Absolution: The Hunter Mercenary Series (Book Two) Read online

  Theirs.

  Others.

  In the process, they are trying to find their own redemption.

  Atonement.

  Absolution.

  Amends.

  It isn’t easy.

  With the lost souls in New Orleans, these men, and the women who love them, will rise up and take a stand for the city and the people of New Orleans.

  N’awlins ‘til death.

  And it is going to be one hell of a battle for each and every one of them.

  With Charlotte’s demise, so much has come to the surface. So much has happened, and they are only beginning to find out what her reach had been.

  She wasn’t a barkeep.

  She wasn’t a snitch.

  She was everything, and she was nothing.

  In New Orleans, the city of lost souls, she was the one who helped those who couldn’t help themselves, and now she was gone.

  For those left behind, known and unknown, she was going to be missed—for her good deeds, and the down and dirty ones too. Her name would forever be on the seedy side’s lips.

  All hail the snake.

  She went down on her own terms and left a mess behind.

  For the Hunters, her death was going to be the beginning of a war that none of them saw coming. The bad guys were now going to have to save it all.

  Or die trying.

  Sometimes, fair doesn’t come into play.

  Sometimes, fate shits all over you.

  And in the end, all you have is your family to pull your ass out of the fire.

  Like now.

  Like today.

  Like for Rogue.

  Hopefully, they can pull it off.

  Signed,

  one more lost soul, raging the war for a city on the brink.

  Sarah Valley—a Hunter.

  Prologue

  Somewhere In

  N’awlins

  One Week Earlier

  Abandoned Airstrip

  W hen they got the call, they arrived as quickly as possible to the most unimaginable scene. Being called to a crime scene in the middle of the night was no surprise for either of them. In fact, it was just one more file on their over-burdened desks.

  There was no shock.

  No surprise.

  No awe.

  Being a cop in The Big Easy was anything but, and they were the proof of that.

  It was borderline hell for everyone involved, but someone had to stand for the dead. Someone had to give them a voice, and it was, sometimes unfortunately, them.

  Good cops were an oddity.

  Cops who cared?

  Scarce.

  They both cared—a lot.

  Detective Cordelia Harding was young, but she was still a veteran in her own right. She was born in New Orleans, she lived the life, and while some of the people around her took the crooked path right into the heart of crime, she took the straight and narrow.

  She didn’t want to be that statistic.

  Her parents did drugs.

  Her father was a thief.

  She was told she’d fail simply based on her shitty genetics, and that was the catalyst to her choosing to be a cop.

  That and she was stubborn as hell.

  Truthfully, Cordelia hated being told what to do when it came to anything in her life.

  ANYTHING.

  It made her want to do the exact opposite. When someone told her she couldn’t do something, that made her want to go out and do it all the more.

  You can’t be anything.

  She became someone.

  You can’t be a cop.

  She became one.

  No one will take you seriously.

  Okay…that one she was still working on to that day.

  Her dad, from behind bars, told her she’d be just like him and why bother? He told her that his blood, and her druggie mother’s, had tainted her. He told her that he could see it in her eyes.

  Well, that stuck.

  And not in a good way.

  There was no freaking way she was going to be a criminal and sign over her life to the system.

  No.

  It wasn’t happening.

  While her old man was a scumbag, she was going to do the right thing. While her mother was hooking to make ends meet, she wasn’t going to give away her body for money and drugs.

  NO.

  WAY.

  She was going to be the ONLY person in her family who wasn’t shady. That was her goal in life. That was her personal mission, and no one was going to make her give it up.

  NO.

  ONE.

  And now, standing over Charlotte Shaw’s body, she was disappointed once more in the city she loved and hated. It, once more, had let her down.

  Here was innocence lost.

  Here was more death that hadn’t needed to happen. She was disappointed.

  Yes, Cordelia and N’awlins had a love-hate relationship of epic proportions.

  She loved being from N’awlins.

  She also hated it.

  The South in her voice said it all. She was laid back, she was calm as a still lake, and she was as deadly as a viper when she needed to be. The city had made her.

  It made her tough.

  In the swamps, it was do anything to survive, and she wasn’t above that.

  As a badge carrying cop, well…she did it within the lines of duty.

  That was the love part of it all.

  The hate?

  This waste.

  This dead woman’s sick end did only one thing to her. It horrified her to no end, and shit like this always would.

  It was sad.

  No.

  It was a disgrace.

  “COD?” she asked the ME as he stood over the dead woman’s body. Cordelia was smiling at him to butter him up. It was barely three in the morning, and this woman looked like she’d been dead a while.

  Days.

  “Well, Detective, let me buy you a coffee, and we can talk all about it.”

  Her partner snorted.

  That was NOT the first time a man hit on her—a fellow cop, an attorney, and now the ME. To that day, it still caught her off guard. Cordy didn’t see herself as someone men wanted to bed.

