Low Sided by A.J. Downey (best detective novels of all time txt) 📕

the law enforcement family. City, county, or state… it didn’t matter. That thin blue line was a towering blue wall when it came to a girl like me.

I was just your average girl who needed to keep her mouth shut. I wasn’t just public enemy number one for my protesting and social justice leanings. No, it went deeper than that now, and I was well aware that they could say whatever they wanted about me and the King County Sheriff’s Department would just hand me over, no questions asked. The last place I wanted or needed to be was within Seattle city limits.

I’d been warned…

Hell, they were all buddies. I bet they’d hand me over gift wrapped in a big red fucking bow, which was why I did anything and everything to fly under the radar. Getting involved with The Sacred Hearts in any capacity whatsoever was so not the way to do that.

“What the fuck are you doing, Raven?” I muttered to myself for the thousandth time. Taking in a deep breath, I put my worn-out Doc Marten’s I’d scored at a second-hand store for like two bucks into motion over the equally worn-out cracked sidewalk.

I licked my lips, swallowed my fear, and stopped below the two guys smoking on the back landing to their clubhouse and looked up.

“Either of you guys know where I can find Maverick, or Fenris?” I asked.

One of the two scowled down at me, a super hairy guy that looked like a damn neanderthal.

“Depends, who’s askin’?” he demanded.

“Does it matter?” I asked, wiping the sweating palm of my hand that didn’t grasp my staff on my post-apocalyptic olive-green leggings.

“You’re coming to us, so… yeah. Kinda.” The other man was eyeing me with mistrust, and I let out a shaky breath, my heart hammering the inside of my ribcage.

“Look, Mace sent me. He was in my bar last night and he got beat up – bad. I helped him, he asked me to—”

The second man who had spoken, the one with the close-cropped dark hair and shadow of a beard just beginning along his jaw, vaulted the railing and landed right next to me. I shied back, but he seized my arm in a crushing grip. I tried to stay calm, fear spiraling through me, coiling in my chest, the panic ready to strike.

“Where is he?” he demanded.

“My apartment.”

“Take us,” he said.

“Are you Maverick or Fenris?” I asked and he cursed.

“No, I’m the VP, little girl, and you’d better take me to him right fucking now.”

“He said to find Maverick or Fenris,” I said stubbornly.

“Squatch, get Mav out here pronto.”

The hairy one went in the back door of the club, yelling out, “Mav!”

“He dies or something—”

I snorted. “He’s not going to, I looked after him myself,” I said hotly. That was one thing I wouldn’t have called into question. I was a good medic… or had been. I so didn’t hang out in the same circles anymore.

“What’s the deal?” a new voice interjected, and we both looked up to the newcomer on the back porch of the heavily graffitied back side of the building.

I opened my mouth to answer, but the man who had ahold of my arm went ahead of me. “She says Mace is in a real bad way, won’t take us to him.”

“That’s not what I said!” I snapped. “What I said was, Mace told me to bring Maverick or Fenris!”

“Well, I’m Maverick,” the man up top on the back porch declared. Vaulting it like the man who was now letting me go, he landed before me and said, “So, lead the way.”

Heartened that his name patch on his vest said Maverick like Mace’s had said Mace, I nodded.

“This way.” I jerked my head and started up the sidewalk. Maverick squinted.

“Where’s your car?”

“I don’t drive.”

“Then we ride,” he said.

“No way.” I shook my head. “This way,” I insisted, and I started up the sidewalk.

“Squatch, have DT on standby, Glassjaw, you’re with me.” He fell into step beside me and pointed up and back at Squatch and called, “I don’t call in thirty get ahold of Cipher, he knows what to do!”

“Got it, P!” Squatch was already moving across the street to the front of the motorcycle wrecking yard that was open for business.

“Step it up, girl,” Glassjaw growled, and I sighed, lowered my plague doctor mask, and marched at a brisk pace toward home.

It was a good five-to-ten-minute walk, so not bad at all. I’d stabilized Mace myself, so I knew he was okay.

The two men traded a cautious look when I went up the stairs to the second floor and stuck the key in the lock of my apartment door. Reluctantly, they followed, and I let them into my space, leaning my staff against the wall by the door and hanging my mask on the protruding nail from the yellowing plaster beside it.

“Mace?” Glassjaw called.

Mace groaned and called out from the bedroom, the door a straight shot from the front one. “Yeah, Glass, I’m in here.”

The two men traded a look and moved practically as one for the bedroom. I just shut my front door and locked it.

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck happened to you, bro?” Glassjaw demanded.

“Jumped by a bunch of pussy-ass frat boys. Where’s Raven?”

“Right here,” I said gently and appeared in the doorway. I crossed my arms and leaned a shoulder against it, hugging my stomach, crossing my legs at the shin, toe of one boot against the worn plank hardwoods.

“You alright?” Mace asked me and I nodded, keeping my expression cool and measured for the other two men who were staring at me.

“Hold on, buddy. Gonna call in some help,” Maverick declared and raised his phone to his ear.

“Thanks,” Mace said to me, and I nodded.

“I’ll put some tea on, you want anything?” I asked him, and Glassjaw looked up at me.

“Yeah, sounds good… thanks,” he said, and his hard looks had been traded for something softer and definitely more polite while Mav fixed me with a