The 13th Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t fix. You ready yet?”
    Billy slammed down the trunk and nodded. “Yeah, man, but…” He stopped short of saying that he didn’t want to do the run this time. Though he really didn’t. It’d kept him up lately, thinking about these poor girls they were pulling off the street and hog-tying and throwing in the backseat or trunk. And delivering to God knew what kind of fate. He’d done a lot of things he wasn’t proud of to make a buck in his life, but he’d never thought that being the middle link in a chain of…what? White slavery?…would be his claim to fortune if not fame.
    “But what?” TG barked. He buttoned up a blue-checked flannel shirt to hide the stained white T-shirt beneath. You going out on the town, you try to show a little decorum (never mind that the flannel had grease and a small bloodstain on the left shoulder). “You gonna go chickenshit on me?”
    Billy shook his head. “No, man, you know I’m with you. And we need the cash bad right now.”
    “Damn right we do. If we’re gonna buy the old Hanson place and set up that bar yer always yammering about opening, we need a stack a green.” He nodded at the car and then rubbed the roll of his gut. “And the kegs and gasoline to keep these machines running ain’t cheap neither.”
    “I just wonder what they’re doing to those girls, is all,” Billy said quietly. He felt unusually empathetic today.
    “Whaddya care?” TG said, smacking Billy on theshoulder and pushing him at the passenger’s door. “Ain’t like any of ‘em are ever gonna drop drawers for you.”
    The two men slid into the Mustang, and in seconds the rev of the eight-cylinder engine echoed across the canyon as TG slipped the car into gear and gunned it down the twisted road and toward town.
    Night had fallen, and as most people were already home from a day’s work, finishing the dinner dishes and tucking the kids into bed, TG and Billy had only just begun their day. After an afternoon of steady drinking, they were going to work.
    The Mustang shimmied like a snake as it hit the asphalt of Crossback Ridge.
    “Yee-ha!” yelled TG, waving one arm out the window.
    Billy didn’t answer. He was staring down the ridge at the tiny lights and the small plume of chimney smoke from the place that paid their admittedly unusual salaries.
    Castle House Asylum.

C HAPTER S EVEN
    Christy Sorensen stripped off the leather jacket and the shoulder holster hidden beneath it, and angrily hung both from hooks in her locker. She slammed the door with a metallic crash and didn’t look back to see if it latched or not.
    What a fuckup. Her first “undercover” gig and she manages to hit a stupid biker. Nothing like blowing your cover before you even start. She’d had no choice but to take the kid into the asylum to seek anymedical attention he might need immediately. But that also meant that there’d be no casual snooping from Castle Point’s finest (or at least, youngest!).
    “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she hissed to herself as she stalked through the station. Chief wanted to see her as soon as she got in, and he wasn’t going to like what he heard. Not that he hadn’t gotten most of it already over the radio.
    “Close the door,” he said when she stepped into the closet he called an office. The place was so tight she could practically feel his breath when she squeezed into the chair wedged in front of his desk.
    She complied, and crossed her arms over her gray T-shirt. Then she realized that the motion only accentuated her cleavage, and that probably wasn’t the right message to be sending at the moment. She dropped her hands to her lap, where her fingers insisted on intertwining, and cracking knuckles.
    “The kid is okay, is that right? He’s not going to sue the department?” His voice came in a low rumble, chimney-smoke thick and deep.
    She nodded.
    “And you are okay?”
    “No bruises, Chief,” she said. “No physical ones anyway.”
    The chief had a way of letting his