by Elise Sax
I shuddered.
Three men left the black SUV. They wore suits and sunglasses, just like in the movies. “Hey guys, what can we do for you?” Adam asked them.
“You found a second girl?” one of the feds asked.
“Boss did,” Adam said. “Are you fellas taking this over?”
“Tandem investigation. Maybe we can help each other out. Our resources and your familiarity with the area.”
Adam nodded and called Amos over. They talked among themselves, and I noticed that Amos left me out of the conversation. I mean, he didn’t mention me. Didn’t mention that I spoke to dead girls. Didn’t mention that I knew her name.
It wasn’t lost on me that Amos was protecting me. The FBI probably didn’t believe in the ability to talk to the dead. And because of that, I would become suspect number one. So, it was just the facts, ma’am. Amos agreed to hand over the body and scene of the crime to them.
He shot me a look, which I took to mean that the FBI may have the forensics, but he had me. The woman who could talk to the dead.
After the scene was secured, Amos offered to drive me home. Before we left, I asked one of the feds about the poop from the sky. “Do you guys know where that was coming from?”
“Sorry ma’am. That’s classified. Way above your pay grade.”
“Joke’s on you,” I said. “I don’t have a pay grade.”
It was the truth. I was poorer than I ever was. If I was cut, I would bleed peanut butter and jelly. My stomach growled. “Can you drop me off at the diner?” I asked Amos. “I’m going to try again to get a meal.”
“I hate that there’s a serial killer in my town,” he said. “We have quirky townsfolk, sure. We have runaway giraffes, sure. But serial killers? No. Never. It makes me fighting mad.”
He dropped me off at the diner and went back to talk more with the feds. Silas was standing outside the diner. His flu had turned out to be the twenty-four-hour kind. I gave him the rundown about the girl.
“Holy cow, since you’ve moved here, things have really gotten exciting in our small town,” Silas said.
“Are you going into the diner to eat?” I asked.
“I already tried. I never thought I’d see the day, but I think Adele is really going to sell. She just can’t take it. Someone needs to pick up the slack soon, or she’s a goner. What am I seeing?”
I turned around. A herd of giraffes—all of them, as far as I could tell—were galloping into the Plaza, but instead of running wild, they seemed to be running in formation. And then I saw why. Behind them, Boone was riding a horse, cracking a whip over his head, corralling the giraffes without hurting them.
“It’s the Man from Snowy River,” I breathed. My hormones went into overdrive. Boone rode his horse with one hand, a master of the horse and master of the whip. He was tall in the saddle, his back straight, his skin tanned. He was a hubba hubba, hotter than hell, sexiest man alive giraffe herder. I wanted him bad.
The giraffes stopped in the square, seemingly content to stay there. Rocco came running, ecstatic that his giraffes had returned safely. Men came out of nowhere, gathering the metal barriers that had been used for the Cook-off to encircle the giraffes. They were corralled.
Boone hopped off his horse and walked it over to me. “Hey there, Matilda. Hey, Silas,” he said. Adele and most of the diners walked out to see Boone’s miracle. Nora was with them, and two of her children ran to the square to pet the giraffes.
“How did you do it?” Rocco asked, running toward us.
“It wasn’t hard,” Boone said. “I don’t know why no one could catch them before. Sweet animals. Like cows, but they smell better.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Rocco gushed. “Our town is saved. I’ll cut you a check.”
“Make it out to Nora Montana,” Boone said.
“Really?” Nora asked, shocked.
“Really?” I asked, too.
“Yes. I thought the money could go toward buying the old food truck.”
“The one that I crashed into?” I asked.
We all looked over at the spot across the Plaza where the food truck remained after I crashed into it with the tractor.
“That’s the one. I figure that sixty thousand dollars is enough to fix it up and get started with Nora’s own food truck business. I always thought you made better tamales than the tamale lady, anyway,” Boone told Nora. “And that way, Adele can get some relief, too.”
Nora started to cry, and Adele cried, too. “I’ll help you,” Adele told Nora and gave her a big hug. “Now I don’t have to move to San Diego.”
“And I bet I can fit at least three kids in the back of the truck while I work,” Nora said. “This is the best gift I’ve ever gotten. Oh, Boone, you’re going to eat free tamales and burritos for the rest of your life.”
They hugged Boone and went off to check out the truck to determine all the wonderful possibilities it could offer.
Boone put his arm around my waist and walked me a little ways away from the diner. His horse followed us.
“That was a very nice thing you did,” I told him.
He arched an eyebrow. “I like Nora, but I did it because you love her.”
“Oh,” I breathed.
He put his casted arms around me and pulled me in close. He lowered his head to me. “I’m a paleontologist,” he whispered. “A dinosaur hunter. And I’ve found the dinosaur that survived.”
Then, he kissed me. His lips pressed firm against mine. He urged my mouth open, and his tongue explored my mouth, making me crazy with desire and my body flood with heat. I wrapped my arms around him, too. My fingers danced along the long muscles of his back. Even though he was much taller than I was, our bodies fit together, and as we kissed and kissed and kissed and kissed, I wondered if they would fit together horizontally, too.
Be sure to watch for the next installment of the Goodnight Mysteries: Jurassic Dark. Sign up for my newsletter to be the first to know when it’s released.
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Would you like to see how it all began? Read An Affair to Dismember, the first book in the Matchmaker Mysteries.
Also by Elise Sax
Matchmaker Mysteries Series
Matchmaking Advice from Your Grandma Zelda
Road to Matchmaker
An Affair to Dismember
Citizen Pain
The Wizards of Saws
Field of Screams
From Fear to Eternity
West Side Gory
Scareplane
It Happened One Fright
The Big Kill
It’s a Wonderful Knife
Ship of Ghouls
Goodnight Mysteries Series
Die Noon
Doom with a View
Jurassic Dark
Operation Billionaire Trilogy
How to Marry a Billionaire
How to Marry Another Billionaire
Five Wishes Series
Going Down
Man Candy
Hot Wired
Just Sacked
Wicked Ride
Five Wishes Series
Three More Wishes Series
Blown Away
Inn & Out
Quick Bang
Three More Wishes Series
Standalone Books
Forever Now
Bounty
Switched
About the Author
Elise Sax writes hilarious happy endings. She worked as a journalist, mostly in Paris, France for many years but always wanted to write fiction. Finally, she decided to go for her dream and write a novel. She was thrilled when An Affair to Dismember, the first in the Matchmaker Mysteries series, was sold at auction.
Elise is an overwhelmed single mother of two boys in Southern California. She's an avid traveler, a swing dancer, an occasional piano player, and an online shopping junkie.
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