Gunning For Angels (Fallen Angels Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

stairwell door was closing. Jack started to go after her but he stopped himself, breathing hard. What was he going to do once he caught her? Spank her?
    “Her name was Ivanna Hamm!” Rachel said, “I thought they were together.”
    “Don’t these brats have parents? They need to lock up the nut-job parents who don’t know how to control their kids!” Jack exploded. Grimacing, he examined his bloody arm.
    “She told me she was with you,” Jeni said, “I thought she was an assistant or something.”
    Jack shot her an incredulous look. A teenage brat assistant? Jeni Hargrove had great legs but she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.
    I got fooled too…
    Jack said, “They should make people pass a test before they have kids!” He gestured for Jeni to return to the office. “Rachel will go over the contract with you.”
    “How ‘bout what the kid said – about the student discount?”
    Jack gave her a “you gotta be kidding” look but she gave him an angelic smile and he felt himself slipping down into the Venus flytrap power of her eyes.
    Maybe that is her real mother…
    He mentally shook himself. No way in hell he was going for another Stella! He walked Jeni into the reception room and handed her off to Rachel. He escaped into his office.
    On impulse, he stalked to the door and shouted to Rachel, “Make a sign – no kids allowed! Under penalty of I will kick anyone’s ass who brings in anything that can’t vote, drink or cuss out their mama!
    I. Hate. Kids. 

CHAPTER SIX
     
    A jug fills drop by drop.
     
    –Buddha
     
     
     
    I won’t rest until I hunt down the degenerate that did this to you. 
    The words echoed in his mind as Bud stood in the desert, looking down at a skull that had been bleached dry by the abrasive desert environment. The thought that anyone could think they had the right to kill another person always filled Bud with a steely determination. Bud was the hunter and the killer was now his prey.  
    The forensic team was methodically digging, labeling and bagging evidence from the shallow desert grave.
    The grave wasn’t a grave at all and wouldn’t have been found if Celia McCraw, grandmother of four, hadn’t overturned her ATV and landed nose to nose-socket with the skull. Bruised and bloody, Celia had refused to seek medical attention until long after the police arrived. She and her husband, Thomas, were still sitting on their ATVs, quietly talking as they watched the police work.
    Bud walked the perimeter of police tape and markers that staked out the area where the bones had been found. The area was Agua Caliente and consisted of old mines and an extensive network of narrow washes and sandy trails. It wasn’t unusual to stumble onto a landscape of lava or an ancient Native American petroglyph, and the remote setting seemed custom-made for dumping bodies.
    Bud observed each individual of the homicide team. It always struck him as an intricate choreographed dance production. Everyone had their part and played their roles to perfection. Photographers were the voyeuristic, anti-social peepers who used their cameras like barbed wire fencing to keep a barrier between themselves and the world. Forensic specialists were the dark-edged academics who solved sinister puzzles in the safety of hidden laboratories. Police were the attention-seeking authority junkies arresting what they secretly desired to be – a rule-flouting member of Joe-Wicked-Public. 
    Bud smiled to himself at his description of his own profession. Homicide detectives were the curious, unrelenting maggots munching their way through society’s rotting flesh to get to the who and the why and then to surgically excise the offending degenerate.
    That’s on a good day.  
    Bud felt the gathering of a million questions that would cut at his waking hours until he had his prey quarried and slumped behind a defense attorney. Bud imagined himself in the witness box, staring into the eyes of…
    Who?
    Bud tried to