I’d just decided to get down and try another window when the face of a beast crashed against the window—snarling jowls and strings of snot hanging between razor sharp teeth.
I screamed as the kennel collapsed beneath me and I went sprawling on the concrete, my arms wrapped around the camera to protect it. I hit on my back with a whoomph and the air was knocked out of me. Something sharp had pierced my leg, but I barely noticed, my eyes wide and unfocused as I focused on getting my breath back.
“Ouch,” I croaked out.
The growls intensified and the window shook as the beast rammed its head over and over against the glass. If that was a dog, it was unlike any kind I’d ever seen before. Unless you counted Cujo.
I inhaled air painfully into my lungs and rolled to my hands and knees, looking around to make sure no one had witnessed my latest disaster. Granted, I’d gotten better at my job in the last few months, but that was probably along the same lines as telling Forrest Gump he was being promoted to remedial math.
The beast kept ramming its head against the window as I got to my feet. I gave it the middle finger because it made me feel better, and then I turned to head back to my car I’d left parked in a ditch near the marshland about a hundred yards away. My leg throbbed and blood coated the bottom part of my jeans. Good thing I’d already had a tetanus shot.
The growling and head butting stopped as suddenly as it began, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It was short lived, because the door of the trailer shook with a mighty force as the beast rammed against it. Apparently, he didn’t like being flipped off, because his determination only seemed to intensify.
I shook my head in pity at his stupidity and kept limping in the direction of my car. The trailer house doors were reinforced just like the windows, and there was no way that dog was breaking through. Noogey was definitely hiding something inside that trailer.
I heard a yelp and then silence, wondering if the dog had knocked himself out, and then I heard a different kind of noise. One resembling a can opener peeling back a metal lid.
“Oh, shit,” I said, staring wide-eyed as I realized what the beast was doing. Maybe he wasn’t so dumb after all.
The doors and windows to the trailer were reinforced, but the trailer wasn’t. Teeth ripped through plastic siding and insulation, and I saw the metal on the outside of the trailer bulge and bend grotesquely, reminding me weirdly enough of when the alien was trying to burst out of Sigourney Weaver.
I started to run, the adrenaline and fear masking the pain my body was in, and I didn’t look back as I heard the metal give. Vicious barks and snarls gained on me with alarming speed. My car came into view—an old white Volvo that had about 300,000 miles on it.
I’d left the windows down because the air conditioner didn’t work and I was tired of the cracked leather seats cooking my ass. I’d never been so grateful to see that stupid car in my whole life. I dived head first into the open window and turned back to roll it up just as the beast hit the side of my car.
Seeing him in his entirety was completely different then seeing his head through a window. He was the size of a horse and built like a monster truck. His fur was black with blotches of brown and gray and his paws were the size of dinner plates. It was safe to say the beast hadn’t been neutered, considering he was half sprawled on my hood, humping the shit out of my side view mirror while he tried to eat his way through the metal to the inside of the car.
He changed positions and the passenger door caved in under his weight. I was trapped inside the Volvo oven, paralyzed with fear. Slobber and snot coated the car window, and all I could see was miles of snapping teeth and beady black eyes I’d see in my nightmares. My hands shook as I dug out the keys from my pocket, and it took me three tries before I was able to get the key in the ignition.
The car started easily, and I rammed it into drive, peeling out in a cloud of dust as I kept my foot on the accelerator. When I looked through the rearview mirror, the beast was still standing where I’d left him, his eyes intent on my car. With my luck, he was probably memorizing my license plate.
I rolled my windows back down to let the hot air out and decided I really needed a beer. Maybe a lot of beers. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a drive-through beer store in the Savannah area. I was in no shape to go in anywhere. I’d have to settle for ice cream.
***
Thank God for Dairy Queen. I was finishing off my second Oreo Blizzard by the time I found a parking space in front of the McClean Detective Agency offices.
Kate had bought a corner building just across from Telfair Square. It was three stories of red crumbling brick being overtaken by the ivy that seemed to grow on every available surface in Savannah, and it was shaded by willow trees that looked as if they’d been there since the dawn of time.
I remembered to turn off the car and managed to get the door open without falling flat on my face into the street. I was fading fast. Maybe it was the adrenaline, maybe it was the blood loss, but I knew if I stayed out in the heat for another minute they’d have to scrape me off the hot pavement like a fried egg.
I focused on putting one foot in front of the other until I got to the glass-paned front door. A cold blast of air hit me in the face as I stumbled inside and I stood there in the entryway with my eyes closed, savoring it.
The agency was made to look like a comfortable home. The front entryway was large. Warm golden tiles sat in a diagonal pattern across the floor and rugs that picked up the color were scattered around. The walls were painted a lighter shade of gold and a leather couch and two matching chairs were placed in front of a large stone fireplace that never got used. A massive walnut desk sat in the center of the room, and the person who sat there guarded the inner sanctum of the agency with an iron fist.
Lucy Kim was technically the agency secretary. But I had a feeling she had some other duties as well—like ninja or vampire—but that was pure speculation. She was about five foot four—a few inches shorter than me—but her posture was rigid enough that she looked much taller. She was exotically beautiful—her Asian/American heritage giving her the best features of both—and her black hair was straight as rain down to her waist.
