Swamp Sniper Read Online Free PDF

given that the victim before him was living in California. That’s kinda like Yankees, right?”
    Several of the mob nodded in agreement and I held in a sigh. Humor had no place in Sinful.
    “You’re twisting my words!” he raged.
    “Your words were already ridiculous,” I said. “I didn’t have to so much as bend one for everyone to get that.”
    “You meddling bitch.” He started toward me.
    I smiled. “You forgot ‘Yankee.’”
    Sheriff Lee, finally noticing the exchange, rushed forward at a good clip of negative two miles per hour. I have no idea what he thought he was going to do against the charging wall of ignorant flab coming at me, and I was almost sorry that he wouldn’t arrive in time for me to see it, but the situation in front of me was about to require action.
    Flabby Man took another step toward me and lifted his hand, palm open.
    Oh, hell no! He did not think he was going to bitch-slap me like some girl.
    “Stop!” Sheriff Lee yelled, but I barely heard him over the crowd. Flabby Man never slowed, so either his ears were insulated with a layer of blubber or he was ignoring the sheriff like most everyone else did.
    He took that final step, his arm swinging downward at the same time. He couldn’t have indicated his strike more if he’d sent me a text beforehand. In a single deft move, I stepped to the side, grabbed his thumb and twisted. He howled in pain and bent over to follow his thumb, and I kept pushing it lower. It didn’t take long for gravity to take over and he went tumbling down onto the street.  
    “She assaulted him!” Another man in the crowd yelled.
    I glanced over, taking only a second to dismiss him as a threat. He looked like Flabby Man’s twin.
    “Good,” I heard a woman’s voice chime in. “He’s an asshole.”
    “You can’t say ‘asshole’ in the middle of Main Street,” another woman complained. “It’s illegal.”
    “What are you going to do about it, asshole?”
    Sheriff Lee, who’d finally managed to make it over to me, waved his hands in the air, trying to get the attention of the clearly escalating crowd. “Everyone calm down. There’s no need for violence.”
    I looked over at Gertie and shook my head. She raised her eyebrows, clearly no more confident than I was that Sheriff Lee could get the crowd under control. The voices continued to escalate in pitch and level. More and more people began shouting and pointing fingers, and I could no longer tell who was angry at whom and for what.  
    And then all hell broke loose.
    Such a simple thing—one shove—and the entire mob erupted. Men swung wildly at each other, mostly missing their intended target and hitting the women, who had handfuls of each other’s hair and were bent over turning in a circle like performing some insane dance.  
    It was a bar fight without the bar.
    Although it pained me, I knew retreat was the best option. I turned to grab Gertie and pull her out of the fray, but as I swung around, I caught a glimpse of her dropping to the ground and crawling through the crowd toward the sheriff’s department.  
    What the hell was she doing?
    I knew it was a suicide mission, but I couldn’t abandon a man in the field, so I ducked down and pushed through the crowd, trying to follow Gertie, who scrambled on all fours through the mass of thrashing idiots. I was just about to step onto the sidewalk when someone grabbed hold of my ponytail and yanked me backward. I saw a flash of glittery hot pink and knew Paulette was the culprit.  
    It took me less than a second to assess my options, and none of them were good. If I didn’t get my hair out of Paulette’s grasp, those extensions were likely to rip right off, leaving me exposed in a way I couldn’t afford. By the same token, I could hardly assault the widow in the middle of Main Street and in front of a bunch of screaming witnesses.
    I grabbed the base of my ponytail as I heard the first rip of hair and at the same time, a spray of water