Samantha Moon: First Eight Novels, Plus One Novella (26 page)

“I need to soak these in ice,” he said. “But if I soak these in ice, the women here will think I’m a pussycat.”

I leaned over and kissed him on his sweating forehead. The blush that emanated from him was instant, spreading from his balding head, down into his neck.

“But you are a pussycat,” I said.

“
Well, you’re a freak of nature, Sam.”

Jacky, of course, didn’t realize how freaky I was. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of people who knew how freaky I was.

“You could be a world champion,” he said. Now we were making our way over to the big punching bag.

“
I’m too old to be a world champion,” I said. Jacky was always trying to get me to fight professionally.

He snorted. “You’re, what, thirty?”

“Thirty-one, and thank you.”

However, Jacky was closer than he thought. I was indeed thirty-seven calendar years old, but I was frozen in a thirty-one year old’s body.

The age I was when I was attacked.

Granted, if a girl had to pick an age to be immortalized in, well, thirty-one would probably be near the top of her list.

And what happens ten years from now when you’re forty-seven but still look thirty-one? Or when your daughter is thirty-one and you still look thirty-one?

I didn’t know, but I would cross that bridge when I got there.

Jacky took up his position behind the punching bag. “So what’s eating at you anyway, Sam?”

“
Everything,” I said. I started punching the bag, moving around it as if it were an actual opponent, using the precise body movements Jacky had taught me. Ducking and weaving. Jabs. Hooks. Hard straight shots. Punches that would have broken jaws and teeth and noses. Jacky bared his teeth and absorbed the punches on the other side of the bag like the champion he was, or used to be. I took a small breather. So did Jacky. Sweat poured from my brow.

“
Let me guess,” said Jacky, gasping slightly, and looking as if he had taken actual physical shots to his own body. “Is it that no-good ex-husband of yours?”

“
Good guess.”

“
Does he realize you could kick his arse from here to Dublin?”

“
He realizes that,” I said. “And why Dublin?”

“
National pride,” he said. “So why don’t you go kick his fucking arse?”

“
Because kicking ass isn’t always the answer, Jacky.”

“
Works for me,” he said.

“
We’ll call that
Plan B
.”

“
Would be my
Plan A
. A good arse-kicking always clears the air.”

I laughed. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Break’s over. Hands up.”

He leaned back into the bag and I unleashed another furious onslaught. Pretending the bag was my ex-husband was doing wonders for me.

“You’re sweating like a pig, Sam,” screamed Jacky. “I like that!”

“
You like pig sweat?”

He just shook his head and screamed at me to keep my fists up. I grinned and unleashed a flurry of punches that rocked the bag and nearly sent little Jacky flying, and attracted a small group of women who gathered nearby to watch the freak.

And as I punched and sweated and kept my fists up, I knew that fighting Danny wasn’t the answer. Luckily, there were other ways to fight back.

Chapter Five

After a long shower and a few phone calls to some friends working in the federal government, I was at El Torito Bar and Grill in Brea—just a hop, skip and a jump from my hotel.

I was wearing jeans and a turtle neck sweater. Not because it was cold outside, but because I looked so damn cute in turtle neck sweaters. The stiff-looking man sitting across from me seemed to think so, too. Special Agent Greg Lomax, lead investigator with the FBI, was in full flirt mode, and it was all I could do to keep him on track. Maybe I shouldn’t have looked so cute, after all.

Damn my cuteness.

El Torito is loud and open. The loudness and openness was actually of benefit for anyone having a private conversation, which was probably why Greg had chosen it.

Personally, I found the noise level here a bit overwhelming, but then again, I’m also just a sweet and sensitive woman.

It was either that or my supernaturally acute hearing that quite literally picked up every clattering dish, scraping fork, and far ruder sounds best not described. And, of course, picked up the babble of ceaseless conversations. If I wanted to I could generally make out any individual conversation within any room. Handy for a P.I., trust me. Granted, I couldn’t hear through walls or anything, but sounds that most people could hear, well, I could just hear that much better.

“
Lots of people over at HUD talk very highly of you,” he said.

“
I gave them the best seven years of my life,” I said.

“
And then you came down with some sort of, what, rare skin disease or something?”

“
Or something,” I said.

“
Now you work private,” he said.

“
Yes. A P.I.”

“
How’s that working out?”

“
It’s good to be my own boss,” I said. “Now I give myself weekly pay raises and extra long coffee breaks.”

He grinned. “That’s cute. Anyway, I was told to tell you what I could. So ask away. If I can’t talk about something, or I just don’t know the answer, I’ll tell you.”

We were sitting opposite each other in a far booth in the far corner of the bar. I was sipping some house zinfandel, and he was drinking a Jack and Coke. White wine and water were about the only two liquids I could consume. Well, that and something else.

Just thinking about that
something else
immediately turned my stomach.

I said, “So do you think the crash was an accident?”

“You get right to the point,” he said. “I like that.”

“
Must be the investigator in me.”

He nodded, drank some more Jack and Coke. “No, this wasn’t an accident. We know that much.”

