Deadly Descendant by Jenna Black Read Free Book Online Page A

What say we move on?”
    For a moment, I thought he hadn’t even heard me.Then he blinked and shook his head sharply, like he was waking up from a dream. His fists unclenched, and he drew in a deep breath. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. His hands shook a little as he lit the cigarette and took a hasty drag. Wordlessly, he glanced down at me, and I read the question in his eyes.
    I held up my hands. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell Anderson you almost lost it.”
    He cocked his head, his brows drawing together in puzzlement. “Why not?”
    Good question. I’d kept my mouth shut about one of Jamaal’s little incidents before, and it had come back to bite both of us in the ass. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson. Except …
    “Because you didn’t lose it,” I said. “Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, you know?”
    He gave a short bark of something that vaguely resembled laughter before taking another long drag on his cigarette. “Some might argue I am a hand grenade,” he said under his breath as he turned from me and unlocked the car, rounding the hood and heading for the driver’s side. I hoped he would put out the cigarette before he got in, but I wasn’t going to make an issue of it. He probably needed its calming effects more than I needed fresh air.
    “More like an atom bomb,” I replied, even though he’d clearly signaled the conversation was over and I knew his sense of humor wasn’t exactly well honed.
    He gave me a quelling look over the top of the car, but though he didn’t laugh, he also didn’t fly into arage. For Jamaal, I figured that was a major breakthrough.
    The scene of the second attack was a lot less unpleasant than the stinking underpass in Anacostia, though I doubted the victim had appreciated the upgrade. The neighborhood itself wasn’t such great shakes, but the victim had been killed right against the fence that separated the neighborhood from the National Arboretum, an oasis of stately trees and well-manicured lawns. I wondered if he’d been trying to jump the fence to escape his attackers.
    There were some houses across the street from the crime scene, their vinyl awnings and bent chain-link fences declaring them less than prime real estate. It was possible there was enough distance between the houses and the fence to keep anyone inside from hearing a disturbance late at night, at least if they were heavy sleepers. Possible but not likely. The cops had canvassed the neighborhood and gotten nothing, and I doubted I’d have any better success, even with Jamaal at my side.
    There was still nothing that jumped out at me and yelled “I’m a clue!” so I had Jamaal take me to the third, most recent crime scene.
    The third murder had taken place on the grounds of the McMillan Reservoir, which was, of course, closed for the night when we arrived. Jamaal parked on the street with a lovely view of a cemetery, and we walked to the barbed-wire-topped fence that surrounded a series of huge, empty fields, featuring regular circulardepressions in the grass. I had no idea what the fields were about, but I made a wild guess that the rows of circular concrete structures that separated them were water towers of some sort. Our victim had been found just beside one of those vine-covered towers.
    The crime-scene techs had found what they suspected was blood on the barbed wire atop the fence, so it looked like this victim had tried to escape by jumping a fence just like victim number two. Fat lot of good it had done him. The police were really scratching their heads over how the dogs had managed to follow him, since there were no breaks in the fence or tunnels underneath, and the gate was clear on the other side.
    Come to think of it, I was scratching my head over that one, too.
    “How did the dogs get past the fence?” I mused under my breath.
    “Like this, I’ll bet,” Jamaal said. He took a quick glance around to make