Voodoo Ridge Read Online Free PDF Page A

the past. I won’t ask you again what you did, your real job.”
    I watched a bead of water course the length of her throat and down, seductively, between her breasts.
    “You mind if I ask you a personal question?”
    “That would be two personal questions tonight, Logan.” She leaned closer to me, her hands cupped with warm water, and slowly rinsed the lather from my neck. “I’m not sure we really know each other that well.”
    “Ever gotten busy in a purple tub?”
    She pretended to think about it for a while. “Can’t say that I have. You?”
    “Never.”
    Her lips curled mischievously. “Well, you know what they say? There’s a first time for everything.” Then she leaned in closer and softly kissed my closed eyes.
    Beneath the suds, something brushed against my leg and glided northward, to more sensitive anatomical turf.
    I knew it wasn’t the soap.

    S LEEP SHOULD ’ VE come easily that night. Savannah was snuggled close, her back to my chest, dreaming contentedly in my arms. The rest of our lives lay ahead of us like a golden fairy tale. But I was awake, consumed by introspection and a rare dose of pure self-realization. If the two of us were to make marriage stick this time, I needed to change, shed myself, I realized, of those vestiges that defined who I’d been and what I’d done all those years in the service of my country. As slowly and quietly as I could, I got out of bed, reached between the mattress and box spring, and unlimbered my two-inch, .357 Colt Python revolver.
    “Where’re you going?” Savannah asked groggily.
    “Gotta run a quick errand. Go back to sleep.”
    “Promise you’ll come back?”
    I bent down and kissed her shoulders. “Promise you’ll be here if I do?”
    She smiled.
    “Promise.”
    Kiddiot was curled like a ball on the floor near the bed, his face buried in his tail. He didn’t stir as I dressed and left. My watch showed 0335 hours.
    Save for a street-sweeping truck washing down the vomit and spilled beer outside the bars and dance clubs on lower California Street that had closed more than an hour earlier, downtown Rancho Bonita was quiet. Not another car in sight, all the way to the beach.
    I parked my truck along Magellan Boulevard, got out, and walked across the sand. The tide was out. The moon was gone. The gun was tucked in the small of my back. It had been my primary backup weapon when I served with Alpha—the theory being that a revolver is less prone to misfire than a more mechanically complex semiauto and, thus, more reliable in a pinch. More than once, the little snub nose had saved my life. But that life was behind me now.
    I threw it as far into the ocean as I could. Then I drove home.

    H EAVY AND hirsute, Larry Kropf trudged out of his hangar at the Rancho Bonita Airport and onto the flight line, grimacing on two bad knees and wiping his greasy hands on a greasy rag.
    “Where’re you headed, Logan?”
    “Lake Tahoe,” I said, loading the last of the luggage into the back of the Ruptured Duck . “We’re getting remarried.”
    Larry peered at Savannah over the bulletproof-thick lenses of his Buddy Holly glasses, then at me, as if I’d just notified him that we were planning a bank robbery. He was wearing a frayed white T-shirt and bib overalls for a change instead of his usual blue work pants. Pulled down low across his brow was a beat-to-hell, red and white baseball cap that read, “You can’t scare me. I have a teenage daughter.”
    “ Re married?” Larry asked. “Nobody in their right mind marries the same woman twice, Logan. Why repeat the same mistake?”
    “Uh, hello.” Savannah folded her arms indignantly. “I’m right here, Larry.”
    “Savannah, you remember my mechanic, Larry?”
    “Not just your mechanic,” Larry said. “The guy you rent hangar space from for your wildly successful international flight school.”
    “Larry’s being somewhat sarcastic,” I said.
    “I would’ve never guessed,” Savannah said