Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC Read Online Free Page B

mile down the road before she screamed in frustration, swore her head off, and punched the steering wheel until her hand hurt. Her department had lost people before, but to things that made sense, like a meth head or a car wreck.…Who got killed in the line of duty by a damned bear ? This wasn’t Alaska. This was Michigan .
    It didn’t make sense. Winter was coming. She was no zoologist, but shouldn’t the stupid thing have been hibernating? The attack had occurred during a freezing rain: why was it even out and about, and why would it attack a car? Heather had no idea, and now her hand was sore, and she chided herself for the tantrum. She had always struggled with her temper.
    Why couldn’t she have been the one to take the call? Maybe if it had been her instead of Buckley, he wouldn’t be dying right now. Maybe she could have done something different.…She knew it was stupid to blame herself, but Heather had always been protective of anyone she deemed to be her people. That attitude had always made her popular amongst her coworkers, but had gotten her into trouble a few times with her superiors in her last department. Copper County was different. This was her town, her people, and this department was family. Only now one of them was dying, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it, and it was really pissing her off.
    It had been several hours after the Buckley call that she had finally made it back into Copper Lake. Half the staff of their tiny department and several family members had gathered in the hospital waiting room. Buckley was a popular and beloved man. By some miracle he was alive, which had absolutely amazed the doctors, but they said that it was too early to tell what would happen and too risky to airlift him someplace better. Heather didn’t like hanging out, nervous and emotional, in hospitals. She had done far too much of that in her life already, and though her shift was over she had volunteered to head into the office to see if she couldn’t help out for a bit. She was still too fired up to go to sleep anyway, and it wasn’t like there was anyone waiting for her at home except for her dog.
    Back at the station, hungry and cranky, Heather had not been surprised to find that nobody had bothered to put on more coffee. She bought a Diet Coke and a package of expired chocolate doughnuts from the office vending machine instead. She didn’t think that doughnuts were supposed to be crunchy, but they had sugar, and that was the important thing. She knew that despite religiously hitting the treadmill every day, if she kept up her junk-food addiction she ran the risk of turning into another Upper Peninsula “snow cow,” but that was a risk she was willing to take.
    “Did you see Joe, Kerkonen?” asked Chase Temple, one of the new road deputies from days. Heather didn’t know him that well yet, just that he had recently gotten out of the Navy and was taking correspondence courses from Northern Michigan University toward a political science degree. His youthful enthusiasm made her feel ancient. She had just turned thirty-six. “I’d heard he was bad off.”
    She had to pause to not talk with a mouth full of doughnut. She didn’t really know what to say anyway; it wasn’t like she knew any more than anyone else. “I didn’t see him myself, but yeah, the doctors said it was bad. Broken skull, massive lacerations to the abdomen, a lot of blood loss, missing a few feet of intestines…” Even if Buckley lived, he would be crippled and miserable the rest of his short life, and that left her feeling even more depressed. She changed the subject and pointed in the direction of the holding cells. “How’s our favorite guest?”
    The Copper Lake station was a small building, so Temple knew whom she was talking about right away. “Bill was ticked after that nut bit him,” he said, referring to the deputy that had been manning the station last night. “He needed five stitches. But I heard you