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  Saphera Nyx Book 1

  Elicia Hyder

  Copyright © 2020 by Elicia Hyder

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Inkwell & Quill, LLC

  Print ISBN: 978-1-945775-26-0

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  Edited by Nicole Ayers

  Edited by Kit Duncan

  Cover by Christian Bentulan

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  For More Information:

  www.eliciahyder.com

  Contents

  Detached

  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

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Thank you

  The Next Book

  Free Book Offer

  HYDERNATION

  Official Merchandise

  Also by Elicia Hyder

  About the Author

  Detached

  Now is your chance. Grab some coffee or tea and find a quiet spot to settle in. This magical adventure will keep you reading all night, and it will stay with you long after the first book ends.

  Don’t worry. Book two and a support group will be waiting.

  Are you ready?

  Welcome to the world of Saphera Nyx.

  For my loving husband, Chris.

  Who’s always wanted me to write about

  zombies and orgies.

  * * *

  Sorry, babe. This still isn’t it.

  Chapter One

  My breaths whooshed, shallow and quick, against the body armor cinched tightly across my breasts. I leapt over a fallen tree, clanging the bones in my ankle when my boot landed hard in a puddle. Thick, heavy mud slashed my pant leg as the flashlight beam danced wildly through the tall pines.

  Neither of us could keep up this pace for long. My lungs burned as I sucked in the crisp fall air.

  “Suspect considered armed,” dispatch said in my ear.

  I swore, panting, as I sidestepped a rotten tree trunk. “Teek . . . don’t make me . . . shoot you!”

  He gave a high-pitched squeal. “You’ll never take me alive!”

  I swore again.

  In the moonlight up ahead, Corbin “Teek” Fleming was slowing. A good sign for me and my screaming thighs. I slipped the hood off my holster. “Let me see your hands!”

  He tripped and pitched forward, losing his bag of potato chips in an explosive shower above his head. I caught up as he tried to scramble to his feet. Securing my gun, I tackled him into the pine needles and dirt. “Don’t you fight me!”

  Teek squirmed, his torso making a loud crunching sound. More chips, I assumed. Something was in his left hand. I straddled his back, holding his arms with my knees, and shined my flashlight on what he was holding. It was long and black, with a green tip. I looked over the rest of him. Bright red T-shirt, pants barely hanging onto his ass, and one safety-yellow sneaker. The other foot was bare.

  I panned back to his hand. “Is that a sock over a cucumber?”

  “No.”

  I reached for his “gun.” He twisted, and I rocked forward on my knees until he yelped and stopped moving. I yanked the vegetable away and pulled off the sock. “Oh, you’re right. It’s a zucchini.” I tossed it onto the ground and pulled his arm back behind him. “Anybody else might have shot you, you know that?”

  “I’m a lone wolf, Nyx. Wanted, dead or alive.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I handcuffed his right wrist and called into dispatch. “Delta Three, suspect in custody.”

  I pulled Teek to his feet. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was hungry.” A potato chip was lodged in the strawberry-blond scruff that hid his chin dimple.

  “So you held up the Mini Market with a squash, while an army of police officers hung out in the parking lot? Genius.”

  “They’re gonna write books about me.”

  “Sure they are. How’d you get here?”

  “I ran.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I am fully aware of how you got in the woods. How did you get to the gas station?”

  “Oh, I walked.” He lifted his face toward the moon and howled. It was a long walk around the lake from the Boro, and Teek didn’t have a driver’s license or a car.

  Officer Brian Everly, the newest member of the eight-person Delta team, met up with us halfway through the woods, on our way back. He was young and lanky, in desperate need of some protein shakes and a treadmill.

  “You got him?” He was panting, doubled over to grip his knees.

  “Yeah, I got him. Are you gonna make it, Everly?” I slapped his chest as I escorted Teek past him.

  “I was right behind you.”

  “Yeah, when we left the parking lot.” I flashed a grin over my shoulder.

  “You’re so funny.” Everly started after us. “Hey, where’s his shoe?”

  “Who knows? Apparently, lone wolves don’t need shoes. Right, Teek?”

  “That’s right,” he said proudly.

  Everly fell into step beside me. “Did you get his weapon?”

  I laughed. “Yep. I’ll probably make a salad later.”

  “What?”

  “He wasn’t armed.”

  “I have arms,” Teek said, rattling his handcuffs.

  “Is he high?” Everly asked.

  “The story is he’s been high for a couple of years. His friends say he ate a handful of acid tabs and never came back.”

  Teek stumbled. “Drugs are bad. Just say no.”

  Looking at Everly, I gestured toward Teek as if to say, “See?”

