McKinnon's Royal Mission (20 page)
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Authors: Amelia Autin
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Prologue
D
etective Alexander Brody opened the front door of his ground-floor garden apartment, bent down and picked up the morning paper from his doorstep.
As was his habit every morning, he took the paper inside and dropped it on the counter beside his struggling coffee machine. The less than peak-performing machine was what commanded all of his attention at the moment. Gurgling, it gave every indication that it was just about in its last throes of life.
None of his coffeemakers were long-lived and he'd been through this before. Alex judged that he'd probably have to buy a new coffeemaker sometime in the latter half of next weekâif not sooner. As a rule, he hated to shop, but this was more important than his dislike for standing in a checkout line. He could function fairly well with little to no sleep and a lot of other things, but he couldn't function at all without that first cup of coffee in the morning.
Usually followed by a second cupâand a third if he was skipping breakfast.
The newspaper was part of his morning ritual, as well. Not that he usually had time to read it. Most days he took off a couple of minutes after he brought the paper into the apartment. Like so many of his under-thirty-five generation, mostâif not allâof his news came from the internet. And, on occasion, from the radio he listened to while driving in to work.
Still, he wouldn't dream of terminating his newspaper subscription. He considered it a tragedy that the written word was dying out. A great many newspapers around the country had already permanently closed their doors, ending, in his opinion, a fine old tradition. He was not about to add to that and help bury that longtime industry by withdrawing his support from the local Aurora paper. Though basically not an optimist, he did still hang on to the very clichéd belief that every little bit helped.
Alex had a soft spot in his heart for newspapers. He always had. For a while, when he was about ten or so, he had delivered newspapers to people's doorsteps in an attempt to earn some money of his own.
Honest money.
Even then, honest money had been a rarity in his family.
But he'd tried.
Alex poured himself a travel mug's worth of thick black liquid, guaranteed to wake up every fiber of his body whether he wanted it to or not. The people he worked with in the department claimed it could probably also be used to fix the cracks in the street asphalt.
Preoccupied, he wound up filling the mug too high. Some of the coffee escaped as he screwed on the top of the mug. Slipping down the sides of the steel-gray thermos, the black liquid began leaking onto the front page of the newspaper.
Swallowing a few choice words that normally didn't get voiced until he was already a couple of hours into his shift, Alex reached for the dish towel hanging off the handle on his stove.
With quick movements he tried to wipe away the coffee before it blurred the front headline.
Which was when he read the words.
And how he wound up reading the article instead of leaving for work right at that point.
The headline that fairly screamed across the front page this morning was about a robbery. Specifically, a break-in in one of Aurora's high-end developments. Apparently, according to the journalist covering the local story, it was the third such robbery of its kind in a short period. The owners of the house had been away in Europe and returned to find that their priceless art collection had been stolen.
Nothing else had been taken.
Alex read the article from start to finish, carefully taking in every word. A wave of nausea came over him as he read.
“Oh God,” he muttered under his breath as he came to the end of the article, no more reassured now than he had been when he'd started reading. “This isn't you, is it?”
The question was addressed to a man who was not there.
Alex's voice, and the question he'd asked, echoed about his small kitchen, haunting him with the possible implications.
Alex tossed the newspaper back on the counter. This was supposed to be behind him, he angrily thought.
Who are you kidding? It's never going to be
behind you.
The words, coming from deep inside him, taunted Alex.
The pinched, sick feeling he had been experiencing in the pit of his stomach accompanied him all the way to the precinct.
With luck, he'd catch a case and be distracted.
Alex crossed his fingers.
Copyright © 2015 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella
ISBN-13: 9781460379752
McKinnon's Royal Mission
Copyright © 2015 by Amelia Autin Lam
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