Mortal Allies Read Online Free PDF

dainty. Like Katherine, she was dressed in a fancy silk pantsuit and would have been quite pretty if it weren’t for the gloomy frown on her face. I thought she seemed feminine in a kittenish way, but that got cleared up real quick when the amazon lumbered past me, jumped on the same bed, and threw an extraordinarily long arm around her neck. To say they were an unlikely-looking couple would be to put too fine an edge on it. They looked like a distorted version of a Disney tale — a teeny beauty and a gangly beast.
    It’s important at this point to understand that I grew up on military bases and spent my entire professional life in the Army. You become accustomed to the military culture, which has a fairly masculine ambiance and a distinctly conservative bent. Anything that’s divergently different makes your hair stand up. And that’s what was happening at this instant. I literally reached up and patted down the top of my head, so it wasn’t too obvious.
    “Hey, everybody,” I said, with this painfully awkward smile.
    Katherine said, “Attila, you look like you’re about to faint. Excuse him, everybody. I warned you he’d be a big disappointment.”
    “Heh-heh,” I laughed, just to show them I was a good sport.
    Nobody else laughed, I noticed.
    The amazon said, “I’m Alice. I like Allie, though.”
    “Pleased to meet you, Allie,” I incoherently mumbled, since it wasn’t strictly correct. I wasn’t the least bit pleased to meet her.
    “I’m Keith,” the guy said, bouncing off the bed with his left hand hanging from a very limp wrist. “Keith Merritt, if you want my full name.”
    His handshake was so quick and light, you wondered if it actually happened.
    The other woman stayed on the bed, frowned, and complained, “I’m Maria.”
    “Hi,” I said, smiling. She didn’t smile back.
    “Okay, everybody’s met,” Katherine said. “Get seated and let’s get started.”
    I looked around for a moment and wondered where I should sit. Allie the amazon stayed on the bed right next to Maria the grump. Keith patted a spot on the mattress he was stretched out on.
    I rolled my eyes and audibly groaned, then went over and sat on the floor in the corner, as far from everybody as I could belligerently get. The rest of them giggled, like my discomfort was just the funniest damn thing in the whole damn world.
    Katherine studied us all in a businesslike way.
    “We’ve got a court date,” she announced. “It’s set for two weeks from today. They’re bringing in a judge from Washington. Attila, have you ever heard of a Colonel Carruthers?”
    “Barry Carruthers?” I asked, and she nodded. There’s actually a fairly small corps of military judges, and lawyers are inveterately gossipy, and if there’s one thing lawyers love to share, it’s stories about judges.
    “I’ve heard of him,” I admitted. “I’ve never tried anything before him, but I know his rep.”
    “And what’s his rep?” she asked.
    “A prosecutor’s dream date. Loose on rules of evidence, murder on theatrics, and he’ll kill you if you deal with the press.”
    “Uh-huh,” she said, apparently unimpressed.
    She should’ve been impressed as all get out. Barry Carruthers loved to dance with defense attorneys, only it was a very ugly kind of dance, because he always took the lead, he stepped on your toes, and he whirled you around so hard that you fell on your ass a lot. Just hearing he was assigned to a case was enough to make some defense attorneys bawl like babies. The stories about him were legion. He’d once suspended a trial for two months because a defense lawyer raised an objection that so thoroughly aggravated him, he actually threw the attorney in the slammer. It did not escape my notice that the Army was bringing in the most notoriously antidefense judge on its rolls.
    I raised my hand like a schoolchild. “Could I ask a question?”
    “What?” Katherine barked.
    “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to get too technical