“So let me get this straight,” sighed the captain. He pinched the bridge of his nose with thick fingers. The nameplate on his desk read ‘James P. Barker’.Detective Bell stood imperiously in front of him, arms crossed, eyebrow arched.I sat in a chair behind the detective holding a cup of sludge the evil front lady from the black lagoon had deceptively (and, no doubt, maliciously) fronted as ‘coffee.'“Someone stole a dead-n...

PrologueI stared dolefully down into my near-empty bag of coffee beans. The new order wasn’t supposed to arrive until next week, which meant it was either a great pot of coffee for tonight’s shift followed by almost a week’s worth of government supplied coffee grinds, or five nights of weak, watery, near bland coffee.I sighed.I upended the contents of the bag into the grinder, brought up the evening body count on my compu...

“Verus! Verus, stop!”Verus leaned forward against his brother’s weight as he walked, his expression set in stony, angry, lines. “What they’re doing is wrong, Dax. You know it as well as I do.”“Yes, but what can you do, Verus? We have no authority or claim.”Verus grinned savagely. “Don’t we?” Dax paled and nearly lost his grip.“You’re not serious.”Verus didn’t respond.“Verus. Verus look at me.” There was still no response....