I sipped my milkshake. “She won’t like it, but she will support me. She happens to think very highly of me and my decisions.”
He snorted and finished his sandwich, grabbed his Styrofoam cup.
“
I can’t believe I was bribed with a shitty tuna sandwich and a Coke.”
“
A simple man with simple needs.”
“
I should resent that remark, if it wasn’t so true.” He stood. “I gotta run. Good luck with the kid, but I think it’s a lost cause. Kid even has a record.”
“
What kind?”
“
Vandalism, mostly. He’s a goner. Hear they’re gonna try him as an adult.”
Detective Hanson left with his Styrofoam cup. I noticed he wasn’t wearing socks. Even cops in Huntington Beach are cool.
3.
Cindy Darwin is an anthropology professor at UCI. Her expertise is in the anthropology of religion, which, she tells me, is an important aspect of anthropology. And, yes, she can trace her lineage back to Charles Darwin, which makes her a sort of icon in her field. She knows more things about anthropology than she probably should, and too few things about the real world. Maybe that’s why she keeps me around.
It was late and we were walking hand-in-hand along the Huntington Pier. From here we could see the lights of Catalina Island, where the reclusive sorts live and travel via ferry and plane. To the north, in the far distance, we could see Long Beach glittering away. The air was cool and windy and we were dressed in light jackets and jeans. Her jeans were much snugger and more form-fitting than mine. As they should be.
“
I’m thinking of giving San Diego a call,” I said.
“
Who’s in San Diego?” she asked. She had a slightly higher pitched voice than most women. I found it endlessly sexy. She said her voice made it easier to holler across an assembly hall. Gave it more range, or something.
I was silent. She put two and two together. She let go of my hand.
“
They call you again?” she asked. “The Rams, right?”
“
The Chargers. Christ, Cindy, your own brother plays on the team.”
“
I think it’s all sort of silly. Football, I mean. And all those silly mascots, I just don’t get it.”
“
The mascots help us boys tell the teams apart,” I said. “And, no, they didn’t call. But I’m thinking about their last offer.”
“
Honey, that was two years ago.”
She was right. I turned them down two years ago. My leg hadn’t felt strong enough.
“
The leg’s better now,” I said.
“
Bullshit. You still limp.”
“
Not as much. And when I workout, I feel the strength again.”
“
But you still have metal pins it.”
“
Lots of players play with pins.”
“
Have you told Rob yet?” she asked. Rob was her brother, the Chargers fourth wide receiver. Rob had introduced me to Cindy during college.
“
Yes.”
“
What does he think?”
“
He thinks it’s a good idea.”
We stopped walking and leaned over the heavy wooden rail. The air was suffused with brine and salt. Waves crashed beneath us, whitecaps glowing in the moonlight. A lifeguard Jeep was parked next to us, a quarter into the ocean on the pier. All that extra weight on the pier made me nervous.
“
Why now?” she asked finally.
“
My window is rapidly closing,” I said.
“
Not to mention you’ve always wondered if you could do it.”
“
Not to mention.”
“
And you’re frustrated out of your gourd that a fucking leg injury has prevented you from finding this out.”
“
Such language from an anthropologist.”
She sighed and hugged me around my waist. She was exactly a foot shorter than me, which made hugging easy, and kissing difficult.
“
So what do you think?” I asked.
“
I think you’re frustrated and angry and that you need to do this.”
“
Not to mention I might just make a hell of a fullback.”
“
Is he the one who throws the ball?”
We had gone over this precisely one hundred and two times.
“
No, but close.”
She snuggled closer, burying her sharp chin deep into my side. It tickled. If I wasn’t so tough I would have laughed.
“
Just don’t get yourself hurt.”
“
I don’t plan to, but these things have a way of taking you by surprise.”
“
So are you really that good?” she asked, looking up at me.
“
I’m going to find out.”
She looked away. “If you make the team, things will change.”
I hugged her tighter. “I know.”
Read the First Three Chapters of Kindle’s #1 Bestselling Vampire Novel
Moon Dance
Vampire for Hire #1
by
J.R. Rain
1.
I was folding laundry in the dark and watching Judge Judy rip this guy a new asshole when the doorbell rang.
I flipped down a pair of Oakley wrap-around sunglasses and, still holding a pair of little
A
nthony’s cotton briefs in one hand, opened the front door.
The light, still painfully bright, poured in from outside. I squinted behind my shades and could just made out the image of a UPS deliveryman.
And, oh, what an image it was.
As my eyes adjusted to the light, a hunky guy with tan legs and beefy arms materialized through the screen door before me. He grinned at me easily, showing off a perfect row of white teeth. Spiky yellow hair protruded from under his brown cap. The guy should have been a model, or at least my new best friend.
“
Mrs. Moon?” he asked. His eyes seemed particularly searching and hungry, and I wondered if I had stepped onto the set of a porno movie. Interestingly, a sort of warning bell sounded in my head. Warning bells are tricky to discern, and I automatically assumed this one was telling me to stay away from Mr. Beefy, or risk damaging my already rocky marriage.
“
You got her,” I said easily, ignoring the warning bells.
“
I’ve got a package here for you.”
“
You don’t say.”
“
I’ll need for you to sign the delivery log.” He held up an electronic gizmo-thingy that must have been the aforementioned delivery log.
