Baddest Bad Boys Read Free

clenching tingle of hopeful anticipation. Whew.

    Enough already. This potty break had stretched out to unprofessional proportions. She had to get her butt back to the monster console before Eliza got annoyed and sent out a posse to retrieve her.

    Danny swept by as she was plugging herself back into the infernal machine, his habitual fierce scowl of concentration on his face. “You coming to Mac and Jane’s for dinner tomorrow?” he rapped out.

    She blinked. “Uh…nope. Sorry. Can’t,” she lied. “I’m working back to back birthday parties all afternoon, and I’ve got a Commedia Dell’ Arte class in the evening. Til late. Very late.”

    Danny snorted, and charged off on his important CFO business. Both brothers were like that. Alpha didn’t begin to describe it.

    She sat in the ergonomic chair and vibrated. Doubts assailed her thick and fast. Jon had said he was bad company. Neck deep in shit. He’d sounded depressed. He’d probably be unthrilled to see her.

    Yeah, and that was exactly the kind of chickenshit, cowardly-ass reasoning that produced twenty-five-year-old virgins.

    It was now or never. If he blew her off, she’d cope. She might fall into a crack in the ground and be crushed to a fine paste first, of course, but then she would just stick on that red nose and soldier on.

     

    Jon jerked up the emergency brake on his pickup and sat there, feeling blank. The light was almost gone. He should move, so he didn’t have to fumble through the dark. He didn’t have the goddamn energy.

    The Geddes case had gotten to him. He didn’t know why. He’d worked plenty of grisly murders over the years, but this one wiped him out. Wallowing inside the twisted mind of this perp had poisoned him.

    William Geddes, the “Egg Man.” So called for the blue robin’s egg he’d place into the mouth of his victims—after he’d killed them, with agonizing slowness, in ways that defied the imagination. Five girls that they knew of, ages eighteen to twenty-two. Just thinking about the guy’s frozen face and staring eyes in the courtroom gave him the shudders. Fucking head case. And Jon had seen a lot of bad shit.

    He’d finally nailed that pustulant shitbag, but not until five girls—at least, he hoped to God it was only five—had died, badly. The trial had wrapped up a couple weeks ago, a drawn-out, sprawling media circus, full of press and politics and pontificating bullshit. But he’d seen to it that the prosecution’s case had been watertight.

    Geddes would be inside forever. Five consecutive life sentences, in a maximum security hellhole where that pumped up prick’s blond Viking good looks would not go unappreciated. Jon took a fierce satisfaction in that. Justice had been done, insofar as possible.

    Cold comfort for the families of the girls, though.

    So? He should be feeling accomplishment. Maybe even pride.

    But he felt like shit. Nervous, jagged, on edge. He couldn’t sleep. He had nightmares, about blood, birds. He was tormented by details that couldn’t be explained. Uneasy about vibes that didn’t add up. He couldn’t pin down what the problem was. But he felt like it wasn’t over.

    His boss hadn’t liked it, either. She’d kicked his ass out on a mandatory vacation after he’d been caught one too many times poring over the Geddes files after the conviction. That stung. He was a good cop. The one thing he knew he was good at. He may have been a rotten husband, he may be a no-good boyfriend, and God forbid he ever have kids. But when someone dissed him as a cop, it got his back way up.

    It was the one thing in his life that he gave a shit about these days, though he knew damn well it was dangerous to care too much about anything. He’d grown up in a series of foster homes, some OK, some less so. He’d seen too many kids get exploited by predators. Now, when he heard about innocent kids being abused, something revved up inside him that he couldn’t control. Sleep wasn’t even