In the few months I’d been working for the agency, I’d never once seen any sort of emotional expression cross Lucy’s face. I’d pretty much decided she wasn’t human, but the look on her face now completely blew my theory out of the water.
She’d stood so fast when I came in that her ergonomic chair had rolled across the tiles and toppled over when it hit an electrical cord. Her hand was clasped over her nose and her black eyes were round and watery. She made small gagging noises before she finally gave up and ran down the hall.
I guess just because I could no longer smell myself didn’t mean other people couldn’t. No wonder the girl at Dairy Queen hadn’t charged me for the ice cream and shoved the two sundaes at me through the drive-through window.
“What in the name of all that’s holy is that smell?” I heard Kate yell from her office.
I heard office doors opening and footsteps shuffling as everyone searched for the offensive smell. I had a hand on the doorknob ready to hobble back to the car when Kate came into the lobby.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, wrinkling her nose. She stuck her head back through the door and yelled, “It’s all right. It’s just Addison.”
Heat rushed to my face as I heard the unhappy grumbles and office doors slamming closed.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’ll go.”
“No, stay right there. You’re hurt,” she said, her worried gaze zeroing in on my leg.
“It’s not too bad.” At least I didn’t think it was too bad. I was going with the theory that if my leg was still attached, I was in no immediate danger. “It turns out Noogey has a big ass dog in his trailer.”
“Noogey’s a wily kind of guy,” she said, her lips quirking slightly. “Let’s get you cleaned up and then we’ll talk when you’re in better shape. I’ve got a new job for you.”
“Will I have to hide in a dumpster?” I asked pathetically as I followed Kate down the hall to the large bathroom that was for agency use only.
“I doubt it. The FBI isn’t fond of dumpsters.”
I raised my brow at that bit of knowledge. I’d never worked with the FBI before. Kate usually gave those jobs to her more experienced agents, and quite frankly I was more than happy to let the more experienced agents take them. I wasn’t even a real agent. I was a contract employee hired to do surveillance work. Period.
“I’m not meeting with the FBI contact until tomorrow, so don’t hurry your shower,” Kate said, putting a first aid kit on the sink, her hand still covering her nose. That was Kate code for scrub more than once, preferably with bleach and a sander.
I sighed and hoped I didn’t drown. I wasn’t feeling all that great and the day’s events were starting to catch up to me. The good news was it was barely ten o’clock in the morning, so things would more than likely get better.
Kate left as quickly as possible and closed the door behind her. I had to peel my jeans away from the wounded area where the blood had dried, and I whimpered as I saw the deep cut in my calf. It oozed blood sluggishly, but I was pretty sure I could get away with bandaging it up myself. I wasn’t a fan of stitches. Mostly, I didn’t want to have to make another trip to the emergency room. The doctors there knew me by name.
I looked under the sink and found a thick black trash bag, the kind that wouldn’t leak if you put a dismembered body inside, and I stripped out of my clothes, putting them in the bag and tying it tight.
On one side of the wall was a row of cubicles that held personal belongings any of the agency employees might need. This wasn’t the first time I’d had to use this shower, and I was almost positive it wouldn’t be the last, so I had my own selection of soaps and lotions in the cubicle marked with my name. I grabbed shampoo, soap and a loofah and stepped under the hot spray of water.
I hissed as the water touched the cut on my leg and went through every curse I’d heard repeated in my thirty years of living. I grew up in a house with a cop, so I knew a lot of curses. The last thing I remember after I’d washed my hair and scrubbed my body twice was laying my face against the cold tile of the shower.
I think I might have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, someone turned the water off and was lifting me out of the shower.
I inhaled a familiar scent and snuggled closer to the hard body that held me. Nick Dempsey wasn’t the kind of man a woman forgot. He was a little over six feet. Whipcord lean with the body of a swimmer. He looked amazing with his clothes on and even better with them off. His hair was black and cut short, though it had a tendency to curl some on top when it grew out, and his eyes—sweet Jesus those eyes were a miracle. They were pale, arctic blue with silvery flecks. When he was aroused, they darkened a shade so it looked as if the ice were melting. When he was angry they could freeze you where you stood.
“Does this mean you’re speaking to me again?” I asked.
“Let’s not get carried away.”
He wrapped a towel around me and set me down on the counter next to the sink. I finally gathered enough courage to look him in the face and wished I hadn’t. His eyes were fixed on the cut on my leg and his lips were pinched with anger. He opened the first aid kit and rummaged around, kneeling in front of me as he made quick work of doctoring the cut and bandaging me up.
I tried my best to think about my grocery list and the piles of laundry I had waiting for me instead of the fact that Nick’s face was about twenty-four inches away from a part of my body that wasn’t wet because of the shower.
I breathed a sigh of relief when he stood back up, but the relief quickly turned to worry as he slapped both hands on either side of me, effectively trapping me against him. His face was like granite and I knew I was in for it.
“Are you mad about my leg or because I shot you?” I asked.
