by RJ Blain
If all three of my parents showed up and found out about Kenneth’s offer, he might end up a friend with permanent benefits.
I’d have to be really careful when Dad called in to check in on me. If I gave any indication I was sharing a room with a man, Ma would show up, as there’d been nothing in the household rules barring her from popping into hotel rooms to check in on me.
Mom would just hand me every single birth control method she could get her hands on, some for him, some for me, and instructions on how to keep him in bed long enough to infect him with my virus.
I hoped Kenneth wouldn’t mind if I locked myself in the bathroom, took a long soak, and hid for a while.
Within five minutes, we were on route to the elevator, and I found some comfort in the realization my week couldn’t get much worse. I waited until we were inside to say, “Thanks. I do really appreciate it.”
“I’ve been in your shoes before; double bookings are the worst. And to add insult to injury? The time it happened to me? Some bigwig with more money than sense wanted my room and paid the hotel off to get what he wanted. They didn’t have a new room for me, either, and I ultimately forced them to pay for my room at a rival hotel, as I’d recorded that the hotel had been paid off to ‘accidentally’ double book my room. After a silent presentation of my badge, they were eager to compensate me.”
I liked that Kenneth played dirty with hotel management, but I wondered what sort of room he’d booked that a bigwig coveted it. “It sounds like you have interesting travel adventures.”
“It’s part of my job. Sometimes I’ll go undercover for a big bust, and I need to stay in the right sort of accommodations to get the right sort of attention. Depending on what’s happening, I’ve even hired escorts to keep me company for a week so I could flush a dealer out. Those jobs are always interesting.”
I arched a brow. “Your job literally involves hiring sex workers to catch drug dealers?”
“I don’t sleep with them, but yes. It’s always interesting when the escorts realize they get paid to do nothing. I’ve learned to bring cards and board games on those busts. The FBI has a list of escorts who know better than to snitch on undercover agents, and they’re compensated well for their discretion. In exchange, we turn a blind eye as long as they keep their activities clean.”
“Please explain to me how an escort keeps her activities clean. This seems like important information.”
“She’s not involved with drug or sex trafficking. We ignore evidence of standard sex work, although most law enforcement does nowadays. It’s pointless.”
“With people like my mom around, it’d be pretty stupid to prosecute sex workers.”
“Gotta keep the lawyers busy,” he countered.
I wondered what Kenneth would think when he found out Dad was a defense attorney and had been for thirty years. “Don’t like lawyers?”
“I like to consider myself a brave man, but little scares me more than a lawyer on a mission. They don’t play fair, jail bird.”
“So, if I ever need to put you in your place, I’d just need to find a lawyer?” I laughed. Dad would enjoy having fun with the one who’d arrested me. I could have fun with him, too, especially if I lucked out and snagged mandatory pro bono hours on a case involving Kenneth.
I bet his expression in the courtroom would be priceless.
“You’re a wicked, wicked woman, jail bird. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Ma sometimes does in her saddest, most disappointed voice.”
“That comes as no surprise, angel and all. I had no idea your life was so interesting. How’d you end up being a dancer of all things?”
Fortunately for me, I’d worked hard to hide my dirty little lawyer secret and had a canned answer for him. “It’s hard to get a job sometimes when you’re infected with lycanthropy. Employers don’t care if you’re not contagious; to them, it’s just a matter of time. They’re especially hard on unmated lycanthrope women in New York. They expect us to drop everything the instant a man catches our attention. Stupid, if you ask me. Gotta eat.”
“They expect your mate to pay for everything. Lycanthropes are shockingly conservative on that issue. I’ve never met a lycanthrope man who wasn’t determined to keep his woman from lifting a finger unless she wanted to. And I’ve never met a lycanthrope woman who wasn’t determined to do as much heavy lifting as possible. I swear, lycanthropes are wired to have daily power plays with each other.”
“Now take all that and add a succubus and angel into the mix.”
