Atonement Sky – Psy-Changeling Trinity Read Online Nalini Singh

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Fantasy/Sci-fi, Paranormal Tags Authors:
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Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
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“Not much cause to be on that road. It dead-ends in the desert.”

Dahlia nodded. “Yeah, I’m with you—prints have to be the shooter’s.” Folding her arms, she turned her attention back to the screen as Adam came around to stand beside her. “I can confirm the shooter didn’t leave Raintree. We overflew the area in every direction for miles as soon as Jacques was away and only saw three people heading out of town.

“One was Jerry, on his usual delivery route—no time in there to fit in a detour, and the other a young Psy couple heading off to the airport. I had a quiet word with their neighbors—the two were definitely at home at the time of the shooting. On the off chance that the fucker had just hunkered down until we lost interest, I’ve kept up the sweeps, and we’re making note of every vehicle that’s heading out.”

“What’s this?” He tapped an image of a vehicle that looked like the kind of old runaround a local might keep for desert excursions.

“I think this is what got Jacques hurt.” Dahlia’s expression was grim; she and Jacques weren’t close, not like Adam and the other man, but they were clan through and through, would go to the wire for each other.

“We located it not far on the wing from where Jacques went down,” she continued. “Unregistered for the past two years—Beaufort already tracked down the previous owner, and he’s a hundred-year-old currently enjoying retired life in Fiji. Was excited to get a call from Enforcement and very happy to talk.

“Says he sold the car at a vehicle market and that the buyer was a ‘nice young man’ who promised to take care of all the paperwork. The buyer did exactly that in the sense that the previous owner is no longer responsible for it, but he never registered it under his own name. Deal was done in cash.”

“Any description on the buyer?”

Lips pursed tight, Dahlia shook her head. “Owner sold it because he was having vision problems. Fixed now, but at the time, he could ‘barely see beyond his own foot’—and per Beaufort, that’s a direct quote.”

Adam liked the detective, but he’d have felt better if Chief Cross had been handling the investigation. The older man had come into the position while Aria was wing leader, so Adam had known him for two decades, while Beaufort had only moved to Raintree two years prior, after accepting the open position on the small force.

“That’s not a coincidence—the buyer going for a seller with vision issues,” Adam murmured. “Someone planned this out.” And the fact that he’d done it two years ago? Fuck.

An image of Eleri flashed to the forefront of his mind, her changeable gaze emotionless as she talked to him about a serial killer who might be using Raintree as a base.

Dahlia folded her arms across her chest. “A drug thing? Everyone knows we don’t put up with that shit, but there’s always some idiot who wants to try.”

“Could be, but there’s another possibility.” He told her about Eleri’s theory, having always intended to bring her into the loop. If Jacques hadn’t been shot, the three of them would’ve had a meeting last night to touch base—Adam only had two wing-seconds, a small number in comparison to the seconds who reported to the SnowDancer alpha across the border, but SnowDancer was massive in size when compared to WindHaven.

The reason the wolves as well as the leopards had allied with them had nothing to do with the size of their clan, and everything to do with their cleverness at having held their territory for centuries, including through the Territorial Wars, melded with how far Adam’s people flew, their range vast.

WindHaven was not only one of the oldest clans in the entire country, it had a seamless record of transition from one wing leader to another, with no battles for succession. It wasn’t about blood, either, his and Aria’s relationship an anomaly; it was a thing of pride to support the clan rather than chance tearing it apart, a fierce loyalty born of their very size.

The sum of it all had put them on equal footing when it came to initial negotiations.

As for him, Dahlia, and Jacques, the three of them worked as a streamlined unit with support from their senior wing commanders. Naia was welcome to sit in on any and all meetings, her rank in the clan akin to Dahlia and Jacques’s.

Now his sole remaining wing-second just stared at him, her dark eyes huge against the cream-toned skin she’d inherited from her Iranian mother—who’d also passed on that white streak in her hair. Dahlia’s Diné father had been known to joke that his mate had cloned herself to create their fledgling, but he’d given Dahlia her height and physical strength.

“Seriously?” she said at last. “Well, shit.”


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