Nightmare Ink Read Online Free PDF Page A

in her thigh paralyze her. Entirely. Especially not when Troy texted that someone wanted a flat ink tattoo from her.
    She hobbled through the snow to Nightmare Ink.
    A tall, slender young man with neat black hair and dark eyes opened the shop door as if he’d been watching for her. He wore dress slacks, a crisp white shirt, and a navy sweater.
    “Ria,” Isa said. “You look—”
    “Like I belong in church with my grandmother?” he interrupted, smiling. “I will be shortly. Your coat. Allow me.”
    “Thank you.”
    As Ria took her jacket, Isa caught Troy Daschel, a flat ink artist leasing shop space from her, eyeing the pair of them from where he sat behind the reception desk. He rose and held out a hand. “Here. I’ll hang that up.”
    “Gracias.”
Ria gave Troy her coat, and eyed her. “I understand you are injured,
señora
. I am sorry to hear this. You are well enough to do a tattoo for me?”
    “It’s nothing serious,” Isa said. “Come on back. We’ll get the paperwork filled out . . .”
    “Already done,” Troy said over his shoulder as he hung her coat in the back hallway.
    “Have a seat,” Isa said, leading Ria around the reception desk to her station. “What are we doing?”
    He settled into the chair as she switched on her work light. His gaze on hers, Ria turned his face so the overhead lamp spotlighted his left cheekbone. The light caught the three ink teardrops tattooed there.
    “A fourth.”
    Isa’s heart bumped down her ribs to her toes.
    Teardrop tattoos were supposed to represent a tally of the murders the wearer had committed. It didn’t stop thug wannabes and stars promoting an image from getting teardrops inked on their faces.
    But Ria wasn’t a wannabe.
    Isa didn’t know what the young gang leader and his gang did in Ballard. Didn’t want to know. It was enough that Ria had been her first customer at Nightmare Ink. He came to her when he wanted tattoos. He brought his people suffering Ink Madness to her for binding.
    Still watching her, he put a hand in his pocket and brought forth a gold and onyx ring like the one he wore, like all of his people wore.
    “Emilio,” he said. “Tragic, senseless waste. Stupid. His funeral is in two hours.”
    Isa rubbed the heel of one hand up her forehead.
    “A quarter of the Seattle Police Department is inspecting my basement, Ria,” she whispered. “Do you really want to advertise the fact that you killed one of your own people with cops crawling all over?”
    His fist closed on the ring until his knuckles turned white. “Yes. I do. Think of the stories that will be told. Police watch while I get another tattoo for another tool that failed me. A powerful message to the rest of them. Do not tell me you won’t do it.”
    Refusing to work on Ria wouldn’t change anything. She turned on her tattoo machine and drew the iridescent black outline of a fourth teardrop into the skin over his cheekbone.
    As if she weren’t jabbing him repeatedly with needles, Ria didn’t move a muscle until she finished and handed him a mirror.
    “Bueno,”
he said, inspecting the work. “I will go to the funeral with a warning label written by your hand. You save lives.”
    He rose and walked away.
    Troy, working not four feet away from Isa’s station, shut off his tattoo machine and straightened.
    At the reception desk, Ria pulled a couple of folded bills out of a pocket, counted off three, and tossed them to the counter.
    Isa stood.
    With a glance back at her, he flicked something else to the countertop. It clinked, hollow and metallic as it hit and rolled.
    A bullet casing.
    Ria walked out into the snow without any hint that he noticed the cold.
    Troy rocketed to the desk, scooped up the brass, and shook his head. “I’m going to strangle that skinny son of a bitch.”
    “That’s evidence,” Isa said, holding out a hand. “And you just put your fingerprints on it.”
    “Nah. It was on the news a day or so ago,” Troy said. “The kid he