Savage Echoes (The Nickie Savage Series, Short Story Prequel) Read Online Free Page A

Savage Echoes (The Nickie Savage Series, Short Story Prequel)
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his hands.
    She left the man her glasses as she walked to Duncan.
    * * *
    "I'm soaked and I smell like I'm homeless."
    Duncan looked Nickie over from head to toe. Wet, yes. Smelly, no. He wouldn't try and argue the point.
    She continued as they walked, "I'm going to grab a shower before I stop by the boyfriend's and the absent teacher's homes."
    When they reached their cars, she turned to him with her steel gray eyes. The wet clothes hugged her in places he shouldn't be admiring at that moment. She wasn't long and thin like most women wanted to be... quite literally like every other woman he'd dated. She was fit and all woman. Her makeup was running, and she looked at him with contemplation. "I'm not kissing you looking like this," she said just before he covered her lips with his. It wasn't his fault. She'd challenged him. He wound his fingers through the damp waves and pulled her into him.
    Taking the challenge, always taking the challenge, she grabbed hold of his shirt and pressed her female shape against him. This wasn't the pleasant peck he'd planned on. He should have known better. Opening for him, lips danced and tongues meshed. How could he ever live without this woman?
    The small moan that escaped her mouth nearly made him take her then and there.
    Expectantly, he felt her hands on his chest as she pushed him away. Licking her lips, she opened her car door before he had the chance. "That's for helping today. Don't go check out the other two locations." At that, she paused, turning to face him head on. "I mean it. Duncan—" But he was already turning to walk away.

 
     
     
    Chapter 4

     
    Duncan stood with his legs wide, eyes on the target. With confidence, he squeezed the trigger of his Beretta 9mm. He didn't care for guns. The noise reverberated in his mind and his memory, regardless of the hearing protection. The feel of the kickback threatened to bring him back to his stint in the Middle East. The need outweighed the memories. The memories were as clear as if they were happening at that moment. Which was why he considered his eidetic memory a curse. The Chinook, the bazooka, the hole the size of a small car, the blood.
    He was dating a cop—a cop who seemed to get herself into the kind of trouble that could use a steady trigger finger and good aim.
    The more he dug up on Nickie's past, the more it connected to the present.
    Bam. Bam. Bam. He'd always had good aim regardless of his feelings about weapons. He would wait another fifteen minutes for her call before he went out to the other two sites.
    Dating a cop was definitely a learning curve. A smile curled the corners of his lips as he took the next handful of shots. And this cop was a learning curve worth the time.
    The job for the governor's assistant was one of the first painting jobs he'd solicited in over ten years. Work rained on him, and he was grateful. This job, however, was more than a painting. More than a paycheck. This guy had something to do with Nickie's past or her present, Duncan wasn't sure which, but he was going to find out.
    He checked the safety and pulled out the magazine. Placing them in his case, he removed his hearing protection.
    * * *
    The captain's wife managed several homeless shelters around Seneca Lake. With hair still wet from her station locker room shower, Nickie pumped Dave for information without throwing the homeless man under the bus. She hoped to find him some kind of assistance he might accept.
    She caught Dave up on where she was with the Serena Flats case. The clock was ticking. It would be a late night, but there would be no sleep with a twenty-year-old woman missing.
    "I called her apartment again," she said. "I didn't tell her roommates about the second call, but they're beginning to sound worried. Serena missed their plans to meet up for dinner at the pizza joint down the street from their place."
    Reassembling her gun, badge, cuffs and phone to her belt, she briefed Dave on the boyfriend and the absent
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