“Have you ever considered getting kidnapped? It might be safer. I might be willing to soil my perfect record and arrange for you to disappear. It’d be cruel to force you to return to that insanity.”
I laughed. “No, but I tried running away once. It didn’t work out well. If Ma thought she could get away with it, she’d lock me in the basement for life.”
“If you don’t want to be kidnapped for your own safety, please invite me to a family dinner one day. I’d love to see this chaos for myself.”
“I’ll think about it as thanks for bailing me out today.”
Kenneth’s smile promised trouble.
FBI agents made a lot more money than I thought. Kenneth’s room was a suite on the top floor, one with two bedrooms, a living room that put my parents’ to shame, and a bathtub worth committing felonies for. I wished Dad the best of luck defending my case, as I’d have no shame in confessing my crimes along with how I managed to get the damned thing out of the resort when it was large enough to fit two comfortably.
“I’m not sure what you’re thinking, but every time I’ve seen a woman with that expression, it’s either led straight to trouble or an arrest.”
“There’s no middle ground with you, is there? It’s like you jump straight to arrest as your solution to life’s problems.”
“I’ve found a few problems arrest definitely doesn’t solve.”
“Oh? Do tell.” I set my bags near the door until Kenneth claimed the bedroom he wanted as his, exploring the rest of the suite. There was a second bathroom with the same, glorious tub. I pointed at it, then turned and pointed at the matching one across the room. “What is this insanity?”
“The master bedroom has one, too. I haven’t figured out why the entry has a full bath in it, but I’m not going to complain. I might watch television and decide it’s too far to walk to the other bathroom to take a hot bath.”
“That would be terribly tragic, having to walk an additional five feet to go to your own bathroom.”
Kenneth laughed and chucked his bag in the direction of the nearest bedroom. “Honestly, I had no idea I was getting this room. My boss made the reservation, I just paid for it out of my vacation pay. I refused to take off the three weeks he wanted, but I splurged and cashed out two extra weeks of vacation. He allowed it. Probably didn’t want to get into an argument with me over it.”
“How tragic for you, being subjected to such a nice room for a week.”
“It was perfect for rescuing my favorite jail bird from needing a rental from some slum hotel in Boulder.”
“When in need of rescue, this jail bird summons either the angel or the lycanthrope.”
“Not the succubus?”
“The last time I asked Mom for help, Dad had to bail her out of prison, and Ma couldn’t even blame her for it.”
“What the hell sort of trouble did you get into?”
I laughed. “I needed one of my parents to talk to my teacher. It didn’t end well.”
“Dare I ask how old you were?”
“Twelve. My teacher was a woman, and Mom went out of her way to make her uncomfortable. It was in retaliation for calling me a miniature slut because of my pedigree. Mom was arrested for disrupting the peace and trespassing, but the charges were dismissed when the police verified she was really my mother and attending a parent-teacher meeting.”
“Your teacher called the child of an angel a miniature slut?”
I
held up my hands in surrender. “Don’t ask me. I think it was Ma’s turn to get left off my papers. Most forms don’t have a third spot for my second mother, so they fight over who gets to be listed.”
“Sounds tough.”
“Only when my teacher wants a parent-teacher meeting and Mom’s the one who gets to handle it. Ma? Ma’s great; no one doubts the word of an angel, especially one indignant at the very idea I might have flaws in my schoolwork.”
“Did you have flaws in your schoolwork?”
“I was top of the class from the day I stepped into school until the day I graduated, because nothing is worse than angelic disappointment. I didn’t even dare to get detention. Mom was so disappointed I didn’t skip school even once.”
Kenneth shook his head, his brightest smile making an appearance. “This explains so much. Your mother, the succubus, took you to a bar, got you drunk, and had you snort pixie dust so you wouldn’t be a sheltered little flower for the rest of your life, and I was the lucky bastard who got to handle your arrest.”
