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Untreed Reads - Jillian Kidd

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143 pages

English

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In the year 2053, Dallas bounty hunter Mina Maxwell's goal is to reach Global status, and she is only three catches away from the needed 25. During one of her hunts, she lets criminal Roberto Franco go in order to capture his higher-ranking boss. It is a mistake that will come back to haunt her.As she continues on toward her goal, she battles with the demons of her past, among them being Damon Wolfe, her Global bounty hunter lover who left her without explanation. Attempting to heal the damage is Mina's good friend, musician Jackson Kincade, who has been hinting at taking their friendship to the next level if she will let him.All hope for the future shatters when Roberto returns, hunts her down and kidnaps her. His plan: weaken her body and crush her spirit so he can sell her to the highest bidder.

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Science fiction

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Publié par	Untreed Reads
Date de parution	23 novembre 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781611871975
Langue	English

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Vengeful Bounty
By Jillian Kidd
Copyright 2011 by Jillian Kidd
Cover Copyright 2011 by Dara England and Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
Copyright for song Just Friends by Alisha Johnson.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.
http://www.untreedreads.com
Vengeful Bounty
By Jillian Kidd
For Alisha, my long-time friend and cheerleader, who believed in Mina back when she was only an idea.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
1
You trust my driving, right? Colt asked.
His eyes darted to my hand that I kept floating above the door bar in case I needed to grab hold. The digital speedometer topped 80 mph.
Sure, I do, I said. I just don t trust everyone else on the road. Speed limit s 60.
Hah! That s for tourists.
Colt loved his cars. But his 2008 Dodge Charger was his baby. I wish I could tell you how much he spent on revamping the 45-year-old vehicle to have hover capabilities, and how much he spent daily on speakers and paint jobs and transparent technology and whatever else he s done to it, but I probably couldn t do the math. Math never was my strong point.
Bounty hunting was.
Although Colt did his share of going after the Bad Fish, it wasn t a full-time career for him like it was for me; it was more of his hobby-an extremely dangerous, adrenaline-pumping hobby that just happened to be my full-time job and the love of my life (love of my life except for maybe homemade chocolate lava cake, which, I have to say to you lonely, single men that might be wondering, is most definitely the way to a woman s heart).
A Scorpions song came on the classic oldies station and Colt cranked up the volume until I felt the bass and drums vibrate ass-kicking energy through my body, readying me for action. As soon as the lyrics crashed in, Colt sang with them at perfect, ridiculously loud pitch. I couldn t help it; I cracked up with delight and relaxed.
His hair changed about every time I saw him. Tonight it was purple and flying everywhere like some midnight elf s mane from some classic fantasy novel. His eyes were a similar shade of violet; he enjoyed switching out different colored contacts almost as much as he changed his hair. He tapped the steering wheel and belted out all the rockin wails while I grabbed the door handle a little tighter and the evening Dallas lights whizzed by out the window. Colt tends to drive faster depending on the speed of the song. I swear the man is hard-wired to music.
An old 2022 Buick with wheels held us up and we slowed from 80 mph to about 40. As if the tires weren t a dead giveaway, the wheelchair symbol on the license plate made Colt groan.
All right, wrinkles, if you aren t going to drive, then get off the highway! he said. The law really should outlaw wheels.
Come on, now. Granddad still drives wheels, I said. It makes the older generation feel safe.
It s not safe. They get flats. They re totally grounded. Stupid wheels.
He opened his mouth and matched the song s wild wailing vocals as he flipped the Charger s up signal switch and checked the mirror on the dash that would reveal any hover vehicles that might be above us in a blind spot. Clear and good to go.
With his heel he pressed the elevation pedal that stuck out from under his seat like a metal tongue and up we went, over the slow car, and down in front of it, hovering the five legal inches above the road.
Few miles and we ll be there, Colt said, taking the exit to the right.
I nodded, getting focused on the task at hand mentally and emotionally.
Tonight s Bad Fish was Nando Gutierrez. He headed the Texas branch of a national organization called The Flowers of Eden. Nando was what we bounty hunters liked to call an Octopus, meaning the type of criminal who has a lot of hands that kidnap for him. This Octopus s prey happened to be young beautiful women, whom he hooked and kept on a steady stream of drugs, and then sold to the richest pervert bidder.
