Game Over! (Parker & Knight Book 3) Read Free Page A

changed while he slept. Dos , the leader of a gang called Muerte Soldados or Death Soldiers, had been murdered by a rival gang, and the Muerte Soldados were no more, as their territory had been swallowed up.
    Nico had grown up in that gang and the loss of it hurt deeply. It had been the closet thing he had to a family.
    He limped back over to the chair in his cheap motel room, his left side noticeably weaker than his right. While in the hospital, he had heard the nurses talking about the re-opening of Taggart’s , and Timothy Hearn didn’t know it yet, but he was soon getting a new partner.
    He picked up a five-pound dumbbell and began strengthening his left arm. Five pounds was pathetic, but even it was a strain. The bullet to the right side of his brain had rendered the left side of his body nearly unresponsive, and the months in bed had withered the rest of him.
    They had given him a cane at the hospital, but Nico hated it, and preferred to walk with a limp, even though it left him looking more infirmed than the cane would have.
    Someone knocked on the door. He placed the dumbbell out of sight at the side of the chair and looked through the peephole.
    When he remembered who it was he was looking at, he smiled.
    They never forget.
    He opened the door and stared at the woman. She was good-looking, black, but her skin was so light that at their first meeting Nico had thought she was Hispanic. He knew who she was, but gazed at her in confusion anyway. The doctors must have told her that his memory was still foggy from his injury, and so he acted as if he couldn’t place her.
    “Who are you?”
    “Mr. Umbria, my name is Detective Knight; do you remember me, sir?”
    Nico shook his head.
    “I remember a big guy with dark hair, but I don’t remember his name.”
    “His name was Detective Parker, he’s my partner. May I come in, sir?”
    Nico let her in and waited, normally he liked sparring with cops, but he really was not himself and didn’t trust what he might say.
    “We questioned you in connection with the murder of Charles Woolley.”
    “Woolley?”
    “Yes sir,”
    Nico shrugged. The doctors told him that he could expect not to remember much of his recent past, and Woolley was a good part of his past to forget.
    “I don’t remember him, but I really don’t remember much of anything that happened around the time I was injured.”
    “I see.” Knight said, and Nico could tell that she was suspicious.
    Nico lay on the bed and rested his head against the pillow.
    “I need to sleep; can we talk some other time?”
    Knight smiled at him.
    “Oh we definitely will, get better Mr. Umbria,”
    Nico watched her go, liking her rear nearly as much as her front. He closed his eyes and mumbled.
    “Oh, I’ll get better, count on it, cop,”
    ***
    R achel walked over to the bar as Heather was picking up a drink order, and Heather saw that she was fiddling with one of the silver barrettes in her hair.
    “Jerry, I’m going out for a while, and I may not be back before closing,”
    “Yes ma’am, we’ll handle things,”
    Rachel turned to stare at Heather, a smile playing on her lips.
    Heather looked back at her. “Can I help you, Mrs. Hearn?”
    “No.”
    “All right... um, Jerry I need a Sea Breeze and a Kamikaze.”
    “Coming up,”
    Rachel took out her cell phone and paused by the door. When Heather finished delivering her drink order to the table, she saw that Rachel was still watching her, but now she also seemed to be discussing her with whoever was on the other end of the phone, and finding it all amusing as she laughed in a giggle. Just as Heather disappeared into the kitchen to pick up an order, she heard Rachel utter the words, “...absolutely clueless....”
    When she came back out to the bar with her order, she saw that Rachel was gone, but she thought about what had just happened long after she left.

4
    F or the second time that day, Heather found herself called to the office; however, this time the