Broken Ice (Immortal Operative Book 1) Read online

There’s no damn way I’m taking Chloe to Libya.

  Now, Jake, on the other hand...

  Yes, definitely Jake.

  With a grin, I grab my daughter’s hand and head deeper into the fair, where knights, fair maidens, and dragons await...

  The End

  Mina Barrett will return!

  ~~~~~

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  Also available:

  The Devil’s Eye

  Maddy Wimsey #1

  by J.R. Rain and

  Matthew S. Cox

  (read on for a sample)

  Chapter One

  Entirely Different

  Unorthodox methods work for me―such as jumping off a bridge after finding a dead man on the side of the road. Not the first thing that comes to most people’s minds, but I tend to regard ‘normal’ as an insult.

  Lucky for me, it’s not a big bridge, and it’s not over water. Or at least, it’s not a sixty-foot drop to a freezing bay. The little creek at the bottom of the gulch in front of me is barely shin-deep, and impossible to see from the road past all the vines and bushes. Oh, and by the way, the hill is steeper than it looked from the road. Naturally, before I’m halfway down, my hair loses its tolerance for being held back, and tosses its clip with the sharp snap of broken plastic. By the time I reach the streambed, my head’s an explosion of bright-red frizz. Sometimes, it’s as if my hair has a mind of its own. Given how often I flirt with magic, it wouldn’t surprise me if it soaked some up and developed free will.

  With both hands, I pull aside the thick, curly theater curtain draped over my face and search the greenery, which comes up to my thighs. A small garter snake lifts its nose off the ground to give me the eye.

  “Good morning, little guy,” I whisper. “Sorry to tromp into your house. I won’t be long.”

  Rick, my partner, yells from overhead, “What are you doing? There’s all kinds of poison ivy and snakes down there… and maybe a bear.”

  The nearly two-foot-long snake lowers itself back to the ground and crawls out of sight among the greenery. I twist around to peer up at my partner leaning on the guardrail thirty or so feet above and behind me. A pair of patrol officers next to him stare down at me as if I’ve lost my mind. Honestly, I’m not sure what made me jump the barrier and go down here. It felt like what I needed to do.

  He laughs when my hair flops down over my face again. I puff at it, but yeah, right. It falls right back over my eyes.

  “Oh, come on,” I mutter to my hair. “I’m trying to work here.” This time, when I tuck it behind my ears, it stays.

  “Maddy?” yells Rick.

  “I’m fine,” I shout back. “Only some garter snakes and they’re no danger. They’re rather charming, unlike your in-laws. They know I’m not going to hurt them… unlike your in-laws.”

  He laughs, then yells, “You should put on a Tyvek… the poison ivy.”

  “Pff.” I wave him off. The plants won’t bother me. It’s a matter of mutual respect.”

  “Suit yourself. So, what… you get some kinda immunity to poison ivy in trade for that two-second sunburn thing?”

  “Something like that.” I’d try to explain my relationship with nature, but it would only waste both of our time. Rick knows I’m a witch, and he plays cool, but I’m sure he doesn’t believe in it.

  He walks out of sight, probably to start taking pictures of the body. That likely means he’s trusting my opinion that we’re at a crime scene and not an accident.

  So, yeah. A trucker finds a dead guy lying on the side of the road at two-something in the morning next to a paper bag containing an empty bottle of Night Train… bum wine. Specifically, the body is on a little bridge spanning the ravine I’m presently exploring. The patrol officers who arrived first figure the guy had been stumbling around drunk when he got clipped in the face by a passing vehicle that mashed open his head like a hardboiled egg. Even if that were true, there’s still a crime―hit and run, since the driver didn’t stop.

  Captain Greer sent us out to have a look, due diligence and all. Within seconds of me staring past the dead guy, over the guardrail and down at the thick greenery, I knew something waited there wanting to be found. I’m also pretty sure we’re not investigating an accident; the energy in the air is completely wrong for that. My arms out for balance, I make my way farther down the slope toward the creek gurgling below.

