and a blistering energy that rolled off her despite her posture of supreme uncaring. Roarke was surprised at how good she looked after just two weeks off the street. The meth sores had cleared up and her skin was back to the soft, glowing plumpness of her age.
    Her gaze flickered over him as he stepped in behind Mills. “Whoa, you brought the Fed this time. You don’t watch out, you’re gonna make me feel important.”
    “It’s your sunny disposition,” Mills deadpanned. “Draws us like flies. Mind if we sit down?”
    She waved a languid hand. “Any position you like.”
    Roarke flinched inside at the blatant sexuality of the reference, but he didn’t show it. Rachel crossed the room to sit at the far corner of the table. Mills lowered his bulk to sit on the edge of the battered couch opposite Jade.
    “So how you feeling, Danger Girl?” the detective asked.
    “I’d be better with a smoke,” she challenged him.
    “Now, you know that shit’s bad for you.”
    Jade widened her eyes disingenuously. “Right, and I’m a brand new me. Livin’ in the pink cloud.”
    Roarke moved to the recessed window and leaned against the sill so he could study her. Rachel, the expert, put her age at sixteen. To Roarke’s eyes she sometimes looked more like twenty-five. Other times she looked twelve. And any thoughts he had about a sane universe dissolved in the face of what this girl had been subjected to in her short life.
    And yet, Jade had fought back, in her way. The girl lounging in the chair was not crushed, not broken. She was covered with body art, her own defiant statement. Her back was especially startling: an intricate design of trees dropping fiery blossoms, a girl dancing in flames.
    A girl on fire.
    “So what’s shaking?” she challenged Mills.
    “We just wanted to stop by, see how you’re doing.”
    Jade gave them a knowing and infuriating smile. “Sweet. But we’ve been through this. I was meetin’ up with Danny in the tunnel. When I get to the arch I can hear him talking with someone. He lights up and I see that crazy woman with him. He says, ‘Want something, bitch?’ and she grabs his hair and slices his neck open with a razor. And I haul ass out of there. Fast as my fuckin’ feet can carry me.”
    Roarke had an uncomfortably clear picture of the scene. He’d stood in that stone tunnel, looking down at the pimp’s body lying in its own blood. When he closed his eyes at night he could see how it had been, Cara and Jade in the cold darkness, their eyes locking above the corpse . . .
    “See, I know what to say,” Jade finished loftily.
    Roarke and Mills