by KD Jones
Deep Bounty
Inter-Galactic Bounty Hunter Series
Book 5
KD Jones
Copyright 2018 KD Jones
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
Chapter 4:
Chapter 5:
Chapter 6:
Chapter 7:
Chapter 8:
Chapter 9:
Chapter 10:
Chapter 11:
Chapter 12:
Chapter 13:
Chapter 14:
Chapter 15:
Chapter 16:
Chapter 17:
Chapter 18:
Chapter 19:
Chapter 20:
Chapter 21:
Chapter 22:
Epilogue:
About the Author
BLURB
Elsa Carson has the perfect job as an inter-galactic bounty hunter and she’s great at it. However, something is still missing in her life. She has exceeded in all areas, except her personal life. That becomes particularly blatant to her as she takes on her next case and finds herself attracted to the man she is hunting. And the thing about Elsa is, she always gets her man.
Chapter 1
“Move it asshole,” Kalen growled out as he jerked the perp along the walkway.
“Easy Kalen, we don’t want to draw too much attention. The authority is waiting for us at the penal spaceport. We’ll drop him off and head back home.” Elsa was just as antsy to get rid of the current perp as Kalen. She needed a good vacation, maybe she would go home to Bazin for a visit.
“I’ll be relieved to get rid of this one. He ruined my best business suit.”
Elsa rolled her eyes at Kalen. He was always dressed immaculately, not a hair out of place. He was from Tsairis, a cold planet where the people lived in domes and were known to be reserved and extremely logical people. Seeing him in his business attire, no one ever guess he was a bounty hunter.
Most people didn’t guess that Elsa was a bounty hunter either. Rather than wear business suits like Kalen, she went in the opposite direction preferring leather and form fitting material. She kept her long blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail and sometimes wore contacts to dull down the brightness of her blue eyes. She knew the overall effect came off like a dominatrix, but she loved it, loved how it made her feel strong and powerful. Whenever she and Kalen worked together, people would stare and whisper about them. She could imagine what they thought. She knew how men reacted to her appearance and she enjoyed using that to her advantage, keeping them off guard.
“I’ll be glad to be rid of the two of you! You bicker like an old married couple.” Their perp commented drawing glares from both Elsa and Kalen.
“Shut up or I’ll make you shut up,” Elsa said, smiling sweetly. It was the dangerous look in her eyes that made him remain quiet.
They walked down the pathway into the spaceport toward the elevator. The penal facility was on the lower level. Once they reached the correct level, they had to go through a series of security checks, all standard. But then one of the security people asked them to stay while they took the perp to lock up.
“Why would they need us to stay?” Elsa asked.
“I’m not sure but it does seem odd. Keep your eyes open.” Kalen made a casual circuit of the room, alert for anything suspicious.
Two female officers passed by and made no secret of checking Kalen out. Having grown prideful away from his home planet and not particularly bothered by it, Kalen responded with a smile and nod, saying, “Good day, ladies.” The women giggled and walked off whispering to each other.
Elsa rolled her eyes. “Do you have to flirt with every woman you meet?”
“I was merely being polite.”
“Right.”
“My question to you is why do you care?”
“I’m your partner and we’re on the clock. You need to keep you mind and your hands on the mission.”
He glared at her, the first real emotion he had shown since they left for their mission. “I am always a professional. You don’t need to tell me how to do my job.”
“Yet, you always tell everyone else how they are supposed to do their job,” she responded back. For some reason, Kalen got on her nerves more than any other bounty hunter she’d had to work with. She respected him and admired his work ethic, sure. But he was also too much like her. It should have made him perfect to work with, but she had definitely not found that to be the case. The best that could be said was they tolerated each other and got the job done. Vic probably put them together because they were so similar. But, despite having different preferences for who she worked with, she had to admit she trusted him with her life and knew he would be there for her if she needed him to be. He was strong and dependable, but annoying because he thought he was always right
“Sorry Kalen, I’m just feeling a little testy. I want this mission to be over so that we can go home. I need some relaxation; I’ve been working too hard.”
“Well, let’s see what they want from us so that we can get out of here,” he commented looking at something behind her.
She turned and saw a man heading their way. He clearly recognized her, though she was certain they’d never met before, so she assumed he was probably the reason the authority officer had told them to wait. The man approached and offered his hand, revealing his unfamiliarity with bounty hunters..
“Hello, I’m Stewart Vanderholt.”
Neither of them shook his hand. Honestly, it was as if he’d never heard of contact poisons before. He lowered his hand and shuffled his feet nervously, obviously thrown off his stride.
Kalen looked at him expressionlessly. “What do you want Mr. Vanderholt?”
“I’m a General Planetary Attorney for New Earth. There is a murder suspect that has disappeared. I wanted to hire you to find him and bring him in for questioning.”