  Rick returns to lean on the guardrail and shakes his head. Normally, he’s pretty sharp. I think he’s daydreaming about an easy afternoon―nothing to see here, just a car accident―and us getting to go home on time. Between watching me ‘do my thing,’ and facing the idea that I may be correct about this not being an accident, he’s no doubt lamenting the death of his afternoon surfing the web. I mean, don’t get me wrong. We love working cases, but we also love being idle―because that means no one’s been murdered. Alas, we’re never idle.

  Once the creek edge is a few inches from my boots, I set my hands on my hips and look around at the area, every so often shooting a glance up at the road in an effort to get a feel for where an object might have landed. It feels like someone threw something off the bridge, and I think my hair agrees with me since it’s staying out of my eyes. That means the Goddess wants me to find something―or I’m potentially in danger. And given the most ferocious critters around here appear to be garter snakes, I’m guessing it’s the former.

  Nothing looks obvious. Might be time to ask for help.

  Focusing on my desire to find what I’m sure a killer hurled down here, I bow my head and whisper, “By Ceridwen’s wisdom and Ma’at’s truth, let Gaia reveal that which is hidden in her verdant swath.”

  A soft breeze stirs among the trees and shrubs, strengthening the scent of the woodlands. Sometimes, I find myself pretending that we’re not a few minutes’ drive away from Olympia, and the whole world is still a vast, natural paradise. I am quite fond of modern amenities―especially hair conditioner… and having coffee shops on every corner―but I’d give those up in a heartbeat if the whole world could be this… simple and alive. Then again, vanilla lattes aren’t really that complex, are they?

  “Anything?” yells Rick.

  Based on the genuine interest in his voice, he’s moved out of denial and into his ‘let’s get this done’ phase. I don’t give him a hard time about his lazy act. One, I’m sure it’s an act. And two, he’s the only one in our department who doesn’t tease me about my witchcraft. While I’m sure he’ll never advance to the point of believing in it, he has been supportive. Rick will usually even chime in on my behalf when Linda gets going. Detective Linda Gonzalez is our department’s resident insecure Catholic. You know that joke about how can you tell if someone is vegan? (Answer: Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.) Well, that’s her, only with church. I don’t have a problem with anyone’s particular beliefs, just the people who can’t accept that some of us don’t want to follow the same path as them.

  I smile at the plant life around me, grateful for the attention of the Earth Goddess. My focus settles on where a dense mass of poison ivy seems to be leaning aside to reveal the ground beneath it―and an old, wooden baseball bat. A wavering branch on a little sapling tree next points at something farther down the creek from the road that’s too small to see from where I stand.

  “Working on it,” I call up to Rick before whispering, “Thank you for hearing me.”

  Good thing I brought the camera. I snap evidence photos of the bat from a few angles and drop a yellow tag to mark where I found it.

  With that done, I tug a pair of blue latex gloves out of my pocket, pull them on, and step over the stream to recover the bat, which is quite obviously spattered with blood at the end. Soon after I move off toward the second object, the poison ivy settles back as it had been. Eight steps later, I find a wallet among the foliage, splayed open with a number of plastic cards scattered aroun
d, likely thrown free from the force of impact. That, too, I snap multiple pictures of, as well as a few shots back up toward the bridge from where I’m standing. Again, I drop a yellow tag by the wallet.

  When I crouch to pick it up, Ceridwen’s wisdom clicks in my brain. Some detectives call them hunches, but the universe hates an imbalance of forces. Energy we send out comes back to us three times as strong, but the universe and random chance isn’t always the agent of karmic return―sometimes it has mortal hands. I know the cosmos is nudging me in a particular direction. The cosmos, I think, wants me to solve this case. Or, in the least, to balance the energy.

  I collect the wallet and cards.

  When I stand and face Rick to show off my discoveries, my hair falls over my eyes again. That’s a good sign. Nothing else to find down here. After puffing it aside to see, I make my way back up the hill toward the road. I suppose I could try to rummage around for my hair clip, but some battles are pointless, not to mention I’m fairly certain it broke. It wouldn’t be the first time. Anyway, my time is worth more than a little bit of spring-loaded plastic.

