Hard Days Night (The Firsts Book 8) (8 page)

“Yeah, I can live with that plan.”

“Okay. You’ll be okay until I come back?”

Mal shoved him hard enough to knock him through the doorway and into the small, but charming living room.

“Like I need a babysitter.  Get out of here.  Try to be back before I die of starvation.”

Luka grabbed the keys to
Mal’s SUV, his expression suddenly serious.

“I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, Mal, you know that?”

“Get out of here,” she barked.

Nodding, Luka took off
down the long gravel driveway and disappeared around a line of trees that stood sentry for Captain Kordalis’s property.

Wandering to the back of the house once again, Mal opened the doors that led off of the living room onto the main balcony.  The cool ocean air felt like sprinkles of magic on her overheated skin.  She moaned, her eyes closed, and just immersed herself in the moment.  Peace.
Nothing and no one needing her to do something, fix something, or chase something or someone. 

Damn, it felt good to just be still and breathe
.

A sling-back couch took up the corner of the balcony so she dropped onto it and leaned
into it to let her body relax.  She watched the ocean move under a strangely shaped moon that illuminated the landscape with its reflected light.  With slow deliberation, the waves moved in, scattered its water onto the soft sand, then rolled away again.  Ummm, Mal thought.  I could really sleep here.

Sleep. 
God, she was going to sleep! 

A low rumble in her belly told her that first, she needed some dinner.  While it was well past dinnertime for most normal people, for her and Luka, there was no normal.  Dinner came when they finished for the night, and that was often late. 
Like now.

Her head swiveled back towards the small kitchen.  He said he b
rought chips and beer.

“As good a start as any,” she murmured out loud and got
up to head to the refrigerator for a cold beer.

Plopping
onto a barstool at a high counter in the kitchen, she popped open a sweating can of beer.  On the counter sat a police scanner and she glanced at it, then turned it on.  With Luka gone, she was a little bored, so she began to toy with it.  After several minutes, it began to intercept some signals.  The calls were infrequent, and a few of them were no more than greetings between the female dispatcher and two male officers out on calls.

“Small towns,” she murmured as she took a long swallow
of beer and listened to the dispatcher flirting with both of the officers.

“Better be careful, dearie. Don’t shit where you eat,” Mal said out loud to her audience of one.

But the girl seemed comfortable with playing them off against each other.

“This isn’t going to turn out well,” Mal mused, reaching for a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips.  Luka did have good taste in junk food.  Although, it was junk food…how could you go wrong?

The two officers were on different calls on opposite sides of the town, and after several minutes of listening to quiet chatter that was significantly less interesting than the view of the ocean, Mal stood to turn the unit off.  Suddenly, she heard the dispatcher say that there was a body on the beach.  A naked male with a single gunshot to the head.  Some four-wheelers had found him.

Both of the officers responded but said it would be a little while before they arrived.  Listening to the address, Mal realized it wa
s just down the street from where she was.  She grabbed the landline, and yes, the captain had the local police station on auto-dial, thanks.  Pressing the button, she waited while the phone was answered.

“Tremont P.D.” a man
answered, his graveled voice a little impatient.

“Hey, listen, you don’t know me, but I’m a homicide detective from L.A. here on vacation and I heard the call about the body at the beach.
  I know your officers are otherwise engaged, and I’d be happy to secure the scene until they arrive.  I’m staying at Jeffrey Kordalis’s beach house.  You know him, I’m sure?”

“What’s your name, detective?”

“Mal Kalani.”

“He’s spoken of you. 
Actually, recently. He called and told me you would be staying at his place.  Uh, yeah, if that wouldn’t put you out, I’d appreciate it, just until one of my officers can arrive.  I’m with a non-custodial parental abduction, or I’d go.  The victim was found by some guys out joy riding on the beach, but they couldn’t stick around.  So, if you could just make sure the scene is undisturbed, I should be able to have one of my boys there within thirty minutes.”

“Happy to help.
I’ll head out now.”

Mal wrote a quick note to Luka, looked around until she found a nice million candle power flashlight lantern, and picked up the keys to Luka’s bike.  She’d ridden before, not recently, and not often.  Looking at the big motorcycle, she hesitated.

“Aw, it’s just a bicycle on steroids. You’ve got this.”

And she did.  After a shaky start, she hit the pavement and the open road.  God, did that feel good.  Bev and the Captain had been right.  The trauma of this situation aside, this time away from work had been desperately needed.
  Sadly, she arrived at the address in too short a time, and promised herself as she pushed the kickstand in place, and got off the bike, that she would have Luka take her out for a long ride.

Engaging the light, she easily found her GSW victim.  Before the
y left, the guys who’d found him had covered him with an old blanket they’d had with them for a picnic.

She pulled the
blanket back to look at his face.  God, he was big.  And probably the handsomest man she had ever seen.  What a shame.  She held the light closer and dropped down to study him.

It was a perfect face.  Even in death, he was beautiful.  She was sorry she would never see him smile or open his eyes, it had to be incredible.

Moving closer, she felt for a pulse in his neck.  No, he was definitely deceased.

Mal was pretty sure that
, alive, he would have blown her away.  She smiled sadly.  Her friends would have laughed their asses off if she told them that the first man she’d even been attracted to in years was a gorgeous corpse lying abandoned on a stretch of lonely highway on a warm summer night.

The single bullet hole
arranged in the middle of his forehead was so obscene because, otherwise, he looked like he was sleeping.  She wanted to run her fingers across his cheek and tell him he was going to be fine.

