by Shirl Henke
She was saved from more importuning by the sadistic Tiff when the lights dimmed off stage and the show started. A pair of men dressed in full Klingoff regalia crouched behind a cluster of boulders, wielding lethal-looking weapons that Sam identified from the photos she’d studied as Dazers. Then a phalanx of Reemulans in full military gear marched onstage, seeming to be unaware of the ambush awaiting them.
She watched Farley lean forward in his seat, his earlier in-disposition forgotten. The poor kid really believed in this stuff. She sensed Scruggs watching her. No sense challenging him. She looked at the action beginning to unfold onstage when out of nowhere two more Klingoffs dashed across the front row of chairs and started pitching small devices into the audience.
Sam instinctively knew this wasn’t part of the show. She reached for Farley, but before she could get a secure hold of him, a series of loud explosions drowned out the action on the stage. Tiff and Mellie stood up and shrieked with delight, their “worm groton” pitched away in the excitement.
The force of the explosion caused Sam to lose her grip on Farley. He toppled out of his seat. Mini concussion grenades! And one had been aimed directly for the kid. Elvis, too, was on the floor on all fours, shaking his head. Sam kicked another of the grenades across the open area. It detonated against the side wall.
People jumped up all across the audience, overturning chairs as they panicked and ran in every direction. Sam seized Farley, yelling over the din, “Stick with me!” She helped him stand up but before she could move him toward an exit a red laser dot suddenly appeared, centered on his chest.
“Down!” She knocked him over just as the shot ripped by them.
“Laser tag!” Tiff yelled behind her. “Let’s play, Mellie!”
“No, get down! This isn’t a game,” Sam yelled over the din. To no avail.
Both girls pulled small laser pointers from inside their costumes and started shooting beams at the goons in Klingoff disguise. When one of the gunmen saw a red dot on the forehead of his companion, he yelled, “Gus, somebody’s got you targeted!”
Both of them hit the floor, using overturned chairs for cover as red laser beams crisscrossed the pandemonium. Still trying for a clear shot at Farley, the second one raised his weapon. Sam caught the movement out of the corner of her eye while trying to reach the girls who were ducking and dodging, yelling like banshees. She kicked an interlocking tangle of felled chairs toward the gunman. He missed his shot when the chain reaction of chairs knocked the wind out of him.
The frightened crowd and actors onstage continued fleeing the area but the special effect lights still flickered overhead, creating a surreal scene. Into the middle of the chaos, Jenny entered, climbing over toppled chairs and dodging fleeing people amid screams of panic. She continued calmly in the direction of her shrieking children, clutching two big containers of “Reemulan brandy.” Apparently used to the wreckage surrounding her offspring, she yelled angrily, “How many times have I told you, no laser tag out in public!”
“Get down!” Sam yelled the same instant a shot ripped through one of the “brandies,” splattering blue liquid every direction.
Jenny stamped her foot. “Now look what you’ve made me do!”
The girls ignored their mother just as she’d ignored Sam’s warning. “Stay behind this chair and don’t move,” Sam whispered to Farley, then started crawling toward the children. Even little dragons didn’t deserve to be cut down in a cross fire. But then she heard one of the gunmen yell to his companion, “Zipper, one of ’em’s got your belly in his sights!”
The second guy dropped like a falling meteorite, then rolled toward an exit sign at the side of the stage. “Let’s get the hell outta here. Nobody warned us about midgets packing heat!”
Chapter 10
Sam watched the two gunmen vanish through an exit door. She wasn’t about to go charging after two armed men when all she had was a plastic “dazer” strapped to her waist. She could see the girls were unharmed as was their mother, who was advancing on Tiff with anger seething from every pore. Let Jenny handle her kids. Sam had one to babysit herself.
“You all right, Farley?” she asked the boy, who was still crouched behind a chair. Scruggs, interestingly enough, was directly behind him. Was he trying to shield the kid?
“Oh, I’m okay. Did the Klingoffs hurt anyone?” Farley asked. Although there was concern in his voice, there was also that creepy excitement glowing in his eyes. All of life was a game to him, fantasy and reality meshed hopelessly together.
“Naw. Nobody’s been shot. Them there Klingoffs couldn’t hit a barn with a shovel load of cow plop,” Elvis said, helping his friend to his feet.
Jenny was busy lecturing Tiff and Mellie, but somehow her stern expression was undercut by the bright blue droplets oozing from her hair and dripping off the tip of her nose. Then two police officers entered the auditorium and started questioning stragglers who had not escaped before the shooters did. One cop engaged Jenny. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Sam murmured to Elvis, “We’d better get Farley out of here before the cops get to us.”
Bingo. Magic words. If anything would work, she gambled that would. Scruggs nodded and took his young friend by his arm, whispering, “She’s right. We don’t know who we can trust. This here was a real close call.”
They slipped out the opposite door before anyone noticed, melting into the crowd. “Now, you see what I mean about how dangerous this convention is?” Sam asked, steering them to the main entrance and out onto the street. “The Klingoffs and Pandorians know who you are. We should head back to Miami.”
“Now don’t go gettin’ your mini in a twist, Lieutenant,” Elvis drawled. Then before she could stop him, he reached over and picked a piece of glowing pink spaghetti off her thigh.
Sam looked down at herself with disgust. She was covered with Sagittarian Worm Groton. Cursing Jenny and her dragons, she started picking pieces of goo off her “uniform” and her legs. Her knees were Day-Glo pink! She must have crawled through the disgusting stuff. Farley seemed embarrassed but Elvis was enjoying the sight altogether too much. Sam abandoned the project as hopeless. The only way to get clean was to soak under a shower.
“Them girls is pure trouble, ain’t they?” Elvis asked innocently.