  Rick takes the bat from me when I reach the guardrail, freeing my hands for the climb up and over back onto the road. Once my boots are on pavement again, I set the wallet/cards on the sedan’s roof while Rick goes for evidence bags from the trunk. We might get prints off the outside of the wallet, so I use a pen to lift the leather flap, exposing a Washington State driver’s license. The deceased is evidently Mr. Brian Lewis. His photo looks much like the guy sprawled on the road would look had half his skull not been mashed in. He’s also local to Olympia. Seeing his registration for a 2014 Saab agrees with the whispers of the Goddess.

  I point to the paper bag of booze. “That wine didn’t belong to Mr. Lewis.” I glance over at the patrol officers, then to Rick. “It belonged to whoever killed him and stole his car. This guy didn’t die from smooching the side mirror of a passing truck.”

  Rick seals the bag holding the bat and gestures for the wallet, which I pass to him. “Kinda figured that part out when you handed me a bloody baseball bat, Maddy.”

  “Where’d you get the stolen car from?” asks the senior of the two cops, scratching at his hairline. A little grey creeps into the brown of his hair over his ears. He’s probably got me by a more than a few years. Hey, some guys like patrol. Nothing wrong with that.

  The other cop, a younger man with short, black hair, keeps eyeing the body, like he’s worried it’s going to run off. I miss being in my twenties, but I don’t miss being a patrol officer. It’s clear from his expression that he doesn’t have much experience with dead people. This could be the first corpse he’s seen up close, or maybe it’s his third or fourth and he’s the type who’ll never get used to it.

  I point at the dead man. “Mr. Lewis is wearing a sweater, khakis, and boat shoes. Not a good choice for a long walk through the woods, and people who go hiking don’t tend to follow roads. Also, a guy who owns a Saab and dresses like that isn’t likely to get blind drunk on Night Train.”

  Both cops cringe.

  Rick winks at me and says, “I’ll stick with Wild Irish Rose, thanks.”

  The two cops chuckle.

  “Wow.” I whistle and shake my head. “That was bad.”

  “Ugh,” says the younger cop. “That stuff’s even nastier than Night Train.”

  I cringe. “You’ve tried it?”

  “No, ma’am. But I smelled it.” He shivers. “Had a guy throw up on me last month. He’d been drinking the stuff.”

  Rick stifles a chuckle since it’s bad form to laugh within ten feet of a dead guy, especially when they might still be watching.

  “Given there’s no Saab here”—I gesture around—“someone, more than likely the killer, took it. The murder weapon and the victim’s wallet, cleared out of cash and major credit cards, were chucked straight off the road. Whoever did this wasn’t thinking much about covering their tracks… probably due to their having three-quarters of a bottle of Night Train in them.”

  Rick bags the wallet before holding it up. “Damn, Maddy. Good eyes. I’m not gonna ask how you found this down there so fast.”

  “I had help.” I smile and brush a finger over my pentacle necklace.

  “Right.” He grins while tossing the bag in the trunk and grabbing a measuring ribbon.

  “You into that voodoo stuff?” asks the younger cop.

  “Witchcraft, not voodoo.” I smile and reach for my phone to call in a crime scene team. Might as well do that before I climb back down to record the official distance the objects landed. “They’re entirely different.”

  The Devil’s Eye

  is available at:

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  Return to the Table of Contents

  Also available:

  Silver Light

  Alexis Silver #1

  by J.R. Rain and

  Matthew S. Cox

  (read on for a sample)

  Chapter One

  Different Paths

  Comfortable can mean many things.

  In the sense that I’m crouching in the weeds with a rock jabbing me in the ass, I’m not comfortable in a physical sense. On a metaphysical level, I am, but it’s taken over a century for me to get here.

  Pine trees filled with the steady susurrus of insects and the chirp of birds surround me. A chorus of cheers and howls goes up from the group of nineteen-to-twentysomethings in the campground I’ve been watching for the past few hours. Despite the ratio of girls to boys basically one-to-one, the predominant activities going on so far have been drinking, pot-smoking, sleeping, and the occasional pill or three.