“How do you know that?”

He smiled. “We just know.”

“Okay. So how did the plane crash?”

“
All signs point to sabotage.”

“
Sabotage how?”

He was debating how much to tell me. I could almost see the wheels working behind his flirtatious eyes. No doubt he was computing the amount of information he could still give me and still not give up any real government secrets, and yet leave me satisfied enough to sleep with him tonight. A complex formula for sure.

Men are better at math than they realize.

He said, “Someone planted a small explosive in the rudder gears. The pilot heard the explosion, reported it immediately, and then reported that he had lost all control of the plane. Ten minutes later the plane crashed into the side of the San Bernardino Mountains.”

“And everyone on board was killed?”

“
Yes. Instantly.”

“
Is there any reason to believe that these key witnesses were killed to keep them from testifying?”

“
There is every reason to believe that. It’s the only motive we have.” He drank the rest of his Jack and Coke. “Except there’s one problem: our number one suspect was in jail at the time of the crash.”

The waiter came by and dropped off another drink for Greg. Perhaps the waiters here at El Torito Bar and Grill were psychic. Greg picked up his drink and sipped it.

“It would take a lot of pull to sabotage a military plane,” I said.

“
Not as much as you might think,” said Greg. “This was a DC-12, and the contract the government has with them stipulates that the makers of the planes get to use their own mechanics.”

“
So the mechanic was a civilian.”

“
Yes.”

“
Have you found the mechanic?”

“
Yeah,” he said. “Dead in his apartment in L.A.”

“
How did he die?”

“
Gunshot in the mouth.”

“
Suicide?”

“
We’re working on it.”

I followed up with this some more, but Greg seemed to have reached the limit of what he was willing to tell me.

Greg motioned to my half-finished drink. “You going to finish that?”

“
Probably not.”

“
You want to head over to my place and, you know, talk some more about what it’s like giving yourself raises?”

I said, “When you say ‘talk’ don’t you really mean boff my brains out?”

He grinned and reddened. I reached over and patted his superheated face.

“
You’ll just have to give yourself a raise tonight,” I said, and left him my card. “Call me if you hear anything new.”

“
But I live right around the cor—”

“
Sorry,” I said. “But your calculations were off.”

I smiled sweetly and left.

Chapter Six

We were at the beach, sitting on the wooden deck of a lifeguard tower. The sign on the lifeguard tower said no sitting on the wooden deck.

“
We’re breaking the law,” I said.

Kingsley Fulcrum turned his massive head toward the sign above us. As he did so, some of the moonlight caught his cheek bones and strong nose and got lost somewhere in the shaggy curls that hung on his beefy shoulders.

“We are risking much to be here,” he said. “If we get caught, our super secret identities may be discovered.”

I said, “Especially if I show up invisible in the mug shot.”

Kingsley shook his head.

“
You vampires are weird,” he said.

“
This coming from a guy who howls at every full moon.”

He chuckled lightly as a small, cold wind scurried over my bare feet. Before us, the dark ocean stretched black and eternal. Small, frothing whitecaps slapped the shore. In the far distance, twinkling on the curve of the horizon, were the many lights of Catalina Island. Between us and Catalina were the much brighter lights of a dozen or so oil rigs. The beach itself was mostly quiet, although two or three couples were currently smooching on blankets here and there. They probably thought they were mostly hidden under the cover of darkness. They probably hadn’t accounted for a vampire with built-in night vision watching them. A gyrating couple, about two hundred feet away up the beach, might have been doing the nasty.

Kingsley turned to me. I always liked the way the bridge of his nose angled straight up to his forehead. Very Roman. And very hot.

He said, “You became a private investigator after you were changed?”

“Yes.”

“
So that means you took your P.I. photo when you were a vampire.”

“
Yes.”

“
So how did you manage that?”

“
I wore a lot of make up that day,” I said smugly, proud of myself. I had wondered what to do about the photo, too.

“
So the make up showed up, even though you didn’t?”

“
Yes, exactly. I even made sure I blinked when the picture was taken.”

“
Just in case your eye sockets came up empty.”

“
Exactly.”

“
You could have worn colored contacts,” said Kingsley.

“
But then the whites of my eyes would have come up empty,” I said.

He nodded. “So you sacrificed your vanity.”

“I might look like a major dork in the picture, but at least I look human. Granted, if you look close enough, there is a blank spot somewhere near my throat, where I had missed a patch of skin, but not too many people are looking at my throat.”

“
No,” said Kingsley. “They’re looking at the dork with her eyes closed.”

I punched him in the arm. The force of my blow knocked him sideways.

“Ouch!” He rubbed his arm and grinned at me, and the light from the half moon touched his square teeth. Kingsley was a successful defense attorney in Orange County. A few months ago, he had hired me to investigate a murder attempt on his life. His case had come at a difficult time in my life. Not only had I just caught my husband cheating, the bastard had the gall to kick me out of my own home.

A very difficult time, to say the least. The wounds were still fresh and I was still hurting.