Renegade Read Online Free

begin until eight-thirty. Gabriel had been assigned to the music department, Desiree to art, and she drama. Weir had applied for and had been awarded a grant of two hundred-fifty thousand dollars to develop a cultural arts program at the high school. The grant’s mission was geared toward reducing truancy, increasing student awareness of the arts, while offering two full college scholarships to qualified students for a degree in music education or fine arts.
    Pulling her lower lip between her teeth, Summer replayed Gabriel’s offer that she spend a weekend at his house. She was amenable to developing a musical production with him, but if he thought she was going toprovide him with any other type of entertainment, then she would make him regret he’d ever taken his first breath.

Two
    Summer sat across a table in a twenty-four-hour diner, watching Lucas Shelby sprinkle pepper over his eggs. Tendrils clung to her damp forehead from her three-mile jog. It was only the second week in September and cooler early morning temperatures hinted that summer was quickly coming to an end.
    “Aren’t you going to order something to eat?” Lucas asked before he shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth.
    She shook her head. “I’ll eat later.” She usually waited an hour after jogging before eating. Once she returned to her apartment she would prepare a small cup of fresh seasonal fruit, a slice of buttered raisin toast, and a cup of decaffeinated coffee.
    Waiting until Lucas had taken a swallow of coffee, she said, “What do you have for me?”
    Lowering his mug, he stared at the bare face of the woman he had supervised for the past three years. Her deep gold-brown complexion was flawless, her large soulful-looking eyes entrancing.
    “Nothing. How about you?”
    She lifted her shoulders under the jacket of her jogging suit while shaking her head. “Nothing. It’s only been three days, but all of the kids at Weir appear to benormal students doing whatever it is high school kids do. School policy is that they aren’t permitted to linger in the parking lot before or after classes, thereby eliminating the risk of dealing on school property. The bathrooms are monitored every quarter of an hour, and there are random locker checks.”
    “What about teachers?”
    “Again, I’m drawing a blank. Most drive late model cars that fall within the moderate price range. The only exception is a Porsche GT2 belonging to Gabriel Cole.”
    Lucas whistled softly. “That puppy fully loaded will set you back a little under two hundred thousand.”
    Her forehead furrowed. “How do you know the sticker price?”
    “I took one for a test drive a couple of months ago. It hugged the road like a starving baby latching onto his mama’s tit.” He noted her scowl. “I’m sorry, Summer.”
    She had decided to ignore his sexist reference, because within her first two years with the Department she had filed so many grievances for sexual harassment against her male counterparts that none of them wanted her on their team. Physically she could hold her own with any man, but the isolation had taken its toll on her emotionally after she was transferred from field to desk duty. She had joined the DEA to fight the war on drugs, not become a glorified desk clerk.
    “Apology accepted.”
    Even though Lucas, a confirmed bachelor, was only in his late fifties, she had begun to think of her field supervisor as a dinosaur. His reflexes and reaction time had slowed, and she knew he was internalizing a great deal of resentment because as one of the first employees of the Department he felt he should’ve headed one of the regional divisions.
    “Right now I’m subbing for an English instructor. She sprained her wrist after falling down a flight of stairs in her home. I’ve assigned her students the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe.”
    He smiled, wiggling his bushy eyebrows. “He’s one of my favorite authors.”
    “I’m putting together a schedule for student