But forensics had yet to arrive.  And he wasn’t going to be fine.  He was done with the joys and strife of living.

Sighing, she stood up, but couldn’t bring herself to cover that stunning face again.  She pulled the blanket back to check his body for other wounds.  The sight of his naked body was every bit as erotically sexy as his face, and she shook her head. 
God, was he incredible
.  She couldn’t stop looking at him.  Heavily muscled arms and chest, flat hard abdominals and beneath,
nestled between his legs
…

She threw the blanket back over his body quickly.

This job required the detachment she had long ago perfected.  Getting justice for the murdered was what she did, what she
was
for much of her life.  Stepping into their lives, their stories, was just normal for her.  She rarely had an emotional reaction.  You couldn’t.   If you were to be effective in finding the creeps responsible for these people’s deaths, it was a requirement.  Cold, analytical, effective.  Work the job. Miss nothing.  Find the perp.  Justice achieved for the victim, if nothing else.  Wrap up their story. 
Next!

And speaking of…  Glancing around, she began to search the terrain while she waited for someone from this
city’s police department to arrive. She needed to stop thinking about how amazingly gorgeous this man was.  He was just a victim. If he’d been
her
assignment, she would eat, sleep, and breathe this man until she did her job for him.  She would owe him her best, and the arrest of the asshole who did this to him. 

Squatting again, she started to reach out for him and let her hand pause just above his lips.

“I’m sorry handsome.  We’ll catch him.  Or her. Was it a lover scorned?  I could see that.  She couldn’t let you go. She vowed that if she couldn’t have you, no one would.  Or a jealous rival?  No man could stand up to you.  Not your real story?  We’ll find it.  If you were mine to work, I’d know you better than you knew yourself before I was done.  Just listen, don’t make me fall in love with you, too.  Don’t need the complication.”

She started to get up when she thought she saw his lips part.  Closing her eyes briefly, she shook her head
before she opened them again, but he was as still as he should be for a dead man.

Mal snorted a laugh.  “One beer and I’m hallucinating?”

Maybe she should cover his face back up and quit musing about him.  Leaning over to do exactly that, she pulled the blanket back up and just as she was going to drop it back over the victim’s face, he drew a breath.

She was so
startled, she fell back on her ass, shocked, and scrambled to regain her footing.

What the hell!

No way.
No fucking way!

Standing again, she walked back over and squatted down to look
more closely at him.  He hadn’t moved, but he
was
breathing.  Shallowly, unevenly, but he
was
breathing. 

“How the
hell are you alive?” she whispered, and squatted once more to feel for his carotid pulse.  But she never felt it, because as her fingers touched his skin, which was still very warm, he began to sit up.

Whether a combination of caution or fear, Mal pushed herself away from him again.
  Nothing like this had ever happened. 

His eyes opened while she was considering what to do next, and he pushed the blanket away from his body.

“Hot,” he whispered, and tried to stand.  But he stumbled a little and Mal, on instinct, surged towards him and slid her arms around his waist.

“I’ve got you, you’re okay. I don’t, uh, know
how
you’re okay, but you are.”

The man, seeking stability and perhaps some human contact, had also slid his arms around Mal, his fingers resting too close to her breasts for comfort, but she didn’t try to move them.  He had just survived a near-death
experience, she would cut him some slack.

“I need to get my phone and call for an ambulance.”

He shook his head, and his eyes met Mal’s.

“No, you don’t.  Look at me, please.”

Mal lifted her eyes to his and felt a white-hot heat in her temples.

“You will not call anyone.  Hand me your phone.”

Mal watched her hand lift as she gave her cell phone to the naked man who had just come back from the dead.  She tried to fight the act, tried to keep the phone in her own hand, but she couldn’t do it. 
Nothing
about this was right.  Shaking her head to try to clear the fuzziness, and finally succeeding, she looked up at the walking dead man.  He smiled, and she remembered thinking that she would like to have seen that.  Damn, it was brilliant, and still shocking, because it should have been impossible.

How was a man with a bullet hole in his forehead, and no pulse, standing here with his arms around
her.  Also, what the hell had happened, that she just gave him her phone?

“Thank you
,” he said, and gently released her.  “I’m sorry to do that to you, but I can’t have you calling the authorities.  I don’t need medical care.”

Mal pushed away from him.
“You were dead moments ago. You need to be in the hospital right now.”

“No, I do not.  You can see I am fine.”

“Except for a hole in your forehead, buddy.  Look, I’m an L.A. detective, and I was sent here because you were dead.  You were
dead
, you understand?  How you’re standing here, I don’t know, but what I do know is that you were shot, almost point blank, in the forehead, and I need to call an ambulance to get you to a hospital immediately.  Sir, your life depends on it.”

“It doesn’t.  Please, forget…”

“I can’t believe I’m arguing with a dead man.  Give me back my phone.  Do you hear me?  Damn, I hate to be yelling at a man with a fatal wound, but give me my fucking phone.”

Ahmose watched the beautiful human woman
with eyes the color of fresh, new moss demanding that he obey her.  He found it amusing and charming, so much so, he couldn’t bring himself to compel her to stop.  

His situation, though, wasn’t
amusing.  Lamont had made an attempt on his life.  Since it was obvious he knew where Ahmose was, he needed to get the hell out of here tonight.  Only it was getting closer to daylight, and he preferred not to fly during those times.  Of greater importance was the fact that he still had a lot of healing to do before he was well enough to use his skills effectively.  His balance was unsteady, and his vision fluctuating, not unexpected with the severity of his wound.  It could take some time to recover after dying.