Mr. & Mrs. Norcross - Page 1

CHAPTER ONE

Wincing, she blinked slowly, coming back to consciousness.

Ugh, her head ached like someone had hit her with a hammer.

Detective Brynn Norcross tugged on her hands. Her heart lodged in her throat.

She was tied to a chair.

Dammit.

She kept her breathing even, her chin down on her chest. She opened her eyes just to slits.

She saw her jean-clad legs, boots, and a cracked, stained concrete floor. It looked like she was in a warehouse. Light was seeping in from some high, grimy windows, and she had the sense of a cavernous space.

She swallowed. Her throat was so dry. Nearby, she heard the drip of water, and in the distance, the barking of dogs.

Dogs.

That’s right. She was currently undercover in a case. A body had washed up two weeks ago in San Francisco Bay with bite marks and a bullet hole between the eyes. Poor Tom Moore had been a well-respected local dog breeder.

It was Brynn’s job to solve his murder. She was a homicide detective, and she was good at it.

So she’d gone undercover as a new dog breeder who’d just moved to the Bay area.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t just found cute puppies in her investigation. No, she’d uncovered the inklings of something far nastier.

Dog fighting.

Someone was breeding beautiful animals—German Shepherds, Belgian Malinois, Rottweilers, and Pit Bulls—for fighting in a ring. For sick people’s bloody entertainment.

Her pulse sped up now. Tom Moore had stumbled onto it and gotten himself killed.

She’d narrowed down the people responsible to three local breeders who all put on family-friendly fronts. She just needed to keep gathering her evidence to uncover which one was the murderer.

Her head throbbed. She’d been supposed to meet one of the breeders—Ed Baker—to check out a dog to breed with one of her fictional dogs. She tested her bindings, but her arms were tied to the wooden arms of the chair tightly.

“Ah, you’re awake,” a deep voice said.

Brynn opened her eyes. She recognized the voice, but couldn’t quite place it.

A man in jeans and a denim work shirt stepped in front of her.

He was just shy of six feet tall, muscular, and with shaggy brown hair sticking out from under his ball cap. He had scars on one cheek that ran down his thick neck. She guessed that a dog had mauled him at some stage.

“Cray, this is a bad idea.” A second man stepped into view.

He wrung his hands, his shoulders hunched under his stained T-shirt. He was shorter than Cray, with a slender build. Probably only an inch taller than Brynn.

“This is crazy, man. She’s a cop.”

Oh, shit. She didn’t react, instead she frowned like she was confused. “Where am I? What’s going on?”

The big guy stepped forward. His name clicked. Travis Cray was second-in-command for Ed Baker. The breeder she’d been supposed to meet.

She’d turned up at the meeting place, and someone had hit her on the back of the head.

“That’s right.” Cray smiled. “We know you’re a cop.”