Free Dealers of Light by Lara Nance Page A

car’s frame. She glanced over her shoulder at Dusty, but he was fine lounging on the back seat.
    “Damn.” I n the older section of Norfolk, the road was narrow and riddled with broken pavement. She gritted her teeth and gripped the wheel tighter.
    A flash of red and blue off to the right caught her eye. She slowed and scanned the five police cars in the parking lot of a small strip mall. The place was full of abandoned stores with sad, peeling paint and boarded up windows. The main attraction seemed to be a fried chicken fast food restaurant on the far corner.
    Making a quick decision, she turned down the street beside the parking lot and pulled to the curb. An ambulance accompanied the variety of law enforcement vehicles, and emergency personnel scurried around one of the boarded up stores. Tor stood talking to a taller, lanky policeman in the parking lot.
    “Stay. Good boy,” she told Dusty after rolling down the windows part way. She climbed out of the car and walked toward Tor, raising a hand. A sense of dread crawled over her skin like icy spiders. He saw her and pointed a finger at her, signaling for her to wait. He patted the other cop on the shoulder and headed toward Cara.
    “Hey,” Tor called, expression grim. The knot in the pit of her stomach tightened with each step he took.
    “Sorry, I don’t want to bother you when you’re busy, but I just had to know if it’s another one.” Her hands tightened into fists.
    Tor glanced over his shoulder at the ambulance and nodded. “It is. Found a dude in that deserted store, wrapped in a sheet. Body would have been there for months if the owner hadn’t come by to show the store to a prospective buyer today. The body must have been hidden there last night.” He removed his hat and ran a hand over his short black hair. As he placed his hat back, his face looked a shade paler than normal. “It’s freakin’ weird, Cara.” He visibly shivered and wrapped his arms across his chest.
    “ The guy was drained?” Cara’s heart flipped. She’d rarely seen Tor so unsettled, and it frightened her more than anything. He was always strong and calm, the tough street kid from Brooklyn.
    “He was beaten, but it didn’t kill him. Man, this sucks.” Tor grimaced and shook his head. “Cara, this is the worst thing I’ve ever been involved in. And I’ve seen a lot of shit in my life. I wanna throttle somebody, but this is something you can’t get a grip on.” He held his hands up, fingers curled around an imaginary object.
    “I know what you mean.” Suddenly, she wanted to be home in her snug little cottage with her dog beside her on the couch. Maybe she should get a gun, or a taser.
    “Is Amber coming o ver tonight?” Tor asked.
    Cara hugged her midsection. “In an hour.”
    “Good. Tell her I’ll drive by when I get off and follow her home. I don’t want some schmuck gettin’ his hands on my babe.”
    “ You really think that’s necessary?” A creak of gurney wheels echoed across the parking lot. Cara shivered when a body in a black bag was carted out of the abandoned store by the EMT squad. A lump rose in her throat. 
    “Something bad’s happening. Something evil.” Tor pressed his lips together and his right hand rested on the hilt of his gun. “We need to be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”
    She flinched away from the sight of the body. “I have to go.”
    He nodded and went to join the other policemen. It had to be hard for him, knowing what happened, but not who did it. He was unable to share his information with the other policemen because they wouldn’t believe him. Energy vampires, ha! Or, what did Shana call them? BD’s? Yeah, Bad Dealers that suck the life out of you. Yeah, the police force would really take supernatural beings seriously.
    And where did Rolf Van Harding, enigmatic mystery Dealer, fit into all this ? Sadistic killer or strange coincidence?
    She didn’t know, but she would find out.
     
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    Desmond stared at