Gabriel by Naima Simone Read Free Book Online Page A

window with the shuttered blinds, the cheery yellow paint bordering
     the frame, and scanned down the white door to the knob.
    Holy shit.
    Her heart bucked. Shock lassoed the breath in her throat.
    Red streaks marred the white paint near the doorknob, the rust-colored marks like
     a macabre version of the peppermints she habitually consumed.
    Reason interjected, argued the smudges could be mud or dirt or grease.
    Intuition asserted that the stains were exactly what they appeared to be—blood.
    The car in the alley. No answer to her knocks on the door… A half-dozen explanations
     scrambled in her head, but one blared louder than the rest. What if someone was lying
     inside the house, hurt? What if Evelyn, Chay’s mother, was that someone?
    An image of Chay’s fallen-angel beauty flashed before Leah’s eyes—the golden, solemn
     eyes, the pretty mouth with the rare smiles. She loved him. Chay, Raphael, and Malachim
     were like brothers to her. And if someone Chay cared about might be in trouble, nothing
     would keep her on the wrong side of this door.
    She tugged on the cuff of her knit sweater and dragged the long sleeve over her hand.
     Chest tight, she twisted the brass handle. The lock clicked, gave. The door cracked
     open.
    Oh, God.
    The odor slammed into her, knocking her back several steps. Rancid meat. Sultry heat peppered with bitter copper and waste.
    Her stomach heaved. She gagged, swallowed convulsively.
    Jesus. Jesus Christ .
    Death .
    On her first week as a beat cop, she and her partner had found a decomposing body
     in a garbage-strewn alley. The god-awful stench had imprinted itself on her olfactory
     memory. She would never forget the reek of the bloated, rubbery corpse that had once
     been a person with life shining behind eyes that had turned glassy and blank.
    Leah pivoted on her heel and a slight twinge spasmed in her hip. She gasped as fire
     flared in damaged muscle and tendon.
    “Son of a bitch,” she rasped, stumbling to the gate, gripping it as she gulped down
     several lungfuls of fresh air. Long moments passed as she tried to recover from the
     blast of pain and clear her mouth and nose of the vile smell clinging to her tongue
     and throat.
    “Son of a bitch,” she repeated, her voice lower, softer, bitter. Her fists tightened
     around the gate, the wire biting into her palm and pushing back the echoes of pain
     in her hip. The injury reminded her she wasn’t a cop any longer; she should call 9-1-1
     now and wait for real officers to arrive.
    She set her jaw, straightened. Screw that. She turned back to the open back door,
     dragged the neck of her sweater over her nose and mouth, and grimly stalked forward.
    As she approached the entrance, she removed her gun from the shoulder holster. She
     grasped the grip and extended the weapon in front of her, the muzzle aimed toward
     the ground. She avoided the doorknob, nudged the panel open with her shoulder, and
     eased inside the house.
    Eerie silence shrouded the tiny entry hall. Her breath—hot against her lower face—resounded
     in the space, loud and harsh. The corridor immediately branched off to the left, and
     she emerged into a large, bright kitchen. Blue-and-white gingham curtains. Pristine,
     white counters and cabinets. A huge, yellow refrigerator covered with magnets from
     different cities: New York, New Orleans, Charleston, Las Vegas. The scene was welcoming,
     cheery—and completely at odds with the body drenched in blood at her feet.
    “Damn.” Relief and regret knotted her chest—relief the empty eyes staring up at her
     weren’t Chay’s mother’s, but regret for the male who had lost his life. From the mottled
     bruises on his face and ragged tears in his chest and abdomen, he hadn’t gone easy.
     Blood pooled around the man’s large frame and splattered the pale gold cabinets of
     the butcher block island and halfway up the nearest wall.
    Though the man was obviously beyond any help, she crouched down and pressed