“Lucky?” I dragged my bags to the second bedroom, wondering how things could’ve gone so wrong that I was in Kenneth’s suite for an entire week. The flight had tested the limits of my dignity and patience. If I didn’t watch out, I might end up liking the man, something I’d never live down. Under no circumstances was I supposed to like the FBI agent who’d cuffed me, shoved me into his car, and gotten the order for me to stay overnight in solitary confinement thanks to my mother’s mission to teach me about life as an adult. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“I consider myself very lucky. That double booking was pretty rotten, though. Think about it this way. You got an upgrade.”
“I’m afraid to ask how much this upgrade is going to cost me. I’d gotten an early booking discount on my room.”
“Please don’t worry about it. I’m paying for the room as it is, and it’s not like adding you to my reservation adds to the price. If it makes you feel better, just give me what you would’ve paid when we get back to New York. Relax.”
Arguing with him would stress us both out, so I nodded. I dug into my bag and fetched my bikini, already regretting I’d followed Mom’s advice on swimwear, which meant Kenneth Bernard would get a close look at a lot of skin. The dinky scraps of material Mom insisted on barely toed the line of modesty. Why had I inherited my sense of right or wrong from Ma’s contribution of genes? “I came the night before specifically so I could go swimming in the pool before the retreat. Would you like to join me?”
“After how much I paid for this week, you better believe I’m going to join you. My daddy taught me the first rule of travel: leave no amenity unturned.”
“Your daddy has a firm grasp of common sense.” I discovered the bathroom attached to my bedroom, skipped inside, and locked the door behind me. He’d get a good look at everything else, but I’d leave a few secrets for the man I’d tagged, bagged, married, and infected with my virus, cursing him to a lifetime of bird-brained jokes and more feathers than anyone ever needed.
Chapter Four
For a fully booked hotel, few people were out and about, and as far as I could tell, we had the indoor pool to ourselves. I liked the open space encased in windows, which let the sunlight in and kept the weather out.
I would’ve liked the pool a lot more if there hadn’t been a body floating in the middle. Given the amount of time we’d spent walking around the glass-enclosed space without having seen anyone inside, I had no doubt she was dead beyond resuscitation.
Then I remembered it took time for a body to float, and she lacked any of the signs of having been dead for too long. All of my education pointed to one unpleasant fact: she’d been dead before she’d entered the water, preserving the air in her lungs, keeping her body afloat.
I sucked in a deep breath and glanced at Kenneth, who had decided to bring his phone for some unfathomable reason. “Kenneth?”
He halted, his eyes locked on the screen. “What’s up, jail bird?”
“First, I think it’s important to state I didn’t do it.”
He jerked his head up and stared at me. “Pardon?”
I pointed at the woman’s body. While I’d specialized in prosecuting homicides, I hadn’t expected to be someone to discover a body. At a loss of what to say or do, I shrugged.
Kenneth frowned, looked at where I pointed, and spat curses. “Jesus Christ.”
“Logically, I know this isn’t the case, but my first thought? I thought bodies were supposed to sink after drowning. But then I remembered that bodies float after a while.” I’d let the FBI agent figure out she’d likely been killed before being tossed into the pool.
“I don’t think she’s been dead long enough to float. There’s no other signs of decomposition. That means she was probably dumped into the pool after death.” Kenneth redirected his attention to his phone, dialed a number, and held it to his ear. “Hello. My name’s Kenneth Bernard, FBI, and I’m at Mountain Gully Resort outside of Boulder. There’s a deceased Caucasian female in the indoor pool. Yes, I’ll hold.”
Kenneth scowled, tapping his foot on the tiles while he waited. “Yes, ma’am. She’s floating face down, unmoving, and there are no signs of life. Had there been, I would’ve jumped in to help her, obviously.”
I shook my head at the implication either one of us would let a woman drown. I gave it an hour before I had to make an unpleasant phone call to Ma so we could verify our alibi in an unassailable fashion.
