I hit play on Officer Chase’s bodycam footage. The camera dipped as the officer knelt by a young woman sprawled on the roadside, her legs tangled in the wrecked tandem bicycle. An ambulance siren blared in the distance.
Blood seeped through her long blonde hair. Her t-shirt was the vivid orange of the
“Oh, dear! You simply don’t understand! If you let this girl roam free, the crime spree will never end. I fear for my life.”
Officer Luddick released a long sigh as he tried to maintain a neutral expression. He despised when anthropomorphic creatures came into the precinct. Last week, a wild-haired man-cub with his
“You’re lucky to be alive, Ms. Takkenridge. If your Saint Bernard hadn’t howled so loud that half the block called 911, you wouldn’t be.” Dr. Olivera took the stethoscope out of his ears.
I smiled, proud of my dog that did do something in the nighttime. Good boy, Matteo.
“You’ve been at Saint Luke’s
You loosen your tie and get out of the car into the blazing heat at the end of a long summer day. It would take too much energy to go home and cook, so takeout it is! Again.
Inside the fast-food joint, the air conditioning barely makes a dent on the swelter. The girl
Ethel Grieves knows people don’t really see her. Not past the limp, the freckled nose, the coke-bottle glasses. In the boardroom of Carmichael Holdings, she is just a secretary. The mousey little thing who files reports and pours coffee for men who sit in chairs too expensive to belong to them.
She watches their hands.
“Never let crime lords get bored,” Ethel instructed her cat, Fresco.
The fluffy feline blinked his blue eyes. “Why?” a robotic voice projected from the small box attached to his collar.
“They always want more.” Her brain pieced together the words as if she were setting type, her raspy voice printing them out once
The operational excellence awards leer at me as I creep through the executive suite lobby, a satchel slung over one shoulder of my gray business suit. I pause before a door with the words “Robert Burgle, Undermine Global CEO” before pushing my way inside.
Burgle, a powerfully built man, slouches in an ergonomic swivel
“For too long, the pigs have slammed the door on us wolves. They’ve got us by the chinny-chin-chin!” Burly gray wolf Bigsby Badham paces the stage in a huff before a towering jumbotron showing the rotating logo of his company, Wolf Works. “But this is the year we blow them away!”
The auditorium erupts
Zai looked at crowds below his dingy second-story window, factory workers heading home after timebells sounded the day’s closing. Though his window faced west, the tall buildings across the road rarely let a ray of sun into the small living space.
He sighed and turned from the window. Work had been slow over the
I punched the Mustang into gear, tires squealing down the unlit county highway.
The sudden acceleration pressed the man beside me back in his seat. He made no move to grab the door handle for support. Probably because I’d zip-tied his wrists behind his back.
“I thought your orders specified not to harm me.”
One hundred seventy hours. That’s it between me and flying somewhere beyond Inteltech’s reach.
I tug my sleeve over my tracker cuff, wishing my sentence for “reckless flying” could disappear so easily. No matter how hard I pleaded my case, Inteltech refused to listen.
Grivo, my cyborg overseer, adjusts his position atop a graffiti-covered
Zai’s blood pressure skyrocketed at the sight of the woman sauntering into the restaurant, her golden hair wound in a coronet, a faint sneer marring her otherwise perfect face. One look was all he needed to recognize Viola Gill, the galaxy’s most notorious slave trafficker.
He was bussing tables at the Perfect Plate
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