Dead to Rights

J. A. Jance

Dead to Rights

The fourth book in the Joa

Prologue

Hal and Bo

In response, Hal leaned toward her. “The name’s Bond,” he whispered, “James Bond.” Bo

“You’re good enough that they should have made you the new James Bond,” she told him.

A passion for James Bond movies was something the two of them had shared in common when they met twenty years earlier. And now, after a celebratory di

On their a

Riding down on the outdoor escalator, Bo

Bo

“You were a very beautiful bride,” Hal said with a sudden catch in his throat. He was still as smitten with his wife as he had been the first day he laid eyes on her, as she had walked along the beach with her little niece and nephew in tow.

Before netting Bo

From the moment he and Bo

“You were beautiful then,” he added, almost as an after-thought. “And nineteen years later, you still are.”

Bo

They reached the intersection of Third and Van Buren just as the light changed from red to green. At nine o’clock at night, downtown traffic was almost nonexistent. Still, Hal checked in both directions before they stepped off the curb. There were a few headlights coming toward them in the right-hand, west-bound lanes, but they were a block away, stopped at the next light as Hal led Bo

Hal jumped back out of the way and tried to pull Bo

Almost at once there were horns honking. Within seconds a crowd gathered out of nowhere, but Hal Morgan heard nothing, saw no one. He vaulted forward, reaching the truck at almost the same time it stopped moving. Several passersby, most of them fellow moviegoers who had followed Hal and Bo

The engine was still ru

“Turn the damned thing off before it catches fire,” some-one shouted. “For God’s sake, turn it off!”

Knowing the danger, Hal did what years of police training had taught him. He scrambled in through the smashed passenger side window, into a fog of spilled booze and across a seat slick with whiskey-laced vomit. The driver, cushioned by the now deflated air bag, was still strapped inside.

“Whazza matter?” he was asking. “What the hell happened?”

Ignoring him, Hal managed to reach across the seat far enough to turn the key in the switch. ‘then he clambered hack outside.

The swelling crowd stood together in stricken silence. All that was visible of Bo

It was then Hal noticed there was someone standing next to him-a young black man in torn jeans and a ragged shirt with a baseball cap perched on a thicket of dreadlocks.

“Help me,” Hal choked. “Maybe we can lift it off her.”

“Sure thing, man,” the kid said. “No problem.”

As the two of them set to work, several of the passersby joined in. They knelt together alongside the fallen pickup. Then, on the count of three, they lifted it, rolling it back up-right, pushing it onto its wheels. Uncovered, Bo

Hal rushed to his wife’s side and threw himself down on the pavement beside her. As he took her wrist to check for a pulse, a hushed silence once again drifted over the crowd of onlookers. That was broken suddenly by a frantic pounding from inside the truck.

“Hey, somebody!” the trapped driver yelled. “Lemme out! The door’s stuck. I can’t get it open. Get me out of here.”