Bloodshot Read Free

Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
    A Spectra Trade Paperback Original
    Copyright © 2011 by Cherie Priest
    All rights reserved.
    Published in the United States by Spectra, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
    S PECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Priest, Cherie.
Bloodshot / Cherie Priest.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52061-6
1. Private investigators—Fiction. 2. Vampires—Fiction. 3. Thieves—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3616.R537B58 2011
813′.6—dc22
2010040168
    www.ballantinebooks.com
    Cover design: Jae Song
Cover photograph (woman with gun): © argo74 / Shutterstock
    v3.1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    Like most books,
Bloodshot
wouldn’t have happened without the assistance, time, and input of a small army of exceedingly awesome folks. Therefore, it’s only appropriate to give some shout-outs and pass along my undying (or undead?) thanks to all of the following: my amazing new editor, Anne Groell, for her outstanding patience and remarkable insight; her assistant, David Pomerico, who has kindly answered many a wacked-out question without complaint; my marvelous agent, Jennifer Jackson, for brokering the whole thing in the first place; and to my husband, Aric, who is probably sick to death of hearing about vampires.
    Perpetual thanks also go to my awesome-sauce day-job boss at Subterranean (Hi, Bill and Yanni!), for helping me keep the lights on between writing gigs; to Team Seattle, scattered to the four winds though it may be; to the Seattle-area booksellers who have been so outrageously kind to me, including Steven and Vlad at Third Place Books and Duane at the University Book Store—plus the Barnes & Noble crew at Northgate, in particular Covahgin and John B.; to my webmaster Greg the Mighty, who hasn’t pushed me off a cliff yet, despite what must be overwhelming temptation to do so; and as always, to everyone in the secret clubhouse that serves the world, for always believing that I can do it, even when I don’t agree.

1
    Y ou wouldn’t believe some of the weird shit people pay me to steal.
    Old things, new things. Expensive things, rare things, gross things.
    Lately it’s been naughty things.
    We’ve all heard stories about people who regret their tattoos. But I’d rather spend eternity with Tweety Bird inked on my ass than knowing there’s a hide-the-cucumber short film out there with my name on it, and my bank account tells me I’m not alone. I’ve done three pilfer-the-porno cases in the last eight months, and I’ve got another one on deck.
    But I think I’m going to tell that fourth case to go to hell. Maybe I’ll quit doing them altogether. They make me feel like an ambulance chaser, or one of those private dicks who earns a living by spying on cheatingspouses, and that’s no fun. Profitable, yes, but there’s no dignity in it, and I don’t need the money that badly.
    In fact, I don’t need the money at all. I’ve been at this gig for nearly a century, and in that time I’ve stored up quite a healthy little nest egg.
    I suppose this begs the question of why I’d even bother with loathsome cases, if all I’m going to do is bitch about them. It can’t be mere boredom, can it? Mere boredom cannot explain why I willingly breached the bedroom of a fifty-year-old man with a penchant for stuffed animals in
Star Trek
uniforms.
    Perhaps I need to do some soul searching on this one.
    But I say all that to simply say this: I was ready for a different kind of case. I would even go so far as to say I was
eager
for a different kind of case, but if you haven’t heard the old adage about being careful what you wish for, and you’d like a cautionary fable based upon that finger-wagging