Dragon Tears Read Online Free PDF

the 1990s.
    Connie rose from shelter far enough to line up a shot.
    Harry was equally quick to take advantage of the lunatic’s sudden obsession with the saguaro. He came to his feet in another part of the restaurant and fired. Connie fired twice. Chunks of wood exploded from the door frame beside the psycho’s head, and the glass blew out of the porthole; they had bracketed him by inches with their first shots.
    The geek vanished through the swinging door, which took both Harry’s and Connie’s next rounds and kept swinging. Judging by the size of the bullet holes, the door was hollow-core, so the slugs might have gone through and nailed the sonofabitch on the other side.
    Connie ran toward the kitchen, slipping a little on the food-strewn floor. She doubted they were going to be lucky enough to find the creep wounded and squirming like a half-crushed cockroach on the other side of that door. More likely, he was waiting for them. But she couldn’t rein herself in. He might even step through the door from the kitchen and cut her down as she approached. But her juices were up; she was jazzed. When her juices were up, she couldn’t help but do everything full-bore, and it didn’t even matter that her juices were up most of the time.
    God, she
loved
this job.
4
    Harry
hated
this cowboy stuff.
    When you were a cop, you knew violence might come down sooner or later. You might suddenly find yourself up to your neck in wolves a lot nastier than any Red Riding Hood ever had to deal with. But even if it was part of the job, you didn’t enjoy it.
    Well, maybe you did if you were Connie Gulliver.
    As Harry rushed the kitchen door, going in low and fast with his revolver ready, he heard her behind him, feet slapping-crunching-squishing on the floor, coming full-tilt. He knew that if he looked back at her, she would be grinning, not unlike the maniac who had shot up the restaurant, and although he knew she was on the side of the angels, that grin never failed to unnerve him.
    He skidded to a halt at the door, kicked it, and instantly jumped to one side, expecting an answering hail of bullets.
    But the door slammed inward, swung back out, and no gunfire followed. So when it swung inward again, Connie burst past him and went into the kitchen with it. He followed her, cursing under his breath, which was the only way he ever cursed.
    In the humid, claustrophobic confines of the kitchen, burgers sizzled on a grill and fat bubbled in a deep-fryer. Pots of water boiled on a stovetop. Gas ovens creaked and popped from the intense heat they contained, and a bank of microwave ovens hummed softly.
    Half a dozen cooks and other employees, dressed in white slacks and T-shirts, their hair tucked under white string-tied caps, pale as dead men, stood or cowered midst the culinary equipment. They were wrapped by curling tendrils of steam and meat smoke, looking less like real people than like ghosts. Almost as one they turned toward Connie and Harry.
    “Where?” Harry whispered.
    One of the employees pointed toward a half-open door at the back of the kitchen.
    Harry led the way along a narrow aisle flanked on the left by racks of pots and utensils. On the right was a series of butcher blocks, a machine used to cut well-scrubbed potatoes into raw french fries, and another that shredded lettuce.
    The aisle widened into a clear space with deep sinks and heavy-duty commercial dishwashers along the wall to the left. The half-open door was about twenty feet directly ahead, past the sinks.
    Connie moved up to his side as they drew near the door. She kept enough distance between them to assure they couldn’t both be taken out by one burst of gunfire.
    The darkness past that threshold bothered Harry. A windowless storeroom probably lay beyond. The smiling, moon-faced perp would be even more dangerous once cornered.
    After flanking the door, they hesitated, taking a moment to think. Harry would gladly have taken half the day to think, giving the perp