  She was a freaking cop.

  “What?” Cordelia asked, giving him a look. Was this man out of his mind?

  Flirting over a dead body?

  There was a time and a place for everything—this wasn’t it. What was next?

  Sex on a church altar?

  “The doctor is moving in,” Detective Boone Savage stated, loving when he could bust his partner’s ass. The moments were few and far between, and he hoarded them like precious gold. “It looks like you’re going to have to do the dance, cher, or the ME is not going to play nice.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  This was becoming more and more irritating for her—not her partner riding her ass, but men trying to literally ride her ass.

  No.

  Just no.

  While the ME was attractive, she wasn’t sleeping with anyone she worked with on the job.

  EVER.

  Not cops, not ME’s, and certainly not defense attorneys who wore suits that cost more than her first car.

  Pass.

  That was exactly how vicious rumors started, and gossip began spiraling way out of control. Cordy didn’t need that.

  At all.

  Already, she had cops talking shit about her life—simply because her parents had made poor choices. She had to live above the law when it came to work, love, and life. For her to break any of that trifecta, there had to be one hell of an extenuating circumstance.

  It would never happen.

  “I don’t dance for fun, pleasure, or men, Boone, and you know that. What I do is kick someone’s ass if they don’t answer a really simple question when I ask it.”

  The ME smiled.

  “I’m not like other ladies, Doctor Leeds. When I’m pushed, I bite.”

  It was the truth.r />
  She was tougher than a set of tits carrying a gun. She’d leave one hell of a mark when she removed a good chunk of ass. Pushing it would be a bad idea.

  Only, her partner knew her better than that.

  “Kinky, cher,” Boone teased, his eyes dancing with amusement as she tried to be serious. “Get a shot, Doc. We have a biter.”

  She snorted.

  He genuinely liked his partner.

  A lot.

  Since returning to New Orleans, and his wife giving birth to their first child, Boone was more than happy to dig in and play in the muck.

  God knew New Orleans had plenty of swamps, and since he grew up there—the child of a cop and teacher—he could play with the best of them.

  “How about I just do your job?” Cordelia stated, pointing at Doctor Nikolas Leeds. “We can take that route if you’d like,” she offered, trying to sway him. “It involves that really sharp probe and your liver.”

  He laughed.

  There was no doubt that she’d do it too.

  Pass.

  Nikolas gave in. He was a smart man, and she had one hell of a rep.

  In his world, you didn’t tangle with someone meaner, nastier, or quick on the draw—like her.

  “It’s a bullet wound to the neck. She bled out and suffocated as her windpipe was crushed by the force of the gunshot.”

  Yeah, she could have told them that.

  “What else?” she asked.

  “Well, there’s not a mark on her except for that.”

  “Did she die ASAP?” she asked, making notes.

  “No, she’d have about as much time as she had to hold her breath. I think she had her wits about her.”

  That had her attention.

  “Why do you say that, Doc?” she asked.

  “Well, it looks like she tried to call someone,” he offered, pointing to the phone on the ground beside her.

  It was a miracle it was still there.

  If that airstrip hadn’t been in the middle of nowhere, someone would have stolen it, pawned it, and it would have been a lost lead.

  This time, fate was on her, and Boone’s, side.

  Clearly.

  That didn’t happen all of the time. If anything, it was nothing but luck on their behalf.

  Cordelia picked it up with her gloved hand and tried to open it. When it asked for a fingerprint, she pointed at the woman.

  “I need a finger.”

  “Which one? I can cut it off…,” he asked with a deadpan look on his face.

  He found that amusing.

  She didn’t.

  Cordelia looked horrified that he’d even suggest that. While she worked homicide, there was a limit to her depravity.

  That, there, was it.

  “I think he was kidding,” Boone stated as he tried not to laugh his ass off. People tended to think you were crazy if you did that on a crime scene.

  There were enough shitty rumors going around that he was a crazy, satanic, devil worshipper.

  You practice Voodoo, and that’s what happened.

  “Was he?” she asked. “Really? He’s wearing a bowtie. He looks like a serial killer.”

  Nikolas snorted.

  “You got me there.”

  Boone didn’t let it go.

  “You have a point. He’s chasing you, so that shows how crazy he is.”

  She gave her partner a look.

  When he winked at her, she couldn’t help herself. She laughed despite herself.

  Cordelia liked working with Boone. He was Native and Creole, and he amused the hell out of her. That, right there, was an aberration in itself.

  She’d take laughter any day.

  It kept her sane.

  PLUS, his wife, Merry, made really yummy baked goods, and as a cop, it was her duty to covet the man’s goodies.

  But only the baked kind.

  “I’m aware of his crazy. Just give me her finger so I can access her phone and keep it on her hand.”

  Doctor Leeds complied, all the while wiggling his eyebrows at her.

  She ignored him.