But like most criminals, Nando had gotten careless. He liked to frequent the dance clubs in the Metroplex, and he d put enough of his trust in people he thought he could buy off to keep his whereabouts a secret. Luckily for us, one of the people he d paid was Colt s long-time friend Aaron.
Aaron worked at The Den of Iniquity, or as the club-frequents called it: Sin Den. He got an extra $5,000 ahead of time in his bi-weekly paycheck if he would keep mum about Nando s occasional visit. And if the money wasn t enough of a motivator, the threat to kill him should have been.
But fearing death wasn t in Aaron s nature (one couldn t be afraid of anything and still remain friends with my brother), and besides that, he had plans to quit his job tomorrow and disappear. How timely! Apparently he was tired of Dallas and wanted to move north.
Where s Aaron going again? I asked.
Canada.
He need any help changing his identity?
Nope. Got it covered.
The song gave way to a commercial:
Be the first in line to order your new incinerator. Available at all House Aid stores now for only $399.99. This new model from Hoover is guaranteed to be safe for children and has updated organic-safety sensors that prevent accidental burns.
I crossed my arms and took a deep breath. I glanced at Colt, whose brow was now furrowed in thought. The collar of his red plastic flex-wear jacket was flipped up, but I could still tell from the little twitches of his mouth that he was chewing on the inside of his cheek, just like he did when he was a little boy and deep in thought.
Are you sure about this? I asked. Does he know what could happen?
Colt gave me a look. He knows.
And you re sure we can trust him?
Yep.
He s really moving to Canada?
Mina! Trust me. You ve got to trust people.
I do, I just don t trust people I don t know. And sometimes I don t trust people I do know.
Colt reached over and turned the radio station away from the commercials and onto a Technopop station. Not my favorite kind of music. Everybody listened to it because that was the thing to do. And I wasn t about to be like everybody. Especially when the majority of the lyrics of that type of music were mindless, and the singers voices could be as bad as a bleating goat but you d never know because they were covered up by all the electronic distortion. Give me the late, great Metallica any day. I don t care if it is old fogey music.
A song I didn t know with a synthesized merry-go-round-like tune and dripping water sound effects played. All I could make of the echoing male singer s voice was:
Goin round, goin round, goin round. Girl, you got me goin round.
Wow. Really poetic. Ahem.
Oh, Colt said. He pulled out a flat black holodisk from his glove compartment. Here, look at this. Nando s pic and stats.
I ve seen him already.
Okay, well, have you seen Roberto yet?
Umm, hmm, let me think.
Actually, I hadn t ever paid much attention to Roberto Franco s images. Roberto went wherever Nando went. He was sort of a right-hand tentacle to the big, bad Octopus. His job at the club was to page Nando s mini-plane to come and fetch him from the roof if Nando was in danger. My job was to seduce Roberto and get him out of the way so the plane would not be paged and Colt and I could nab the bounty.
I pressed a little green button on the side of the holodisk. Appearing above the flat surface in the air was a translucent hologram of a twinkling star.
Is he already programmed in here? I asked.
Doi! I wouldn t have given it to you if he wasn t.
Hey, don t doi me. It s happened before.
Because of glitches, he said with a chuckle.
Mm-hmm.
Then he started perfectly singing that God-awful merry-go-round song, dancing robotically to each pulse as if he d written the tune.
Ignoring him, I said, Roberto Franco, and the hologram star began to twirl.
The star disappeared, and jumping out of the disk in its stead was the translucent image of a man, perhaps a few years older than I, making him around 30. He looked Italian, dark hair and eyes, and a smile that could melt most women. I say most because I ve seen that bullshit smile a million times before and I knew what it was about. I did so enjoy wiping it off the faces of these so-called men. Still
He s kind of hot, I said, unable to suppress a smile. I guess if I have to drag anybody off into the shadows, he s not bad. Not at all like Billsworth Farmington. Ugh, I don t think I ll ever be able to get the memory of that blubbo s tongue out of my mouth.
Hah! Hey, go for it! Have some fun! Then, he had to say, You know, Sis, you should start dating again.
Just absolutely had to go there, didn t he? And we were having such a nice evening.
This time, it was my turn to shoot my brother a look.
What, I said, so I can be a little girl-treat like you?
Hey! No need to insult! I date a lot and have fun. That doesn t make me a whore. You know,