Elsa frowned, “Why isn’t this request coming through the authority?”
“The man in question does not have a warrant out for him yet and the authority can only do so much without a warrant.”
Kalen grunted in acknowledgement. “And we bounty hunters are not so hampered by such things as warrants.”
The lawyer smiled widely. “Exactly.”
“How did you know we were going to be here?” Elsa asked suspiciously.
“I called the authority today to try to get them to do something and they suggested that I use a bounty hunter agency. There aren’t any agencies based here, though. I asked if they knew of any bounty hunters off planet and they said that a couple of bounty hunters were bringing in a perp in for processing today. I asked that they have you wait for me and let me know immediately of your arrival and to ask you to wait for me.”
“Why would the authority do this for you?” Kalen sounded just as suspicious of the lawyer as Elsa was.
“I have a few friends in the authority. They owe me favors.”
Elsa looked at Kalen. He didn’t believe the guy was telling them the complete truth either. “We can’t take on extra jobs without approval from our boss,” she said.
“Call him. I’m willing to double your normal fee.”
“Who exactly is this person you want us to find and who is he supposed to have killed?” Elsa asked while Kalen pulled out his phone to call their bosses Vic an
d Jagger Desantos.
The lawyer pulled out a folder from the briefcase he had been carrying and handed it to her. “His name is Felix Roberts. He is wanted for questioning in the murder of his wife Bridgette Roberts. I’ve included photos and a brief bio on him.”
She didn't bother opening the folder. If Vic and Jagger called them back home there was no need to get any further involved. Turning to wait for Kalen to finish the call she could feel the nervousness radiating from the lawyer. He was ringing his hands and sweating profusely. He looked around almost in fear of something. There was definitely something off with this situation. She focused back on Kalen and caught the end of the conversation.
“I understand. Yes, we’ll be careful and check in. I’ll tell him.” Kalen ended the call and ignored the lawyer entirely as he addressed Elsa. “He said that it was up to us on whether we want to take another job or to head back. I’m fine with taking on another job. What do you want to do Elsa?”
She could feel the lawyer’s eyes on her but she kept her expression carefully blank. The folder was still in her hands. If the guy in the folder really did kill his wife, he was too dangerous to be left out there on his own. But if he was innocent and the lawyer sent someone else after him, there was every possibility he wouldn’t make it back alive. She didn’t know him at all, this potential perp, but she knew firsthand what could happen when the wrong person was sent to retrieve a culprit. She had a feeling, like tuition that she needed to take this job.
Images of a young boy with curly blond hair chasing a puppy across the yard flashed through her mind. The boy was her little brother Johan. He was a sweet and funny, always following her around, wanting to be like his big sister Elsa. This was followed by another image, one of the same boy, now a young man of almost nineteen, lying dead on the dirty cement floor of a strip club.
Her sweet baby brother had gotten hooked on drugs at the age of fifteen. By sixteen he had been arrested five times for use. He went to juvie for a year. He got out and was good for six months, going back to school and getting good grades. Then he went to one party, drank a few beers and had one joint. That’s all it took for him to fall back into the wrong scene.
He became a drug dealer. He got caught by the authority again and was released on bail. He dodged his court date. A couple of rookie authority officers tracked him down to a local strip club. He refused to go with him. The officers outnumbered him and he was unarmed, they shot him down right there. Witnesses testified against the officers who were currently serving time, but that didn’t change the fact Johan was gone and would never again make her laugh or smile or cry. He was gone forever.
Elsa was left behind to deal with her anger and confusion. She hated the authority and the officers for what they did. When she Vic and Jagger, she realized that things might have turned out differently if her bosses and their agency had been called on to bring Johan in. She decided that she could do that for her brother, be the type of bounty hunter that wouldn’t shoot first and ask questions later. She could protect lives instead of taking them without a thought. That’s what she did and to this day, she had managed not to kill anyone. She was a damn good shot, but she always shot to stop, not to kill, though she knew if she had to kill to protect the innocent, she would.
She opened the file and looked at the man’s picture—Felix Roberts. He was laughing in the picture and the expression reached all the way to his eyes. How did he go from this to killing his wife? Surely the man in this picture deserved a chance to tell his side of the story.
“We’ll take the job,” Elsa told the lawyer without looking up from the picture.
Kalen handed a card to the lawyer, “Call and ask for Victor Desantos. He’ll take your payment over the phone and send you paperwork to fill out. If he doesn’t receive the paperwork and payment in the next two hours, the job is cancelled.”
“I need your number, to get updates on the search,” the lawyer said as he took the card.
