The 7th Month Read Online Free PDF

and fled toward the rear of the cemetery, Joe in hot pursuit. The ax man ducked behind a large oak tree, dodging left, then appeared again straight in front of D.D.
    Gun up. Acrid taste of fake fog. Damp smell of fresh-turned earth. Shocked expression of one white-faced fleeing man, suddenly confronting a very large, pregnant woman with a flapping black overcoat and rock-steady Glock 9.
    “Halt, Boston Police.”
    “Wh—wh—wh—oomph!”
    Joe Talte had arrived. He leapt through the air, wrapped his arms around the ax man’s shoulders and took him down. Both men fell hard. Joe got up first.
    The stand-in drew his sidearm. At the last second, he seemed to remember it was only a prop. Hastily, he holstered it again, then glanced around to see if anyone had seen him.
    “I got him,” D.D. spoke up, voice loud, authoritative.
    Joe glanced behind for the first time, spotting her. He nodded once, curt acknowledgment, then stood aside, given her official capacity and, better yet, her real handgun.
    She noticed that his breathing had already settled, and that his hands remained in front of him, legs spread shoulder-width apart for balance. If ax man came up, Joe would be taking him down again.
    Ax man didn’t try to get up. Instead, sprawled on the ground, he groaned.
    D.D. stepped closer to Joe.
    Her heart was pounding too hard from the short burst of adrenaline. She could feel a stitch developing in the left side of her stomach, not to mention a now sharper ache in the small of her back. Running after the ax man hadn’t been a great idea. Bending over to cuff him would be an even worse one.
    The baby had spoken. Time to stop playing cop and return to the business of being a mom.
    She had a couple of zip ties in her coat pocket. She held them out to Joe and let him do the honors. Later, she hoped Alex and her boss would be pleased with her common sense. In the meantime, she noted that Joe didn’t need any instructions in how to use zip ties to restrain a grown man.
    With the attacker’s hands secured in front of him, Joe hefted the groaning suspect to his feet. And D.D. found herself face-to-face with a vampire.
    “It was my girlfriend’s idea,” Will Kent was lamenting ten minutes later, sitting in a cold metal folding chair in the middle of the green room, hands still tied, security guard looming at his shoulder. Six feet tall, probably one eighty, with a face painted chalk white, natural eye color obscured by jet-black contact lenses, not to mention a set of presumably fake fangs pressed into blood red lips, the wannabe actor looked like a freak show and talked with a lisp.
    D.D. and Joe had led him back to the set to discover the crew in disarray, Natalie unharmed but in hysterics, and the director studying the outtakes to see if any of them might be usable.
    “I mean, I was busy the day of the audition,” the twenty-year-old continued to whine/lisp, “and my schedule’s lousy anyway for callbacks. So Rhonda said I should sneak in, show you what I can do.” Will glanced at the director, Ron LaFavre, his gaze hopeful. At some point during the tousle, probably when Joe Talte had body slammed him, Will had bit his lip with his prosthetic fangs. The blood smeared on his chin lent a nice touch to his costume.
    “A vampire?” the director said.
    “Well sure. Vampires are hot, you know. Exactly what you need to make this movie pop. Anyone can be a Gravestone Killer. A vampire, on the other hand, really rocks. Besides,” Will added belatedly, trying to scratch at his leg with his tied hands, “my werewolf costume’s at the cleaners.”
    “A vampire,” the director said.
    “How’d you get in the cemetery?” D.D. wanted to know.
    “Backside. There’s a hole in the fence. Most of the locals know about it.”
    “When’d you enter?”
    “Shortly after six, before the grounds got too busy. I made a little shelter by a row of bushes. Been hanging out in my sleeping bag for hours, you know, just trying to stay