Redemption Read Online Free Page A

the street. It’s next to the gas station. You can’t miss it. Ask for Hilary and tell her you need a ride to the bus station. If you leave tonight, you can be home around this time tomorrow. But do me and your family a favor. Wash off the face paint and ask the shelter to give you a pair of jeans and a sweater. You don’t want to get off the bus dressed like this and give your mother a stroke! And call your folks before you leave so they know you’re coming home. Okay?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” the girl stuttered.
    “And by the way, if I ever catch you working the street again, I’ll kick your ass into next week. Understood?”
    The girl smiled. “Thank you,” she whispered through a well of tears. She started down Colfax and then turned back to Jane. “Hey, how’d you know I was fourteen?”
    Jane shrugged her shoulders in an offhand manner. “I just did.”
    The girl turned and continued toward the shelter. Jane felt a sharp stab of pain around her jaw where Carlos had punched her.
For the first time that night, she realized how much the beating truly hurt. She took a final drag on her dying cigarette, crushed it into the wet pavement, and headed back to her car. Once inside, she angled the rearview mirror toward the light of the bar’s neon sign and examined her battle scars from the bar brawl. Her right cheek was starting to swell. Likewise, her cut lip was beginning to show signs of bruising. For a second, Jane flashed back to a bloody night nearly twenty-two years before, when she was fourteen years old and her cop father, Dale, nearly kicked her to death in a drunken rage. It was an incident that had haunted and defined Jane for many years, and one which fueled so much primal anger. It was also a memory that, up until nearly six months ago, had triggered her need for a fifth of Jack Daniels in one sitting.
    Jane was just about to fall back into the violent flashback when she thought she saw a face looking at her in the reflection of the rearview mirror. She shifted the mirror to the old sedan parked directly behind her Mustang. However, between the shadows that cut through the curtains of falling snow, Jane couldn’t see a figure in the car. The only thing she could identify was a crystal hanging from the sedan’s rearview mirror.
    Paranoia kicked in as Jane sat back in the seat. She slipped her left elbow toward the driver’s door lock and pressed it down. Reaching under her seat, she pulled out her Glock, placed it in her lap, and stared straight ahead. Jane’s mind raced with various scenarios of who she may have seen—a mob lackey hired to stay outside and wait for her exit, a Denver detective planning to trail her moves, or...nobody. It was the psychological price Jane paid for getting involved in dicey clandestine work, and it was taking its toll on her psyche. She snuck another look in the rearview mirror and was shocked to see that the sedan was gone. Jane looked around. She couldn’t believe she had missed the stealthy exit of the mysterious car. She tuned in to the moment, surrounded by the fast falling snow, and listened to her gut. When all else failed, Jane Perry could always rely on her sixth sense. And right now, her gut was surprisingly free of turmoil.

    Checking her watch, she noted it was just after seven thirty. She deduced she could head home and order a pizza and ruminate on how her life was going to hell or she could attend the regular 8:00 AA meeting in the basement of the Methodist Church a few blocks from where she lived. Being a Friday night and a couple days after Christmas, Jane figured the meeting would be filled with people who were equally engaged in gnashing their teeth over their individual dramas. “What the hell,” Jane muttered to herself as she clenched a fresh cigarette between her teeth, slid her Glock under the front seat, and peeled away from the curb.
    She pulled into the parking lot of the Methodist Church at 8:10 with the butts of two cigarettes still