“You call Vic when you want updates—he will be in touch with us. It’s standard procedure to protect our safety as much as it is for the safety of those we are hunting for,” Kalen told him. “Elsa, are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Wait!” The lawyer said, grabbing Elsa’s arm before she could go. She stared him down until he released her and stepped back.
“Don’t you want more information from me?”
Elsa shook her head. “Give the information to Vic. He’ll update us.”
“Look here, I’m paying a lot of money to…”
Else moved into his space and gave him a cold, hard smile. “We’ll be in contact, Mr. Vanderholt.” With that, she turned and walked away. She didn’t look back for Kalen, trusting that he was right behind her. Once they were out of sight of the lawyer, Kalen moved up to walk next to her
“Why did you agree to take this job?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think the lawyer is being upfront about this perp. It made me curious about whether this guy did what he’s being accused of.”
“I think you’re going soft Elsa,” Kalen said with a rare show of humor.
Maybe she was. She had worked as a bounty hunter now for over ten years. She had seen a lot of bad things but also, a lot of good things too. It was the good things, like helping turn around a young kid’s life around and get it back on the right track, that helped her get through the bad stuff.
“Whether I’m soft or not, I can still kick your ass.”
He snorted. “You wish.”
“Any time you would like to take me on, just let me know.”
Chapter 2
How had this become his life, Felix asked himself as he moved down the dark streets of the spaceport. The spaceport had over twenty levels and each level was essentially its own city block. The block he was on now was certainly one of the less appealing ones. He kept to the shadows and avoided anywhere that seemed like it might have video surveillance. Of course, everything he knew was from the movies, so who knew how accurate it was. He was amazed he hadn’t been caught yet. He was way out of his depth. He was a doctor, for crying out loud! He saved lives, he didn’t take them. Pausing at the corner, he leaned against the wall as he was overwhelmed once more by recent memories.
It had only been two weeks since he met his wife Bridgette for dinner at their favorite restaurant. They had, admittedly, been going through a rough patch in their marriage, but he was going through the motions of trying to make it work. He suspected she was cheating on him and had filed for divorce. He was quite sure that she had only married him for his money.
Felix had grown up in a wealthy family. He didn’t like to count on his family’s money, though, so he worked hard at school to get a scholarship and put himself through medical school. He had been so proud of himself. Then his parents were in an accident and both died. He was left with everything to deal with, both the estate and the family money. He had honestly been tempted to give it all to charity. Then he met Bridgette on a blind date.
He was attracted to her from the beginning, her long blond hair and pretty green eyes. She had a body of a goddess. She said all the right things, seemed to care about what he thought. Looking back now, he could see more clearly that it had always been an act.
Bridgette laughed too much, even at things he said that weren’t funny. She rarely looked him in the eyes unless she was seducing him to her bed for sex, which they had quite a lot of at the beginning of their relationship. He had felt so empty inside since the death of his parents, and he had only one living relative now, his cousin Roger Roberts, who lived on another planet and he rarely saw. Children seemed like just what he needed to fill the void, and his wife seemed to want the same thing.
It didn’t take long after the honeymoon before he started to notice changes in Bridgette’s demeanor. She found his jokes boring; she spent a lot of time ordering new furniture and redecorating the house. She loved spending his money a little too much. Then there were her weekend trips with her girlfrien
ds, girlfriends he never met and never saw.
It was while she was away on one of her trips that he discovered something was not quite right. He called her hotel she said that she would be staying but was told no one by that name had checked in. He used the phone tracking app to find her exact location which was only a few hours away. He drove to that location and sat outside this chateau in the woods in the dark.
Felix watched through the lighted window as his wife made love to some other man with his back towards him. Vaguely, he thought he should have been furious, should have gone nuts and run inside to demand answers. That was what always happened in books and movies. Instead, he sat in his car feeling betrayed and also foolish, but not really anything else. He realized in that moment that he had never loved Bridgette, he had just been lonely and she was there. Thank God his parent’s lawyers had insisted on a prenup.
When Bridgette had returned from her girlfriend’s trip, he told her that he was filing for a divorce and that he would move out to the guest cottage until the divorce was finalized. She tried to plead her case, tell him that he was mistaken, it hadn’t been her. When none of that worked she got really ugly and started breaking things instead. She destroyed his grandmother’s fine china, a model ship he had built with his father when he was five, but the worst was when she dented the frame and cracked the glass of a picture of his mother. The picture had suffered a tear across his mother’s face and it was the only copy. It was ruined. He demanded that she leave or he would call the authority on her and press charges.
“They’ll take me at my word when I tell them you were trying to hit me,” she spat. “You’ll be the one arrested!”
“You can try to tell that lie, but let me remind you that I have very expensive lawyers.”
She tried to hit him but the butler walked in at that moment. “Fritz, please escort Bridgette off the property. We have decided to separate for irreconcilable differences.”