  My camera sits against my chest on a strap, half-hidden behind my long, black hair. Normally, I prefer skirts or dresses, but neither are good choices for deep woods hiking. Since my objective has turned out to be rather boring, I lose a few minutes observing a caterpillar inching across my right shoe. I’m wearing one of those ‘not-quite-a-boot-but-not-quite-a-sneaker’ hiking deals.

  The one in the green shirt looks delicious, says Licinia, her voice in my mind still tinted with a Latin accent. Not Latin as in Hispanic, Latin as in Ancient Rome. She pronounces her name like ‘Lee cheen-ia.’ Licinia Neratius took her last breath in 52 A.D. I tried coming up with a short nickname, but ‘leech’ wouldn’t work, and ‘Lee’ sounds wrong too. ‘Chinny’ made her growl. So much for nicknames.

  Delicious? Do you mean that sexually or literally? I grin. The man in question is about twenty-two, short black hair and clean-shaven. He has the look of an Italian bodybuilder who’s recently decided to give up and go live the slacker lifestyle.

  Licinia laughs in the back of my thoughts. Oh, either, I suppose. But I am fond of his looks. If we ate him, we couldn’t enjoy him again.

  Too bad the poor guy’s taken so much of whatever he’s on that he’s tasting color. Probably LSD. The whole campsite before me is full-on 1960s chic. Their attempt is admirable if not a bit off. Some of the decorations are from the early-mid 70s. Still, points for trying to bring back hippie culture. We’re in the woods a couple miles southeast of Monroe, Washington. I figure it’s an old, abandoned campground these kids found and made their own. Aside from a mixture of barely-functioning vans and a pickup truck, they’ve got a few trailers and an RV. They even built an outhouse from plywood.

  The reason for my being here sits on a green and white folding chair, his bare feet up on a tree stump while he lazily tends a tiny, rectangular grill where a colony of turkey hotdogs progresses from completely inedible to merely repulsive. Worse than the rock jabbing me in the ass, the smell of that ‘food’ is making me regret taking this job. Of course, when a panicked father shows up at my office rambling on about his missing boy, it gets my attention. Licinia’s as well.

  Kyle Brennan, age nineteen, missing for two weeks. Though, to hear his father tell the story, it sounded more like a seven-year-old gone missing from his bed in the middle of the night. Overbearing dad, I
get that. No wonder the kid wound up toking his brains out in the woods. I wish one of them would light up again. That smelled better than those atrocious fake hotdogs.

  Licinia chuckles. After all, she, better than anyone, knows that I had long since lost my taste for conventional food. I mean, I can eat it all right, but those particular wieners don’t even rate as food.

  A girl somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four is curled up beside him, her head in his lap, her straight brown hair long enough to touch the ground. I could take their photo, and someone would mistake it as a still from a documentary on the sixties. Hell, given the scenery, the photo would make a decent album cover for 60s music. Except for the smartphones a few of them have out. In fact, I do take pictures―several dozen. Mr. Brennan hired me to find his ‘missing little boy.’ I have to show him proof I did something.

  Amazing how small those things have become, says Licinia. I remember the first ones filled entire rooms.

  Those were computers, not phones, but I suppose the difference is minimal these days. I mentally agree with her while picking at some beef jerky unearthed from the pocket of my green Army jacket. I don’t remember the name of the man who gave the coat to me, but I do recall it had been worn by a soldier in Korea during the war. It’s in good shape as it doesn’t leave my closet often. I don’t get cold, but I’m quite pale. The jacket helps me blend into the woods.

  So much for daddy’s little boy. Licinia laughs. That man was obnoxious. Talks about this kid like he’s still small enough to require someone to wipe his ass for him. No wonder the boy’s out here. He’s old enough to make his own choices.

  Yeah. A hobbledehoy out of his father’s shadow.

  You’re showing your age again, dear.

  I roll my eyes. She’s one to talk.

  A gossamer sigh slides across the back of my brain, giving me a momentary shiver. I do regret the effect my presence has had on you.