Dead But Not Forgotten Read Online Free PDF Page A

have been on the six o’clock news.
    When he looked up, the nerd king was standing right in front of him, and Kevin had to work to control a flinch. The man moved without a sound, an eerie inhumanity that he either cultivated or just didn’t mind displaying. Hard to say which one was worse.
    â€œName,” the vampire said. He had his crew arranged around them now, though Kevin hadn’t heard any orders given; maybe they communicated like ants, through some kind of chemicals. He and Kenya were really, really alone.
    â€œKenya Jones,” Kenya said, and gave the vampire an unexpected smile as she collapsed her baton and put it away. “This is Kevin Pryor, my partner.”
    The cold stare—fading back to blue now, rather than green—transferred to her, and somehow she kept smiling. Kevin didn’t imagine it was easy. “What makes you think you can come in here and do this?” Now that he’d spoken more than two words, it became clear he had a faint trace of an accent—something muted and lost in time. Whatever it was, it didn’t fit his computer-geek disguise.
    Kevin said, “We’re with the Bon Temps Police Department, sir. In pursuit of a murder suspect.” He pointed at the man on the carpet. “That’s him.”
    There was an indefinable shift in the vampire, though Kevin couldn’t have named what changed; maybe it was just a fraction of a rise in an eyebrow. “Bon Temps. Louisiana. Area Five. Did Sheriff Northman send you here?”
    â€œOur boss is Sheriff Bud Dearborn, sir,” Kenya said. “He knows where we are.”
    â€œYour pursuit of your murder suspect is curiously backward, since you preceded him to this club,” the nerd king said. “My name is Stan Davis. I am the sheriff of Area Six. You are operating within my realm, and my establishment, without authorization from the sheriff of Area Five. I believe you would call that operating outside your jurisdiction.” His gaze flicked down for a half second to the man lying between them. “Leave him.”
    â€œCan’t do that, sir,” Kenya said. “He’s our prisoner.”
    â€œDo you doubt for a moment that you can all disappear?” said another vampire, a female one, bone white, with a feral light in her eyes. She licked her very red lips. “Let me take them.”
    â€œI don’t want trouble with Area Five, Rachel,” Davis said. “Police officers are easy to kill but hard to explain.”
    Though Rachel didn’t actually pout—her features weren’t expressive enough—Kevin got the sense of something like a toddler’s tantrum, but bottled up tight and a whole lot more homicidal.
    At their feet, Quentin Glick twitched and groaned. Kenya reached behind her back under her jacket—a move that made all the vampires tense up again—and came out with a pair of handcuffs that she clicked on the man’s wrists to pin him facedown.
    That was when Kevin spotted the vampire they’d talked to at Hardee’s. He was standing off to the side, half-hidden in shadows, but he was clearly part of the group, or he wouldn’t still be in the room. Stan Davis’s agent?
    Kevin nodded toward him. “He wanted to find out what we knew about Mr. Glick, here. Which means you wanted to know about him, Mr. Davis. Were you expecting him?”
    Silence. Stan Davis’s stare was unnervingly precise, like an ice pick. “You need to walk away now and leave him to me,” he said.
    â€œSir, Glick needs to face justice,” Kenya said. “He killed a boy in Louisiana.”
    Rachel laughed. It was a sound like hail on glass. “So?”
    â€œThere are matters you have no place in,” Davis said. “Go home. I said dead police officers were hard to explain. Not impossible.”
    That was an order, and there didn’t seem to be much of a way to argue about it. Glick had gone still,