“
I’m sure you do,” I said, and opened the screen door and stuck a hand out. He looked at my very pale hand, paused, and then placed the electronic thing-a-majig in it. As I signed it, using a plastic-tipped pen, my signature appeared in the display box as an arthritic mess. The deliveryman watched me intently through the screen door. I don’t like to be watched intently. In fact, I prefer to be ignored and forgotten.
“
Do you always wear sunglasses indoors?” he asked casually, but I sensed his hidden question:
And what sort of freak are you?
“
Only during the day. I find them redundant at night.” I opened the screen door again and exchanged the log doohickey for a small square package. “Thank you,” I said. “Have a good day.”
He nodded and left, and I watched his cute little buns for a moment longer, and then shut the solid oak door completely. Sweet darkness returned to my home. I pulled up the sunglasses and sat down in a particularly worn dining room chair. Someday I was going to get these things re-upholstered.
The package was heavily taped, but a few deft strokes of my painted red nail took care of all that. I opened the lid and peered inside. Shining inside was an ancient golden medallion. An intricate Celtic cross was engraved across the face of it, and embedded within the cross, formed by precisely cut rubies, were three red roses.
In the living room, Judge Judy was calmly explaining to the defendant what an idiot he was. Although I agreed, I turned the TV off, deciding that this medallion needed my full concentration.
After all, it was the same medallion worn by my attacker six years earlier.
2.
There was no return address and no note. Other than the medallion, the box was empty. I left the gleaming artifact in the box and shut the lid. Seeing it again brought back some horrible memories. Memories I have been doing my best to forget.
I put the box in a cabinet beneath the china hutch, and then went back to Judge Judy and putting away the laundry. At 3:30 p.m., I lathered my skin with heaping amounts of sun block, donned a wide gardening hat and carefully stepped outside.
The pain, as always, was intense and searing. Hell, I could have been cooking over an open fire pit. Truly, I had no business being out in the sun, but I had my kids to pick up, dammit.
So I hurried from the front steps and crossed the driveway and into the open garage. My dream was to have a home with an attached garage. But, for now, I had to make the daily sprint.
Once in the garage and out of the direct glare of the spring sun, I could breathe again. I could also smell my burning flesh.
Blech!
Luckily, the Ford Windstar minivan was heavily tinted, and so when I backed up and put the thing into drive, I was doing okay again. Granted, not great, but okay.
I picked up my son and daughter from school, got some cheeseburgers from Burger King and headed home. Yes, I know, bad mom, but after doing chores all day, I definitely was
not
going to cook.
Once at home, the kids went straight to their room and I went straight to the bathroom where I removed my hat and sunglasses, and used a washcloth to remove the extra sunscreen. Hell, I ought to buy stock in Coppertone. Soon the kids were hard at work saving our world from Haloes and had lapsed into a rare and unsettling silence. Perhaps it was the quiet before the storm.
My only appointment for the day was right on time, and since I work from home, I showed him to my office in the back. His name was Kingsley Fulcrum and he sat across from me in a client chair, filling it to capacity. He was tall and broad shouldered and wore his tailored suit well. His thick black hair, speckled with gray, was jauntily disheveled and worn long over his collar. Kingsley was a striking man and would have been the poster boy for dashing rogues if not for the two scars on his face. Then again, maybe poster boys for rogue did have scars on their faces. Anyway, one was on his left cheek and the other was on his forehead, just above his left eye. Both were round and puffy. And both were recent.
He caught me staring at the scars. I looked away, embarrassed. “How can I help you, Mr. Fulcrum?”
“
How long have you been a private investigator, Mrs. Moon?” he asked.
“
Six years,” I said.
“
What did you do before that?”
“
I was a federal agent.”
He didn’t say anything, and I could feel his eyes on me. God, I hate when I can feel eyes on me. The silence hung for longer than I was comfortable with and I answered his unspoken question. “I had an accident and was forced to work at home.”
“
May I ask what kind of accident?”
“
No.”
He raised his eyebrows and nodded. He might have turned a pale shade of red. “Do you have a list of references?”
“
Of course.”
I turned to my computer, brought up the reference file and printed him out the list. He took it and scanned the names briefly. “Mayor Hartley?” he asked.
“
Yes,” I said.
“
He hired you?”
“
He did. I believe that’s the direct line to his personal assistant.”
“
Can I ask what sort of help you gave the mayor?”
“
No.”
“
I understand. Of course you can’t divulge that kind of information.”
“
How exactly can I help you, Mr. Fulcrum?” I asked again.
“
I need you to find someone.”
“
Who?”
“
The man who shot me,” he said. “Five times.”
3.
The furious sounds of my kids erupting into an argument suddenly came through my closed office door. In particular, Anthony’s high-pitched shriek. Sigh. The storm broke.
I gave Kingsley an embarrassed smile. “Could you please hold on?”
“
Duty calls,” he said, smiling. Nice smile.
I marched through my single story home and into the small bedroom my children shared. Anthony was on top of Tammy. Tammy was holding the remote control away from her body with one hand and fending off her little brother with the other. I came in just in time to witness him sinking his teeth into her hand. She yelped and bopped him over the ear with the remote control. He had just gathered himself to make a full-scale leap onto her back, when I stepped into the room and grabbed each by their collar and separated them. I felt as if I had separated two ravenous wolverines. Anthony’s fingers clawed for his sister’s throat. I wondered if they realized they were both hovering a few inches off the floor. When they had both calmed down, I set them down on their feet. Their collars were ruined.