First Impressions (A Grace deHaviland Bounty Hunter Story) by David DeLee

Author:David DeLee [DeLee, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Dark Road Publishing
Published: 2010-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

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Also, you won’t want to miss the first, full-length novel featuring

bounty hunter, Grace deHaviland

Fatal Destiny

Read on for a preview…

CHAPTER ONE

GOD MUST HATE ME.

Here it was, just the second week of October and a cold snap had moved into the area, plunging the temperatures to near freezing already. Unseasonably cold, the TV weather people said. A stalled Canadian cold front, they explained. Yeah, right. I knew what was really going on. It was God. I could hear him up in heaven, telling the angels with a laugh: Grace deHaviland’s doing surveillance. Let’s make it cold as a cadaver’s crotch down there.

I cupped my hands and blew into them. Damn.

Parked in the Grandview Heights section of Columbus, I’d been sitting for hours in my beat-up cargo van in the shadows of an overhanging elm tree down the road from the only working lamp post, my full attention on a dilapidated old colonial across the street. The house was one on a block of rundown homes earmarked for demolition, something the city never seemed to get around to. In the meantime, they became havens for drug dealers, users, crack whores and the homeless.

This one had a large front porch. The paint on the wide steps was worn to the wood and the once-white railing had so many spindles missing it looked like a boxer’s punch-drunk grin. A rusted glider was set off to one end and an old, moldy couch sat under the large front window. The cushions on it were so worn out, they sank. Broken crack vials, fast food wrappers and a busted up tricycle littered the yard. An old box spring and rusted iron headboard leaned against the peeling siding. Junked.

I covered the light of my cell phone and checked the time: 6:30 a.m.

The darkness before the dawn.

A lone figure rounded the corner, coming from Avondale Avenue, and walking in my direction. His hands shoved in his pockets, he had his hoodie pulled up over his shaved head to ward off the chilly, pre-dawn breeze. I checked him against the mug shot I had of Tyrell Parks. It was my guy.

I opened the well-oiled van door without a sound. The dome light remained off because I’d removed the bulb months ago. The van’s decrepit appearance—I’d picked it up at auction about a year ago—its dings, dents and splotches of matte-black primer paint were deliberate, all carefully applied so no one looked twice at it. Yet mechanically, its care and maintenance was top shelf, as good as money could buy. The perfect decoy vehicle.

Jogging across the street, I avoided the splash of piss-yellow streetlight, and carefully navigating my interception point, I jammed my hands into my jacket pockets too, returning the mug shot of Tyrell Parks to one pocket and wrapping my hand tightly the stun gun I carried in the other. My Colt .45 auto-loader sat snug and heavy in its holster, pressing into the small of my back.

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