His gaze snapped to mine and I tried to pull the towel tighter around me, but it was caught under his fingers.
“I have a list that grows longer every day,” he said. “Your job is to take pictures from a distance. How in the hell do you keep ending up looking like a crash test dummy? Your palms are scraped, you’ve got bruises all down your back, your leg is cut bad enough that it might need stitches, and you’re so sunburned I can feel the heat coming off your body from here.”
Now that he mentioned it, I was starting to feel the aches and pains of my other injuries. Nick’s voice got softer and softer the longer he kept talking, and I knew his temper was about to reach explosive proportions.
“I had to start taking blood pressure medication,” he said. “Every time I got a call I was afraid someone was going to tell me you were dead. And believe me, after all the stunts you’ve managed to involve yourself in, I get a lot of calls.”
I narrowed my eyes and remembered exactly why Nick had no say in my life anymore. We’d had a rough relationship since we met three months ago. We’d been hot enough to set each other on fire. For a while. Then I caught him with another woman, and I was hot enough to do something drastic. This was the first I’d seen of him in weeks.
“You have no right to get mad over anything,” I said, slapping my hand against his chest, the towel forgotten. “You made it perfectly clear that we’re not in a relationship any more, and you have no say in my life.”
He growled low in his throat and I could feel the rumble from his chest against my hand.
“I have every right to be mad. You fucking shot me in the ass with a tranquilizer gun.”
His teeth were grinding together so hard I was surprised he could get the words past his lips, and a tiny vein bulged in his temple.
The anger I’d been trying to repress the last few months was coming to the surface in a hurry, and I didn’t do the quiet voice when I got angry. I became a firestorm of waving arms and Arsenio Hall whoops, and I channeled every antebellum ancestor I’d ever had, so my accent grew thick as honey.
“It’s not like I shot you with bullets. You’re overreacting. Though you’re damned lucky I didn’t have a real gun on me or I might have. You were with another woman. At a motel. In the middle of the day. What the hell else was I supposed to think? All I know is that one minute you had me naked and panting, and you were finally about to be inside of me, and the next thing I know, your cell phone is going off and you’re running out of my apartment like your pants were on fire. And then twelve hours later I see you at a motel talking to a woman who was trying her best to get you to turn your head and cough. What was I supposed to think?”
“She was an informant.” Exasperation tinged his voice. “I’ve already tried to explain this to you, but you’re too stubborn to listen. And that doesn’t excuse the fact that you shot me with an elephant tranquilizer.”
“Are we done here?” I asked, pushing against him so I could slide off the counter.
My knees gave out and Nick caught me around the waist, holding me close to his body until I got my balance. I sucked in a breath at the contact and closed my eyes to savor the feel of our bodies touching. I looked up and saw his eyes smolder with pleasure as he brought me closer, so we were completely aligned. The towel had dropped to the ground and my nipples hardened to pebbles as they pressed against his chest. His mouth hovered just an inch away from mine so our breaths mingled, and I wanted nothing more than to take a bite of his full lower lip.
The chemistry between us was definitely still there. Too bad I had lousy taste in men. If we started kissing now it would be hard to stop, and as much as I wanted to taste him, we had too many unsettled issues between us. I pushed away from him and bent down to grab the towel, wrapping it around me securely.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, not meeting his eyes this time. I felt his sigh and wanted to give one of my own. We were a mess.
“I brought you some clothes. Kate said to burn the ones you were wearing. You must have smelled pretty bad. The entire lobby ree
ks of disinfectant.”
“It wasn’t one of my finer moments. Thanks for the clothes. You can go now.”
He smiled and heat shot straight to my loins. “Don’t think you’re going to get rid of me so easily,” he said. “We’re going to be seeing a lot of each other over the next few weeks. I’m the lead detective assigned to work with the FBI on the case Kate mentioned to you. It made it easier since I already act as media liaison through the department.”
Nick’s a detective for the Savannah PD, and last I’d heard he was working homicide. He’d been assigned as media liaison because he had the patience of a saint and the looks of a movie star. I couldn’t imagine what type of case would involve a homicide detective, the FBI and a P.I. agency, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
I propped my fist on my hip and glared at Nick. “Un-unh,” I said, shaking my head. “There’s no way I’m working with you. You’d probably get distracted by all your informants trying to stick their tongues down your throat, and then I’d get arrested for killing you.”
Nick fisted my towel in his hand and pulled me toward him, making my breath catch at the dangerous look in his eyes. He was either going to throttle me or kiss me, I wasn’t sure which.
His lips touched mine gently, though I could feel the anger vibrating through his body, and his tongue caressed mine as if he were tasting his last meal. By the time he pulled away I was breathing like a steam engine and I was pretty sure the towel had disintegrated from the heat my body was giving off. My female parts were screaming, this one, and my heart wasn’t too far behind. Luckily my brain had better sense. My heart had already been trampled on and was in no mood to repeat the process.
“I like it when you’re jealous. And despite you shooting me up with tranquilizers, the only person I want to stick my tongue into is you.”
Whiskey Sour (Romantic Mystery/Comedy) Book 2 (Addison Holmes Mysteries) Page 2