100 Proof Stud (The Darcy Walker Series) Read Online Free Page A

and then looked to the right while I stepped off the curb. I briefly wondered if we’d still meet up tonight and barely realized a small part of me—unfortunately, the smallest—screamed I was danger bound.

     
    2. Fatal Attraction
    I t’s like we’d been frozen in time.
    My head slowly shifted to the left when I realized I’d stepped out in front of a moving vehicle. Sometimes people say they have out of body experiences, where their mind actually steps outside their physical entity and observes the world around them; I think I had one right then. I’d slipped outside my skin and watched myself spill to the pavement and splat like an egg. My phone crashed several feet ahead as my right hand took the brunt of the fall. I even threw in a forward roll before the car squealed to a stop. Somewhere in the distance, I heard rapid Spanish and the ground echoing with frantic footfalls. I landed flat on my back, spinning and facing the car with half my body underneath. A different series of bumpity-bumps hit the air, and I didn’t know if my brain rattled around or another part of my body broke in two.
    When I made an effort to stand…God help me, I tumbled down.
    Down, down, down, into what I quickly surmised was an open manhole.
    Holy shiiiiiii- , I almost cursed. I screamed my I’m-Jamie-Lee-Curtis-and-Michael-Myers-is-after-me scream of Halloween . I was freaked way the heck out because my guess was…
    I was dead.
    All I could hope for was they spelled my name right on the tombstone because God knew I’d been misrepresented before. Last summer, I went undercover and helped the Orlando Police discover the whereabouts of a little boy who’d been missing for six months. I had a knack for solving problems or seeing things no one else saw, and when I read of his plight, I inserted myself into the details of the case. To make a long story short, I used a code name of Jester. I liked to think Jester was the bad girl, not Darcy Walker. Call me the Queen of Rationalization, but it’s the way I made peace with my impulse control issues. To the best of my knowledge, Jester was still only known by a handful of people, but when the newspaper credited things to Darcy Walker (successes that came via Jester), I’d erroneously been listed as Darky Walton.
    I mean, get it right or leave me out altogether.
    Mofos…there went my fifteen minutes of fame.
    I mouthed my name twice, carefully enunciating the syllables, throwing in the correct spelling. Trouble was, no one was around to hear. I heard another squealing stop and what sounded like a car door slamming shut.
    I lay prostrate in the bowels of the city’s sewer. Gutter trash. As I drug myself up to a standing position, it felt like I swam in an oil slick. My hands were slippery with white, peppery slush, and the cold water drenching them cut like a bee sting. A full moon filled the round hole I’d fallen through, and the first thing to register was a flashlight and a pair of legs, dangling until they dropped down beside me in a coordinated jump.
    When our gazes connected in the sewer, I realized it was a guy—he was emotionally distraught, screaming toward the open manhole to call 911 to a male shadow who accompanied him. I grabbed my head with both hands because his words came at a rapid-fire pace like a machine gun. Dropping to my knees, I curled into a ball and closed my eyes. Yup, I was dead. Off to the Sweet By and By. No one wanted to die in the sewer in front of The Double-B, but it looked like the method of my demise as I met my Maker.
    I heard, “Niña, niña! Rise!” Oh God, it was Claudia…or Satan must be Spanish. Claudia had been schooled at some weird school in Puerto Rico for spiritualists.
    Her supposed claim to fame? Raising things from the dead.
    I opened one eye and trained it on her voice. She’d bent herself and one boob in the hole, training another super-powered flashlight on me. The guy in the manhole with me squatted down, and my other eye went to