  The man was blonde, blue-eyed, and not her type. She liked bad boys—thanks to her mom’s shitty gene pool. This man was so straight and narrow, you could measure with him.

  That would be a disaster in the making.

  He likely folded his underwear and color-coded his socks by days of the week.

  Yeah, no.

  That wasn’t how she rolled.

  At all.

  He pressed the victim’s bloody finger to the screen of the phone, and it opened.

  Fortunately, for them, there was ten percent battery left, and they could dig around before charging it.

  It was their lucky day.

  Here was more proof.

  The phone was high-tech, and proof that the dead woman had some money. Cordelia knew how much she made as a cop, and she couldn’t afford this kind of tech. It was brand new, and out of her financial league.

  Then again, pretty much everything was.

  Civil servanthood sucked the big one.

  The woman on the ground was sporting designer duds, a high-tech phone, and a bullet wound.

  Yeah, this was way off.

  As she flipped through the information, trying to ascertain anything she could about the dead woman, her suspicions were piqued.

  What the hell had gone on at that airstrip?

  Meanwhile, Boone crouched down and patted her chest with his gloved fingers.

  “She came here knowing there would be trouble,” he stated. “She’s wearing body armor under her girly things.”

  Yeah, more mystery.

  “I don’t know about you, but I know I don’t walk around N’awlins in body armor unless I’m working,” he stated. “What does she do for a living, do you think?”

  Cordy couldn’t tell.

  She wasn’t a hooker. She had no track marks, she wasn’t undressed, and she was wearing too nice of things to be a lady of the night.

  They saw a lot of them.

  She didn’t fit.

  “I have no clue,” she stated. “Do you think she was out here working?” Cordelia asked him.

  He wasn’t sure.

  The thing about that city was there were so many factors that could be part of just about anything. Nothing was as it seemed there. Charlotte Shaw looked like an angel.

  One who had her wings clipped at an abandoned airstrip by some gun-toting killer.

  Why?

  That one question was going to answer everything, and they all knew it. The devil was in the details, and in N’awlins, it was all devils all of the time. It would come together.

  He’d bet on it.

  “Oh, look at this,” Cordelia stated, as her partner stood up to stare down at the phone in her gloved hand.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I think I have something.”

  Boone was intrigued. They’d only been partners a few months, but Cordelia had that look on her face.

  It was her treasure-finding face, and it always made an appearance when she’d found a little gem for their investigation. He was about to get lucky.

  Well, on this case.

  “Pay dirt! Look what I found on her fancy phone,” she stated. “It looks like someone was up to something.”

  They read the text.

  ‘I’m shot. Temporarily hide her and then when the coast is clear, get her to her father. They will come for her!’

  That said it all.

  There wasn’t a plea for her to be saved, or someone shouting out her location.

  No.

  She was focused on someone else.

  Possibly a child?

  Who was the mystery father?

  “Well, isn’t that interesting. She was meeting someone here, it went bad, and now we need to find out who the ‘her’ is in this equation,” Boone stated.

  Yeah, yeah, they really did.

  “I don’t think Ms. Shaw was shocked that she’d be shot. I think sh
e was more worried.”

  He agreed.

  “We have a big one,” he said. “The spirits will be on our side.”

  She stared at him.

  “You’re not going to sacrifice anything on an altar, are you? I just got these jeans.”

  He laughed.

  “I wasn’t planning on it. I was thinking more like working the case by digging into her life.”

  “I have to ask. You’re a weirdo.”

  Boone had heard that before.

  Only, it didn’t matter. They had a good one. He could tell. His gut was telling him to go full steam ahead.

  “You don’t say?” he asked.

  “Oh, I do,” she answered, already focused on this woman and what her game had been. In N’awlins, people died daily. Some by accident, some with intent, but there was always death.

  Somehow, this woman’s demise could have been prevented.

  She was sure of it.

  This was one hell of a mystery, and Cordelia liked a mystery. That buttered her bread, got her going, and kept her focused on work.

  “Who could they be hiding?” she asked.

  “Well, that’s the million-dollar question, now isn’t it, cher?” he asked.

  It looked like it was.

  “It’s time to take her in,” the ME stated, getting their attention. “Are you done?” he asked. “It’s creepy out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  They both stared at him.

  He dug in bodies for a living and rode in a van with a dead person in tow.

  This was the least creepy part of the man’s life.

  “Yeah, roll her out,” Boone drawled. “We’ll catch you later at the morgue. We’re up for the night.”

  Yeah, they were.

  Doctor Nikolas Leeds bagged her body, getting her ready for transport to the city morgue.

  “If you want the autopsy results, pop in around nine. I’m up, so I’ll head to the district office, and I’ll get her started for you.”

  They both looked over at him.

  A magnanimous ME?

  That was going to be expensive—as in someone was going to be owing the man something—like a blowjob. Since the dude was smiling at Cordelia, Boone knew who was off the hook.

  Him.