First Offense Read Online Free PDF Page A

herself. You’re going to be fine. Maybe it wasn’t even a bullet. Maybe she’d backed into a jagged metal wire…something sharp.
    “Stay calm,” she could hear her father say. He’d told her that right after she graduated from the police academy and had seen her first dead body—that of a child. She’d come home and told her father she couldn’t do it, wanted to resign. She was too young, too sensitive to be a cop. “Everyone is sensitive to death. If you weren’t sensitive to death, you wouldn’t be human. Take some deep breaths and call on your inner strength,” he’d said firmly.
    Ann suddenly found herself fully upright. Her vision was blurred and distorted, perspiration streaming from her forehead into her eyes, but she was standing. She knew now what she had to do. She had to make it across the street.
    “Are you hurt?” a concerned voice said from behind her. “Is something wrong?”
    “I’m…I’ve been…” She tried to hold on, to turn around, to speak. Help was here…it was going to be all right now.
    Ann felt her strength evaporating. As soon as she felt an arm brush against her side, felt the comforting warmth of another body against her own, she allowed the person to lower her back to the ground.
    “You?” Ann mumbled as a disembodied face floated in front of her. Gentle, caring eyes looked down into her own, the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen.
    “Get an ambulance,” a voice yelled so loud she was startled, “Quick, she’s hemorrhaging. She’s going into shock. And…blankets. Get blankets. Look in my trunk.”
    The next second, the voice was calm and soothing, and Ann saw a man leaning over her body, his shirt brushing against her face. “We have to apply pressure. The bullet struck an artery. Be still and relax. The ambulance is on the way.”
    The man moved to the other side of Ann’s body, and she felt his hands on her. She kept watching his face, lost in his eyes. From somewhere far away Ann remembered them, knew she had seen them. She was swimming now somewhere between consciousness and blacking out, awake but not really awake—a murky, wavy world, almost as if she were under water. She heard other voices, heard other feet pounding in her direction. All she could see was this face, hear this reassuring voice, feel the warmth of this person’s touch on her body.
    Through the fog Ann heard a shrill siren piercing the night. With his free hand the man stroked Ann’s forehead, gazed down into her eyes again. Hair brushed across her face. “Your hair…” Ann said. It was like a soft blanket.
    “You’re going to be fine,” the voice assured her. “The bullet entered near your shoulder.”
    Ann strained to see, hear. The face was becoming distorted. She felt a rush of emotion—love—mixed with a feeling of complete peace. “Hank,” she whispered. “I knew you’d come back.”
    Her eyelashes fluttered and then closed involuntarily. She felt an unknown force pulling her down into the darkness. She desperately held on to the image of the man in front of her, refusing to let it go. It was the only thing between her and the nothingness that was calling. Then she was sinking, unable to hold on. She heard Hank’s voice, smelled his body next to her own, recognized his firm touch. Hank was here. Her son would have his father. She could let go.
    A few seconds later, she let the darkness take her.

Chapter 2

    A t fifty, detective sergeant Thomas Milton Reed was still a fairly good physical specimen, even if he did say so himself. At six one, two hundred pounds, he had all his hair and only a few strands of gray. He bared his teeth in the mirror. Most of the stains were gone now that he’d kicked cigarettes. Watching Lenny Braddock die of lung cancer had finally done the trick. But the lines in his face would remain. Too many years in the California sun. People said it gave a person character, anyway. If he didn’t have anything else. Reed laughed, he certainly had