  “Wow,” Everly said.

  “Get used to seeing him. I’ve taken him to Sterling Heights at least three times this year.”

  “No Sterling Frights,” Teek said, cringing. Sterling Heights was the mental health center.

  “Oh, you’re going to jail tonight, my friend. That’s what happens when you rob people and run.”

  Only three squad cars remained in the parking lot of the Mini Market when we emerged from the woods. Eric Jones was standing by his door, eating a corndog. Jones was tall and thick muscled. A fellow combat vet with a shiny, bald black head. Bright-yellow mustard was smeared from the corner of his mouth up his cheek.

  He swallowed the bite in his mouth and grinned at me. “Beefing up your resume with an armed-robbery capture?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure the board will be very impressed by a suspect armed with a zucchini.”

  “Huh?”

  “It wasn’t a gun. It was a zucchini inside his sock.”

  Jones bit down on the insides of his lips.

  “You said it was a squash,” Teek said.

  I closed my e
yes and took a deep breath.

  “You got him?” a woman yelled from the door of the convenience store.

  I waved. “We got him, Sally!”

  “Thank you, Nyx!” Sally Penrod, the night-shift clerk, held up a thumb and walked back inside.

  “Where’s everybody else?” I asked Jones.

  “Called to handle a ‘delicate matter’”—Jones used air quotes—“at the Drexler. So, of course, everyone is headed that way.”

  “You going too?”

  “Bet your ass.”

  I chuckled.

  With lakeview chalets going for over $10,000 per night, the swanky resort, golf course, and casino drew an always-interesting clientele. The last time we were called to handle something “delicate,” a hammered and naked Hollywood A-lister (not naming names) was tearing up the hotel golf course with a Bugatti.

  Needless to say, no one was missing out this time.

  Jones looked down. “Where’s his shoe?”

  I tugged on Teek’s arm. “Did you stash it somewhere around here?”

  Teek lifted both shoulders and his eyebrows.

  “Guess you’re going to jail without it. Come on.” I walked Teek to my unmarked black patrol car and opened the back door. He stepped into my back seat, and as I reached to hold his blond head . . .

  Kaboom!

  All our heads whipped in the direction of the lake. Smoke billowed up through the moonlight from somewhere around the Drexler Resort and Casino.

  “That wasn’t me,” Teek said, breaking our stunned silence.

  “Officer down!” Corporal Mason Baker yelled, breathless, over the frequency.

  My heart stopped.

  “Explosion at the Drexler, north side, near the chalets. We need medical!”

  Jones tossed what was left of his corndog into his car.

  “Who else is there?” I demanded as I hurried Teek into the back seat.

  “Sarge and Rivera, I think,” Jones replied, getting in his driver’s seat.

  Everly was still frozen to the concrete. “Get in your damn car!” I yelled at him as I got behind my wheel.

  “I’ve never driven Code Three by myself.” His eyes were as wide as the moon above us.

  “Go!” I slammed my door and flipped on my lights and siren. Then I floored the gas pedal.

  My radio beeped as I followed Jones onto the highway. “Delta One,” a deep, winded voice said.

  My heart eased a bit.

  “Go ahead, Delta One,” dispatch replied.

  “All officers are OK and accounted for,” Sergeant “Sarge” Essex said.

  I exhaled fully for the first time since the explosion.

  “Roll medical and fire. Possible casualties inside Chalet One-Ten on the golf course.”

  At ninety miles per hour down the winding mountain pass, Jones, Everly, and I peeled through the entrance of the Drexler before Sergeant Tyler Essex even stopped reporting over the radio. In my back seat, Teek wailed along with the siren, the perfect soundtrack for the adrenaline surging through my veins.

  “Holy shit!” I said when I rounded the steep curve toward the back of the golf course.

  The chalet, once a bi-level, wood-and-stone marvel that faced the sixteenth hole on one side and Sapphire Lake on the other, was now split down the middle. Raging flames devoured the crevice, pumping black-and-gray smoke toward the few visible stars. Even at the bottom of the hill, the smoke stung my eyes, giving the flecks of rising embers a watery glow.

  I parked beside Sergeant Essex’s unmarked black SUV and opened my door. “Teek, sit tight.”

  He didn’t answer; his face was plastered to the polycarbonate front wall of my caged back seat, the flames dancing in his pupils.

  I pulled my undershirt up over my nose to block the acrid smoke. “Everly, watch Teek!” I yelled as I ran past him toward the scene. Jones was right behind me as the first fire truck pulled in.

  The silhouettes of two men, one significantly larger than the other, were coming down the hill toward us. The smaller one was limping. When I was close enough, I made out a black police uniform and a black suit. The officer was my boss, and the giant dressed like a penguin was my older brother, Ransom, head of night security for the hotel.

