Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 60360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
“You’re not a cop.”
She sneered. “Cookie or a star?”
“You’re a bounty hunter.”
Izzy sighed. “Bitch, bounty hunter. How’d you get this far in life only stating the obvious?”
Ignoring her comment, he said, “I got money.”
Izzy turned the wheel, aiming the car down Holder Street, toward the station at the corner of Holder and Cross. It wasn’t the closest precinct, but it was where she preferred to drop off her skips. Of course, going there wasn’t without its drawbacks.
“Hey, I got money,” the skip repeated.
Izzy rolled her eyes. “No, you don’t. If you did, you’d have paid your own bail instead of using a bondsman. And I wouldn’t be chasing your ass now.”
He grunted. “I do, too,” he insisted. “I made some big sales the last couple days.”
“Getting together some cash to skip town?”
He glowered at her.
Izzy wouldn’t have bothered to chase him if he’d left Denver. Dealing and statutory were small potatoes and it would cost her more time and money to hunt him outside the city than he was worth. The payday just wasn’t there. She believed him that he’d made some quick sales during the time she’d caught his jacket and started looking for him, not that she’d take him up on his offer even if it were true. He wasn’t the worst skip she’d ever brought in, not by half, but a bad guy was a bad guy, and one less of them on Denver streets was always a good thing.
Plus, she was a good guy, as Pop had always reminded her. “We may not play by their rules, Z,” he’d always say, “but we got our own and we don’t break them.”
Taking a drug dealer’s cash to let him go was out of the question, no matter how badly she might need the money.
She parked in front of the station and killed her Mustang’s engine. She pocketed the keys and slid out from behind the wheel.
“Goddamnit! I have money!” the skip whispered fiercely as she dragged him from the backseat. He looked around fervently at the cruisers surrounding them and ducked his head when he spotted the uniforms talking animatedly on the sidewalk nearby. “Don’t tell me you can’t use the cash,” the skip sneered as he jerked his head back toward her car. The backseat was littered with cheeseburger wrappers and empty Coke cans.
Izzy’s pride bristled. It might look like she lived in her car, but it wasn’t true. She only worked out of it. Her laptop was securely mounted to a steel frame on the passenger seat, the week’s active files sandwiched between the seat and the center console. A digital camera was locked in a case that was bolted to the floorboards. She shuddered as she thought about the day when she’d finally have to drag it out and use it, and how fast that day might be approaching.
She cuffed the skip on the ear. He cursed her, then glanced at the cops. Izzy didn’t recognize any of them in particular, but they probably knew her. They gave her a wide berth as she shoved the skip toward the front doors of the building. She resisted the urge to nail him with the door as she opened it. She was in a bad mood, but he wasn’t a real bad guy per se, and therefore not worth the headache it would cause either of them.
She herded him in to the front desk where a large, fried-blonde eyed the skip as though he were something she’d found on the bottom of her shoe.
“Hey, girl,” said the blonde.
“Hey, Vernita.”
Vernita raised an eyebrow at the skip. “Where’d you find him?”
“Train yard,” Izzy replied, pushing him to the desk.
“Mmm hmm. You a hobo?” Vernita asked. “You look like a hobo.”
The skip glared at the older woman. “Yeah? You look like a bleached wha-”
Izzy slapped him on the side of the head again.
The skip ducked under the blow. “Bitch!” he yelled.
“Speaking of whaling,” Vernita replied sarcastically.
Izzy couldn’t help but laugh. Vernita had been working the front desk since before Izzy had graduated from high school. Not much fazed the older woman these days. Izzy always harbored a sneaking suspicion that Vernita and Izzy’s pop had enjoyed an “understanding” —the kind that older people sometimes entered into when neither of them wanted anything serious but still enjoyed the company of another person from time to time.
“Hugo!” Vernita bellowed, thumping the glass behind her. “Izzy’s got a skip!”
A larger man in an ill-fitting officer’s uniform lumbered out of the surveillance room. Izzy handed Hugo the skip and Vernita the manila folder in her hand.
“Reginald Deacon,” Izzy told her. “Signed, sealed, and delivered. Meth dealer.”
Vernita grumbled and took the folder. “Damn TV. Everybody wanna be Heisenberg.”
Izzy watched as Vernita processed her claim paperwork.
“Don’t spend it all in one place,” Vernita told her, handing the claim over for Izzy to take upstairs.