Love Bites by Lynsay Sands, now you can read online.
Prologue
Pudge squinted through the scope of his rifle. Not just any rifle. A Tac Ops Tango 51, the ultimate tactical precision rifle. It weighed 10.8 pounds, was 44.3 inches long and had a guaranteed accuracy of .25 MOA. Its stock incorporated a semiwide beavertail--He paused in his mental recitation of the Tac Ops catalog description to peer at the weapon, not quite sure what a beavertail was. It sounded almost sexy the way it read. A semiwide beavertail. Beaver tail. Beaver. Tail. The whole description of the weapon was sexy. For instance, it was suppose to have "dual palm swells." He wasn't sure what those were, but it made him think of boobs. Of course, most things made him think of boobs.
Yep. He was holding "beavertail" and "dual palm swells." Awesome.
The sudden blare of a horn made him start and nearly drop his rifle. Grasping it protectively to his chest, Pudge glared down at the dark street below. He'd chosen the rooftop of this building because it afforded a bird's-eye view of the parking lot across the street. It had never occurred to him that it would be completely unsheltered up here on the roof and cold as an Alaskan winter. If Etienne didn't hurry, Pudge was going to freeze to death waiting for him. He scowled at the possibility. How long was the jerk going to be in there, anyway? It was already past midnight. This was--
"Shit!" The toothpick he'd been chewing on slipped from his lips as the man in question exited the building and started into the parking lot. Etienne Argeneau. And he was alone.
Pudge froze for one moment, then scrambled into position. He peered through the scope, got a bead on the guy, then hesitated. He was suddenly aware that his breath was coming fast. He was panting as if he'd been running for miles, and despite the cold he was sweating heavily. Norman Pudge Renberger was about to kill a man. And not just any man. Etienne Argeneau. His nemesis.
"Bastard," Pudge muttered. With a slow grin, he directed the laser sights of his gun onto his target's chest. There was no sound as he pulled the trigger. He had outfitted his Tango 51 with a Tac Ops 30 suppressor, a silencer, so the only noise was a pfft of air. If it weren't for the way the rifle jerked in his hands, he might not have believed it fired.
Hurrying to focus on Etienne again, Pudge squinted through the scope. The man had stopped dead, staring down at his chest. Was he hit or not? For a moment Pudge was afraid he'd missed altogether, but then he noted the blood.
Etienne Argeneau raised his head. His silver eyes found and focused clearly on where Pudge was positioned on the rooftop, then the light in them faded and the man fell flat on his face on the pavement.
"Yes," Pudge breathed, a shaky smile coming to his lips. He worked clumsily to dismantle his rifle, ignoring the sudden trembling of his muscles as he replaced the pieces in their case. His sexy Tango 51 with dual palm swells and beavertail had cost him nearly five thousand dollars, but it had been worth every penny.
Chapter One
"Yo, Rach. I'm gonna grab a Java. You want anything?"
Rachel Garrett straightened and wiped the back of her gloved hand across her forehead. She had been bouncing between the chills and fever since arriving at work two hours earlier. At the moment, she was in a hot phase. Sweat was gathering across her back and along her scalp. She was obviously coming down with something nasty.
Her gaze slid to the clock on the wall. Almost one. Two hours down, six to go. She almost groaned. Six more hours. The way this flu bug was coming on, it was doubtful she'd last half of that.
"Hey! You feeling all right, Rach? You look like hell."
Rachel grimaced as her assistant moved to her side and felt her forehead. Like hell? Men could be so tactful.
"Cold. Clammy." He frowned and asked, "Fever and chills?"
"I'm fine." Rachel pushed his hand away with embarrassed irritation, then reached into her pocket for some change. "Okay, Tony. Maybe you could get me some juice or something."
"Oh, yeah. You're fine."
Rachel stilled at his dry words, suddenly realizing she had pushed her smock aside and shoved her hand into her pants pocket without removing her bloody rubber glove first. Great.
"Maybe you should--"
"I'm fine," she said again. "I'll be fine. Just go on."
Tony hesitated then shrugged. "Okay. But you might want to maybe sit down or something till I get back."
Rachel ignored the suggestion and turned back to her cadaver as Tony left. He was a nice guy. A little weird maybe. For instance, he insisted on talking like a Goodfella from the Bronx when he had been born, raised, and never left Toronto. He also wasn't Italian. Tony wasn't even his real name. The name he'd been given at birth was Teodozjusz Schweinberger. Rachel had complete sympathy with the name change, but she didn't understand how the bad accent came with it.
"Incoming!"
Rachel glanced at the open door to the main room of the morgue. Setting down her scalpel, she stripped the rubber glove from her right hand and walked out to meet the men propelling a gurney inside. Dale and Fred. Nice guys. A couple of EMTs whom she rarely saw. They generally delivered their clientele to the hospital alive. Of course, some died after arrival, but it was usually after these two had already been and gone. This patient must have died in transit.
"Hi, Rachel! You're looking... good."
She crossed the room to join them, politely ignoring Dale's hesitation. Tony had made it more than plain how she looked. "What have we here?"
Dale handed her a clipboard with various sheets of paper. "Gunshot wound. Thought we got a beat before transporting from the scene but might have been wrong. For the record, he died in transit. Doc Westin pronounced him gone when we got here and asked us to bring him down. They'll want an autopsy, bullet retrieval, and so on."
"Hmm." Rachel let the paperwork fall back into place, then moved to the end of the room to grab one of the special stainless steel gumeys used for autopsies. She rolled it back to the EMTs. "Can you switch him over onto this while I sign?"