Raw Deal (Bite Back) Read Online Free

maybe Mexican. One with a mustache. All with coats to here.” He chopped his hand against his thigh. “All collars up.” He flicked the collar of his shirt.
    I snuck another cookie. “And what was it about them you didn’t like?”
    He stole one of my cookies and sat back in his seat, thinking and chewing.
    “Moving,” he said. “The way they are moving. Down the street in the city, but looking like hunters, yes? Looking for someone. Or following someone. Not looking to the side. Not talking. Not pleasant people.” He shook his head.
    I jotted it down and put my shoes back on. It would just finish my day to have Buchanan walk in here now and see me in my stocking feet. I didn’t think this information was relevant, but at least there was someone who had been looking outside at the right time. Maybe he’d seen something else that he would remember later.
    “It could also be, I have seen too much of your TV.” He shrugged, and spun the little screen on the machine around to show me. “Now look, your feet, here.”
    The machine had scanned my feet in, and was now displaying them as 3D models, slowly turning around.
    “When I make you your boots, I have exact measurements. The fit will be perfect.”
    “I’m a policewoman, Mr. Schumacher, and I can hardly afford store boots, let alone handmade.”
    “Store boots!” He snorted. “Rubbish. A waste of money. My boots,” he leaned forward, “my boots are an investment.”
    I laughed. “I need to invest in my car first, but I’m tempted, really I am.”
    Note to self, go buy a lottery ticket.
    “You said there’s three of you,” I went on. “Who’s the third?”
    “Our daughter, Emily.”
    Something in his voice made me glance up from my notes. This had nothing to do with my job here, but the shop was the last one on the block and I needed an excuse to sip some more coffee and nibble the last sweet ginger cookie. “Problem?”
    “No, no. Not really.” He smiled a little. “Every year, you look back and think the problems from last year weren’t so bad, not so?”
    “What’s this year’s problem?”
    “Oh, such a little thing really,” Klara said, coming back in with the pot. “She and her friends, they dress in black and do the makeup.” She indicated around her eyes. “You know, the dark eyes. They call it Goth or Emo. They listen to the ugly music.”
    She’d brought over a photograph from behind the counter, a young girl with black hair and wide eyes. She had an innocent look I never quite managed at that age, no matter how hard I’d practiced in the mirror.
    Back then, I thought I’d get away with things if I looked like that. Now, it just made me wonder what she’d been up to.
    “Kids experiment with styles,” I said, handing the photo back.
    “Did you?” Klara asked.
    Actually, I hadn’t. When I was not much older than Emily, my dad got sick and died. The insurance company wouldn’t pay. Bad things happened. I dropped out of school to help support the family. I joined the army and got expert in ways of killing people.
    “No, I was kinda too busy.”
     
    I left the Schumachers’ shop a short while later, with an invitation to stop in when I was passing and an assurance that there was always coffee and sometimes there were cookies too. I did not look at the boots as I went out. I have a will of iron.
    And I needed it, to keep from biting Buchanan’s idiot head off when we reported back. He took it as an affront that all we’d collected between us was one shoemaker who might have seen three people heading down the street, looking mean.
    I tuned him out as he vented, using the time to scan the activity in the alley. The body was long gone—bagged, tagged and on its way to the morgue. I really wished I’d gotten a better look at it.  
    I was seeing Colonel Laine today—my liaison with the army. The man who I was supposed to report to if I found any credible sign of vampire presence or activity here in Denver. Operative