Dead in the Water (Gemini: A Black Dog Series Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

difference. From the hips down, his bones had been picked clean of meat.
    No wonder the marshals were on high alert. A predator hunted those waters. Charybdis? I doubted it. He was too fastidious. The compressed timeline bothered me too. Not to mention the victim was the wrong sex, and mutilation on this scale wasn’t his style. He collected arms—one limb per victim, to be precise—not legs. And he drowned his girls first. This boy… Gods, I hoped he hadn’t been alive when the creature who killed him began eating.
    “Here.” A bottle of water appeared in front of me. “Rinse out your mouth with this.”
    I stuck out my hand, and the Good Samaritan slapped the drink across my palm. When I stopped tasting bile, I lifted my head high enough to see Flipper standing barefoot across the fissure from me. She had stripped out of her boots and cutoffs. The purple neoprene top was back on, but she wore a lime-green bikini bottom instead of the metallic tail from yesterday. I craned my neck but didn’t spot any fins or gills.
    “What are you about to do?” I wiped my wrist across my mouth.
    Her toes flexed in the loose sand, and her orange-and-blue toenails sparkled. “I need to interview the locals.”
    A red mask hung from her fingertips, which answered my next question. “You’re going in the water.”
    She raised a candy-colored eyebrow. “Unless you’re volunteering…?”
    A shudder rippled through me hard enough to squeeze my empty gut again. “No.”
    Flipper twirled the rubber strap around her pointer and started walking toward the waiting marshals. “In that case, I left your fob in my right boot in case I don’t make it back.”
    “Hey,” I called after her. “Be careful.”
    Her answering smile dazzled. “You too.”
    It was on the tip of my tongue to ask why I had to be careful. Unless whatever living in Wink Sink No. 2 sprouted legs, I was safe here on the high ground. Right?
    “You consulted on the other cases.” The marshal from earlier offered me a rune-covered hand, and I let her haul me to my feet.
    “Yes.” Magic blasted through that contact, and I jerked from her grasp. “You’re a legacy.” I rubbed my palm. “A powerful one.”
    She was also a half-blood, but I didn’t say so. Most didn’t appreciate the reminder they were half-human.
    “A legacy?” She tugged her long black hair up into a ponytail. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never that. What does it mean?”
    “Your mother or father was born in Faerie.” That explained her strength. “The closer the tie to Faerie, the stronger the magic.” She rubbed the markings covering the fingertips of her left hand together. “I hope I didn’t say anything wrong.” The urge to explain myself to her surprised me. “My gift is like a stream of consciousness. Classifications pop into my head and then they fall out of my mouth.”
    “That’s a cool talent.” For the first time since meeting her, the marshal locked gazes with me. Her eyes were bright and as sharp as a knife’s blade. “I’m Thierry Thackeray.”
    The name rang a distant bell, but as with Shaw, my brutal travel schedule meant my brain was too stuffed with the names and faces of colleagues for me to skim any details off the top.
    She indicated the tarp. “Are you finished with the body?”
    “No.” A bitter taste lingered in my mouth. “I need to—” I swallowed. “The condition surprised me. The others were…not like that.”
    “I won’t tell you it gets easier.” She patted my shoulder, and raw power zinged down my arm. “It doesn’t, but you do find better ways of coping. My favorite is finding the person responsible and—” as though poised to say one thing, she instead said another, “—I make them pay.”
    Despite the heat, a biting chill crept over my skin. I believed her.
    Someone called her name, and Thierry excused herself. I breathed easier with her out of touching distance. Suddenly I sympathized with Flipper and her