Sometimes, having an angel for a mother was a pain in my ass, but it paid off in spades when I was innocent of wrongdoing.
“Yes, ma’am. We’ll be here waiting. I’m accompanied by a friend. She was the one who discovered the body. We’d come down to the pool from our room for a swim. Yes, I’ll hold.”
At the rate Kenneth was tapping his foot, he’d punch a hole through the floor. We hadn’t even had a chance to take our shoes off.
“No, ma’am. I have no idea who the woman is. She’s face down in the pool. Yes, I’ll hold.”
“She likes putting you on hold, doesn’t she?”
“She’s dispatching officers and an ambulance to our location. Normally, she’d keep talking on the line, but this is my work phone, so she’s able to confirm I’m in law enforcement. Well, I hope she confirmed it, otherwise she’s going to have a bad time when her supervisor reviews her calls.”
I stared at the body. “Why would someone dump a body in a pool she wouldn’t normally be able to drown in? Under any normal circumstance, she’d just stand up and be fine. That water’s not deep.”
“Don’t know. That’s a very good question. That’s also why I didn’t go in to pull her out. The police will want to have a look over the whole scene when they arrive. I’m sorry, but we’ll be questioned. That’s probably not how you wanted today to go.”
“Truer words were never spoken. I’m not going to be arrested, am I?” I knew we wouldn’t be arrested, but I wanted to see what he’d say.
“If we’re really unlucky, we’ll be asked to go to the station for questioning.” His brow furrowed, and he held up a finger. “Yes, ma’am. That’s correct. We’ll be here. Thank you.”
He hung up, shaking his head.
“That doesn’t look promising.”
“There’s an unfortunate statistic where the person who calls in about a death is the cause of death. Her tone implied she thought this was the case. Drownings are difficult, as there’s often a loss of evidence.”
I loved my ma, and I’d make sure she knew it within the next five minutes. “Can I borrow your phone? I’ll cover the not guilty of drowning someone part of things. I hope you don’t have an aversion to angels.”
He offered me his phone. “Not at all. I’ve worked with them many a time. It’s the archangels who put me on edge.”
Archangels put me on edge, too, and I’d met more than my fair share of them. “Israfil’s terrifying.”
“Which one’s that?”
Crap.
I’d used the Arabic version of the archangel’s name again. If Ma found out, she’d scold me. Again. “Sorry, Raphael.”
“Which one’s that?”
“He’s one of the archangels who can trumpet in the end of everything. Michael’s the other one. It’s a bit muddled, honestly. They might be the same archangel for all I know. Point stands, though. He’s terrifying.”
“That’s a good reason to be terrified of him.”
“I certainly thought so. I think I hurt his feelings when he visited Ma. I ran away. I may have screamed. It’s not my fault. I was little, and Ma kept telling me stories about him!”
“Being honest with you, I’ve never known whether to think of an angel as a male or female.”
“You think of them in whatever gender they currently are because only an idiot judges an angel about their current gender of choice. When I met Raphael, he was male.”
“How could you even tell?”
“His voice. They change their voice to match their currently chosen gender. So, Ma sounds like a woman right now. After Dad dies, who knows? She’ll probably return to the heavens for a while to mourn. That’s typical.”
“Fortunately for your Ma, lycanthropes live a long time.”
“That’s not a boon in Mom’s book, because she’s stuck with Dad, too. Ma and Dad won’t let her escape. It’s fun watching her try, though.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“If you don’t want Ma knowing something, don’t even think it. Also, don’t lie. Don’t even think a lie. Ma hates liars. I lied to her once. She spanked my ass so hard I couldn’t sit for three days. You won’t ever catch another lie coming out of this mouth ever again, not when Ma might hear me, no, sir.”
Kenneth put his phone in my hand. “Just call before you get so nervous you can’t hold the phone.”
“What makes you think I’m nervous?”
“You’re babbling worse than a brook, jail bird.”