Cold Hard Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 2) Read Free Page B

me.”
    I eyed her suspiciously.
    “Yesterday,” she said. “After work?”
    The fisherman in my brain finally felt a bite. “That’s right! I knew I told someone. Captain thought I was crazy.”
    “You say that in the past tense,” said Quinto. “I think the present tense is more appropriate.”
    “For your information,” I said, “I’ve looked up the definition of crazy in the dictionary, and in my owned esteemed opinion, I don’t even come close to qualifying.”
    “Did you look up the definition of amnesia, as well?” asked Quinto.
    “Just for that, I’m rescinding my peace offering,” I said. “No kolaches for you.”
    “Now look at what you’ve done, Quinto,” said Shay. “You’ve gone and made him moody. You know I have to hang out with him all day, don’t you?”
    Quinto’s shrug implied he didn’t, but his crooked smile said he did. I plucked the apricot kolache from the bag and tore a chunk from it with my teeth. I chewed slowly, moaning with delight before sucking my fingers with overexaggerated vigor.
    “No hard feelings,” I said. “You’ll just have to endure the succulent scent of these fried delicacies on an empty stomach, my friend.” I held the bag out to Shay. “Want one?”
    She shrugged. “Ehh, why not?”
    My partner plucked the honey kolache out of its paper perch with delicate fingers and took a bite. On our first lunch together, she’d ordered a meatless salad of wilted vegetables. I’d feared the worst, but apparently she’d been afraid to make the wrong first impression. Since then, the gal had proven to be a champion eater. Where she put the food, I’m still not sure—maybe elven stomachs work differently than human ones—so I reacted with only mild surprise when she accepted my offering of artery-clogging vittles.
    I tucked the white sack back into my coat pocket. “You’ve been working on your intestinal fortitude, I see.”
    “What? This?” said Steele around a mouthful of sugary bliss. “It’s just a doughnut.”
    “That’s not what I meant. Given all this carnage, the body’s got to be a mess, and you’re still eating. I’m impressed.”
    “Actually, about that,” said Quinto with a raised finger. “It’s not exactly what you’d expect.”
    I raised an eyebrow.
    “C’mon,” said Shay. “We’ll show you.”
    My partner led our procession over to the bedroom, which held more evidence of the same sorts of carnage that infested the living space. Smashed furniture, a torn sofa chair, scrapes and gouges in the floorboards, and a mattress that looked like it’d been used as the playing surface in an epic game of five finger fillet. Unfortunately for the guy face up on the mattress, it looked like he might’ve taken part in the game as well.
    I almost choked on my kolache. “Argh… It’s worse than I thought.”
    “What? How so?” said Shay.
    Given the nature of the stiff’s apartment, I’d expected a rather horrific body—one covered in cuts, scrapes, and bruises—but the corpse on the mattress was surprisingly clean. His skin was unblemished, without any blood spatters to speak of. His physique was also far less imposing than I’d expected. The destruction throughout the apartment looked to have been caused by a hulking bruiser, but the guy on the bed was several inches shorter than my partner and rather doughy around the midsection.
    In the middle of his chest, immediately over his heart on the left side, a thin, ornately-crafted stiletto protruded from his skin. A lone trail of blood snaked down his chest and onto the mattress underneath. It was the only wound I could spot upon first glance, but that didn’t prevent there from being one rather horrific aspect of the body.
    “The guy’s naked,” I said.
    “So?” said Shay. “If I recall correctly, there was a naked person involved in your last case with Griggs.”
    “Yes,” I said. “But there was a crucial difference between that naked body and this