Three Days of Dominance Read Free Page B

car parked behind her at the curb, she strolled past the letter box. Thirty-two. Yup. This was it . Red brick, single story, yard full of rusted machinery and junk, from fridges to car bodies to a mashed pile of uncollected sales catalogs. The only thing missing was a half-breed, underfed watchdog to chew her legs off.
    She jogged up the three battered concrete steps that led to an equally battered timber door, knocked, and waited. Her partner, Rob, raised a hand as he went down the side. He’d cover the back.
    The door creaked open, shedding a few more flakes of pinkish gray paint in the process.
    “Yeah?” Facing her was a hard-eyed woman the size of a hippo, shrouded in a thin floral muumuu, her feet in a pair of scummy green flip-flops.
    “Mrs. Georgette Hankers?”
    The lady—though applying “lady” to her was a stretch of vocabulary—kinked an eyebrow and took another draw on the cigarette butt dangling from her lips like a suicide jumper with second thoughts. “Yeah.”
    “I have a warrant here for the arrest of one James Finn Hankers—your son. Would he be on the premises?”
    The boy was suspected of a spate of burglaries that might have made Jesse James envious.
    “Ain’t him!” The woman scowled with one chubby hand on the door handle and the other on her hip. “You got the wrong address and wrong boy!”
    Lying . It was clear as a bell, to her anyway. If the boy wasn't here, that could make it hard though. She'd need to convince the sergeant to throw more resources into this.
    Danii raised her hand to emphasize a point and felt the jarring slide that signaled another vision. Images flooded through her, drowning out sound and sight and leaving her mute. When next she became aware, she found herself staring at an empty doorway with no knowledge of how long she’d been there. Explaining to Rob how she’d managed to lose a woman who’d be lucky to run fifty yards without a cardiac arrest would be difficult, to put it mildly.
    An engine revved nearby. To the left, over the tall paling fence shielding the driveway from the house, the top of a white van slid past. A green flip-flop halfway down the steps and a still-burning cigarette stub on the grass showed which way the lady had gone. Straight past her nose.
    Damn! How the—
    “Shit!” No time for gates. She sprinted, flung herself at the fence, hit it with a thump, shaking it and going over the top with the ease of a hundred on-foot chases, to land on the other side next to the dented van door. She grabbed it, wrenched it open, put on her best snarl and yanked the keys from the ignition.
    The young man inside flinched, staring at her slack-jawed, his only sound a half-strangled yelp.
    From the crackle of snapped-off shrubbery and the crunch of footsteps, someone was running along the other side of the van. Rob, panting and red-faced, appeared in the window. He yanked open the opposite door, gun out and pointing upward.
    “Stay put!” she yelled at the young man.
    Rob gave her a thumbs-up.
    On opening the back of the van, she discovered a treasure trove of stolen goods and one very irate and glowering mother.
    She smiled back at the woman.
    Definitely the maniac burglar. Make that burglars, if the mother had anything to do with it.
    Done and dusted, thank heavens. If she’d messed up this arrest, she’d have stood a fair chance of being tagged for parking fine duty on Monday. Not that it would’ve surprised her—being a woman on the force had disadvantages, not least being that she was expected to be perfect. Though, if she was honest with herself, maybe her own reputation for being different didn't help either.
    It was disturbing how close she’d come to disaster, especially for someone who prided herself on her professionalism. Having to guard against the possibility of something going wrong, of another vision affecting her, every second, every minute of the hour, for the rest of the day, wore her down bit by bit.
    She seriously considered