No Honor Among Thieves: An Ali Reynolds Novella (Kindle Single) Read Online Free PDF Page A

to be out of reach for as long as it takes to get back and forth to Bisbee. Stu would be lost on his own, and Cami’s not experienced enough.”
    Shaking her head, Ali collected Bella and took her to the kitchen. Leland Brooks, their majordomo, was already on hand with a freshly brewed pot of coffee. “Will you and Mr. Simpson be wanting breakfast?”
    “Sounds like breakfast of any kind is off the list for this morning,” she told him as he busied himself dishing out Bella’s food. “B. and I have to head out for Cottonwood as soon as we’re both decent. There’s some kind of crisis afoot, so whatever you were planning for dinner should probably be put on hold. I’m being deputized to a crime scene in Cochise County. I don’t know where B. will end up, and I have no idea when we’ll be back.”
    “In other words, business as usual,” Leland said with a smile. “I take it you won’t be going into the office in Flagstaff today.”
    Weeks earlier, Ali and B. both had been involved in the take-down of a polygamous group called The Family located in northern Arizona. The group’s leader, Richard Lowell, knowing he was about to be brought to justice for human trafficking, had gunned down most of the men in the cult, leaving the affected women and children to fend for themselves.
    Some of the women had left The Family’s compound willingly. Others who tried to stay on ended up being evicted when the state discovered that most of the dwellings in the community weren’t built up to code and needed to be leveled. Most of the displaced homemakers had few job skills, and the kids were years behind students of the same age as far as scholastic achievement was concerned. Working as a volunteer three days a week out of an office shoehorned into the Flagstaff YWCA, Ali’s job was to smooth out some of the bumps and difficulties The Family’s women and children struggled with as they tried to find their way in a world entirely foreign to them.
    “This is a priority right now,” Ali told Leland. “I’ll call the Y and let them know I’m traveling and won’t be in. Since I’m a volunteer, obviously they can’t fire me.”
    When Ali returned to the bedroom with two cups of coffee in hand, she found that B., fully dressed, was back on the phone, speaking urgently and fluently in a language Ali suspected to be Danish. It was a lengthy conversation. By the time it ended, Ali was dressed and both of their coffee cups were empty. On their way to the garage, they found that Leland had freshly loaded travel mugs waiting for them on the kitchen counter.
    “I’m telling you, you’re never going to be able to talk Stu Ramey into a helicopter,” Ali insisted again, once they were in B.’s car and belted into their seats. “He’s scared to death of flying.”
    “He flew to Vegas for the wedding,” B. countered. “He flew to Paris last winter.”
    “Yes, he did,” Ali conceded, “but it was under protest, and those trips were on board airplanes. Big difference. Planes are one thing; helicopters are another. He won’t go.”
    “He will if you ask him,” B. said. “After all, aren’t you the smooth talker who persuaded him to take both those trips?”
    “But why does Stu need to go in the first place?” Ali objected. “I’m not exactly tech savvy, but I’m pretty sure I’m smart enough to operate an RFID chip reader and relay the information back to you.”
    “I’m sure you are, too,” B. replied. “But think about this: Supposing a crook of some kind has been tasked with driving a truckload of stolen merchandise from one place to another. How’s he going to figure out how to get there?”
    “If he hasn’t been there before, he’d probably need a GPS device of some kind,” Ali answered.
    “Right. And who do you suppose is one of the most qualified people on earth when it comes to extracting information out of whatever device Mr. Bad Guy may have been using? Not you and not me, either. Stu can do it