Page 5 of Killer Clone

She glared at him. “Broad, you need to calm down and go home. Sleep it off. I won’t say it again.”

Broad lowered his chin to his chest. He examined her from underneath his thick eyebrows. “Hey, it’s you. I know you. You find my truck yet?”

Instead of punching him, she simply shook her head. The truck had been missing for a couple weeks now. Broad had probably parked his Toyota Tacoma at the bottom of a lake somewhere and forgotten about it.

“The BOLO’s still out.”

He swayed, blinking heavy. “Tha’sallrai’, hon-neh.” The words blurred into each other. It took a second to untangle them.That’s all right, honey.“How’s about a quote fer me? Huh? Something about…murder…something. Whatever ya got, I’ll take. Write it up fer you. Make you famous. Make youmore famous.”

He cackled and slapped his leg, nearly falling over in the process. Stella’s anger deepened.

Two weeks had passed since the end of their last case. To say she was eager to get out of uniform and back to her real job in Nashville’s FBI was the understatement of the year.

Stella and her partner—both romantically and professionally—Special Agent Hagen Yates had agreed to stretch theirextended leave into a temporary co-sheriff position while the governor of Pennsylvania found a new sheriff.

Under usual circumstances, when a sheriff in Pennsylvania vacated the office for whatever reason, the job passed to the chief deputy. But since the chief deputy had been murdered, the problem was kicked up to the governor.

For Stella, time was dragging. Handing out speeding fines and dealing with daytime drunks had never been rewarding work. She’d had enough of that when she was a beat cop.

And Paul Slade, their supervisory special agent, was eager for them to return to Nashville so the team would be at full strength again. He’d called that morning and told them the governor had finally found a replacement.

They needed to get their asses down south.

But the thought of leaving the mayor and the rest of the town in the hands of some stranger sat uneasily with Stella. Besides his civic duties, Dr. Bill Silow was also the administrator of a nearby psychiatric hospital and a good man who’d recently lost friends and a patient to a murderer. Stella liked him. But Slade was right. She and Hagen needed to get back to their lives and back to work.

A truck pulled out of the parking lot behind the general store.

Broad leaped into the middle of the road and stretched his arms wide. “Have ya repented, Dick? Ya gotta repent before the end of the world, Dick.”

The truck swerved. Dick Terry, the owner of the town’s carpentry workshop, stuck his fist out his window and yelled at Broad to get out of the damn road before someone got killed.

Broad responded by yanking off his coat and throwing it at the truck’s cab. Dick drove over it without slowing.

That was enough.

Stella whipped the handcuffs out of her belt and moved in to make the arrest. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back. I’m arresting you for public intoxication.”

Broad didn’t move. He didn’t even pick up his coat. Stella drew nearer. Broad arched his back. One hand curled into a fist. He pulled back his shoulder and swung.

Stella had hoped Broad wouldn’t do anything stupid.

But she’d expected otherwise. And she was ready.

His massive fist cut through the air with surprising speed for a man his size, and his entire body twisted with the force of the blow. A small breeze swept past her face, his knuckles missing by inches as she executed her practiced dodge.

Broad’s boots skidded on the road’s icy surface, sending him crashing down with all the elegance of a hippo on ice.

In a second, Stella’s knee was in the small of his back. She yanked his arms behind him and snapped the handcuffs around his wrists.

“You’re an idiot, Broad. You know that?”

Stella picked up his coat and tossed it over her shoulder. The material stank of sweat and tequila. She then pulled Broad to his feet, draped the coat over his shoulders, and shoved the drunk headfirst into the back of her SUV.

Her phone rang.

She took a moment to catch her breath before answering. “Knox.”

“Yates.” Hagen was a welcome change to the morning. Stella was only a little envious that he was spending it in the sheriff’s office while she managed the callouts.

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