Read Shaken for Free Online Page A

confident.
    “Officer Jacqueline Streng. Jacqueline is fine.” I hated when Harry called me Jackie .
    “Who’s the suit?” Harry asked.
    The good-looking man answered, “Armani.”
    “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Armani,” I said, extending my hand.
    The man’s eyes twinkled. “The suit is made by a designer named Giorgio Armani. My name is Shell Compton.”
    His grip was also warm and confident, but it lingered longer than Herb’s.
    “This one of your whores, Shelly?” Harry asked, jerking a thumb at the corpse.
    Shell’s face got hard, and he took his hand back and stared at McGlade. “None of the ladies who work with me are whores. They’re escorts, and what they chose to do with their clients is their business and perfectly legal.”
    “Huh,” Harry said. “Never met a self-righteous pimp before.”
    “Is he your partner?”
    Shell asked me.
    I nodded.
    Shell tilted his head to the side and whispered, so only I heard him. “I’m so sorry.”
    Then we all turned our attention to the body. I watched Shell’s eyes, watched his look of shock turn to sadness when he noticed the tattoo on the corpse’s ankle.
    “That’s Linda,” he said, shoulders sagging.
    “You’re sure?” Herb asked.
    “Tattoo on her ankle. Mole on her collarbone.” He turned away, glassy-eyed.
    Herb flipped open a handheld notepad. “You reported Linda Candell missing yesterday. She’d been gone for forty-eight hours prior to that.”
    Shell nodded. “Linda wasn’t flighty. She didn’t just disappear, and she’d never miss a date with a client. I tried to file a police report after she missed her first appointment, but I was told I had to wait two days.” He looked at the ME. “When did she die?”
    Blasky clucked his tongue. “Hard to say. When I took her core temperature, it was seventy degrees. In that heat, in that dumpster, it should have been at least a hundred. I think, after she was murdered, the killer put her on ice. Not a freezer—there aren’t freezer burns. But someplace cold.”
    I felt a shiver crawl up my backbone. Being horribly murdered was bad enough. Getting stuck in a refrigerator afterward, like meat, was one of the worst things I’d ever heard.
    Shell must not have cared for the idea either. He excused himself and hurried out of the room. Herb tucked his notebook into his breast pocket and turned to me.
    “How long have you been doing Vice stings, Jacqueline?”
    “Yesterday was my sixth night.”
    “Do you think you can do an undercover operation for longer than a night? Say, a week or two?”
    I felt my pulse quicken, wondering if this would be my opportunity to finally work Homicide. Goodbye spandex skirts and slutty high heels. Hello respect and commendation.
    “This is the third body in six weeks,” Herb continued. “Same MO. All escorts. Two of them worked for Shell.”
    “He’s gotta be the killer,” Harry said. “I don’t trust guys who wear nice clothes.”
    Both Herb and I ignored him. “You’re thinking I pose as an escort,” I said.
    Herb nodded. “I’ve already talked to my captain. You’d be placed in Shell’s operation, working full time. He’s already agreed. We think it might be someone close to his business, maybe a client or a competitor. You wouldn’t have to do anything sexual. Shell was telling the truth; his escort service is simply an escort service, not a prostitution ring. You’d wear a wire the whole time, be under full surveillance—”
    “I’ll do it,” I said, interrupting him.
    Herb stared at me. He had a kind face, but his gaze was hard. “Wasn’t too long ago I was a uniform, eager to get into plainclothes. But this is serious, Jacqueline. The man doing this is a monster.”
    I gave him a hard stare right back. “I’m in. This is why I became a cop.”
    We held the intensity for a few seconds in silence, then Herb grinned. “Great,” he said, chuckling.
    Was he mocking me? I folded my arms across my chest. “Is something funny,