  Ransom had grown a short beard since last I’d seen him, and his dark-walnut hair had some kind of faux hawk thing happening in the center. Something I’d definitely give him shit about later.

  For now, all I cared about was that he and Essex were safe. “You all right?” I asked both of them, carefully searching my brother for blood.

  Ransom shook my hand off his arm. “I’m fine. You?” he asked Essex.

  My boss’s face was covered with ash and a few small cuts. “Yeah, I’m OK.” His limp down the hill said otherwise.

  Ransom peeled off his jacket and tossed it to the ground. His ruined shirt was only recognizable as white by its sleeves. “Damn, that was close though.”

  I looked back toward my car. “Everly! There’s a case of water in my trunk. Bring some over.”

  He nodded.

  Officer Jadon Rivera jogged down the hill behind them. Rivera was our shift’s reigning asshole, but I was thankful to see him in one piece.

  “You good?” Essex asked him.

  Rivera gave a thumbs-up. Soot streaked his face.

  “What the hell happened?” Jones asked.

  Essex took a few deep breaths. “Some people walking on the beach heard screaming inside the unit. They called hotel security.” He tipped his head toward my brother. “When Ransom couldn’t get an answer, they called us.”

  “There was nothing but silence by the time I got here,” Ransom said.

  “Why didn’t you go in?” I asked him.

  “I knocked, even tried my master key, but the lock was disabled. It was like all the power was out in the chalet.”

  My brow lifted with surprise. “You didn’t break down the door?”

  In his wilder days, my brother had been an MMA fighter. And at six two and two hundred five pounds of solid muscle, a door couldn’t have stood in his way if Ransom had been determined to get through it.

  “It’s company policy to call the police before forcing entry.” He looked back at the building. “Maybe that was a mistake.”

  “Or maybe it would have gotten you killed too.” I squeezed his arm, thankful he was alive.

  Rivera looked from Ransom to me and back again. “You two know each other?”

  “My brother.” There was no time for formal introductions.

  Everly came over, cradling an armful of water bottles. As he passed out water, Corporal Mason Baker joined us.

  A former semi-pro linebacker, Baker towered over the rest of us, even Ransom. In addition to our normal patrol shift, Baker and I were both part of the SWAT team, a specialty unit called out to resolve high-risk tactical situations.

  Baker swiped the back of his hand over his brow, leaving a sweat smear through the ash speckling his forehead. “Sarge, I’ve got units blocking the roads up here, but we probably should put someone on the beach.”

  “Everly, go down and block beach access—”

  I stopped Essex. “Everly’s busy.”

  “With?”

  “Guarding my suspect in custody.”

  “Babysitting seems about Everly’s speed,” Rivera said with an eye roll.

  Essex spoke into his radio. “Delta One, I need units blocking beach access. Nobody on or off the golf course.”

  “Delta Five, en route,” Chris McCollum responded.

  “Delta Six, en route,” Cameron Legieza said.

  “Ransom, does the hotel have barriers handy?” Essex asked.

  “Already on the way,” Ransom answered.

  The firefighters were knocking down the flames, but it was clear the chalet was a total loss.

  “What caused the explosion?” Jones asked.

  Essex turned toward the dying inferno and shook his head. “No clue. I was looking in the front window when it blew
. In seconds, the whole place went up in flames.”

  “Gas leak?” Rivera asked.

  “The hotel doesn’t use gas,” Ransom answered between sips of water.

  “Did you see anything inside?” I asked Essex.

  “Just the glass blowing at me.”

  I walked closer to him and examined his face. Blood drizzled from a cut across his cheek. “You’re bleeding.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the napkin left from the gas-station dinner I didn’t get to finish. I dabbed it against the cut.

  “I’m fine, Nyx.” He took the napkin from me and held it against the cut himself. “No way the same is true for whoever was inside.”

  “Who was it?” I asked.

  “We didn’t get that far.” Essex looked at Ransom. “Who was staying in this chalet?”

  Ransom looked nervous, a rare emotion for my brother. “Ryder Stone.”

  “Who?” Essex asked, because if someone was famous for anything outside ESPN or crime action drama, he was lost.

  I leaned toward him. “The son of country singer Shooter Stone. They had a reality show called The Family Stones.”

  Essex lifted both shoulders.

  Baker looked down at me and cocked an eyebrow. “I’m a little surprised you know that, Nyx.”

  “Our grandfather loves that show,” Ransom said.

  “I heard he was in town with his girlfriend, filming an episode of Romancing the Stars,” Jones said.