You don’t know the half of it. “Yeah,” she said, wanting to divert his quick mind before he made Farley mistrust her even more. “But right now, Ensign Winchester’s safety is what we have to consider. I can protect him better in Miami.”
“We know the danger, but we got us a mission.”
“Yes, Commander Satterwaite was captured by Pandorians and we have to find her,” Farley chimed in as they crossed the street. His face was still flushed with excitement…or something else.
Sam watched the traffic, almost expecting a car to come skidding around the corner aimed straight at them, but none did. She only half listened to Farley and Elvis discuss the mysterious woman they seemed so concerned about. She was too busy wondering about the glaze in the boy’s eyes. It looked to her like more than just an adrenaline rush. Farley was definitely “spaced out” on something.
“We got inside info they brought Leila here. Thought you knew that,” Scruggs said, implying that she certainly should have.
Her uncle Dec always said when you don’t have the straight skinny you have to bluff. “Nobody told me anything about a Commander Satterwhite,” Sam replied with cool authority.
“It’s Satterwaite, not white,” Elvis said. “Her cover in Miami was working as a stripper before she transponded to that Pandorian ship. Far seen the whole thing, didn’t you, buddy?”
What had the kid seen, Sam wondered—Leila doing the bump and grind, or being “transponded”? She didn’t have the least interest in some bimbo Scruggs was probably boffing when he wasn’t chasing space aliens.
Farley nodded vaguely. “I…I was kind of messed up. You know, when she was taken prisoner or I could’ve helped her.” The poor kid sounded guilty.<
br />
“What do you mean, ‘messed up’?” she asked.
“All that stuff I’d been drugged with…”
“Drugged? Who drugged you?” she asked, watching Scruggs’s body language out of the corner of her eye.
He never missed a step. “He was havin’ some problems, but we ’bout got him straightened out,” Elvis said quickly, calmly.
“El’s trying to keep me from being court-martialed.”
“Don’t you say no more, Far,” Scruggs instructed firmly as they entered the hotel lobby. Then he turned to Sam and looked her up and down. “Hey, ’pears to me you need to get yerself cleaned up. We could stand a change of clothes, too.” Although they were only spattered with flecks of pink, the Worm Groton had obviously hit them, too.
“I’d like to lie down for a little bit—if that’s okay?” Farley said tentatively.
“Sounds like a plan to me. You get some rest, Farley. How about I meet you at your room, say around five? We’ll head for the evening show then,” Sam suggested.
Farley, his faith in her seemingly restored, smiled eagerly and nodded. Elvis aimed his index finger at her, drawing back his thumb as if cocking a trigger. “See ya at five.”
After getting out on the seventh floor, she ran up the next six flights of fire stairs to where Farley and Elvis stayed. She could hear them inside their room. Good. She waited until she was pretty sure they wouldn’t try to sneak out. Maybe the attempts to kill them had spooked the crafty Scruggs enough so he’d let her stick around. She hoped so as she rode back down and walked out the rear entry to the parking lot.
Roman Numeral’s Jag stood out like a beacon. She approached carefully, using other cars for cover just in case Elvis was watching from the sliding-glass doors above. Luckily, the trees around the lot provided cover for the Jag. The coast appeared clear. The drapes to their room were closed tightly and the attendant at the booth was reading a newspaper. It took her only a moment to pop the hood. Pulling an all-purpose file from her fanny pack, she unscrewed the distributor rotor and replaced the cap. God, you had to love those vintage cars before fuel injection. So easy to disable.
Whistling, she retrieved her small suitcase from the van and walked inside. After asking a few questions, she found a bellhop going off duty. “Want to earn an easy fifty?” she asked the kid, whose name tag identified him as Edward.
He looked to be around Farley’s age with ebony skin and a serious expression on his long, narrow face. “What would I have to do?” he asked politely but uneasily, eyeing the wreck of her costume.
“Nothing illegal,” she assured him. “I’m a private investigator on a case.” She flipped out her Florida P.I.’s license. “All you have to do is watch room fourteen-forty for me. If the two guys inside leave, call me.” She jotted down her cell number and offered it to him along with a twenty and a five. “I’ll give you the other half when I get back.”
“I guess that’d be all right, since I’m off duty now,” he said. “I need tuition money for next semester.”
Knowing he was working his way through college made her feel a little better about blowing fifty hard-earned bucks. “Thanks, Edward.” Maybe she’d even get to collect her fee and expenses, who knew?
She headed for the front desk and paid for one night in an obscenely expensive room just down the hall from Farley and Elvis. Sam absolutely refused to spend another minute with Jenny and her dragons. With any luck, maybe the cops would arrest them for starting a riot. At least confiscate those damned laser pointers. The thought made her smile as she unlocked the door and let herself into the room.
Her legs were starting to itch from the pink stuff. Stripping off the ruined costume, she considered whether she ought to pay Jenny for the outfit. No way was Worm Groton going to be dry cleanable. But it was Tiff and Mellie’s fault that it had been ruined in the first place. The hell with it! Besides, Jenny’s sister, Tess, had come into a substantial hunk of her ex-husband’s legit money when he went to jail. Tess could afford to pick up the tab.
Humming to herself, she turned on the water in the shower, good and hot, then adjusted the thermostat in the bedroom to keep it cool. She set her cell on the bathroom sink where she’d hear it beep if Edward spotted Elvis trying to make off with Farley. “Please don’t let me have pink hair,” she muttered as she stepped into the steamy compartment.
Although she kept watch over the phone, she didn’t hear the door to her room being unlocked. She’d been too preoccupied with getting her clothes off to remember to slip the inside latch on the door. Her head was lathered up with shampoo when the shower door opened, letting out a big whoosh of steam.
Instinctively she crouched and assumed a fighting stance, but the soap running into her eyes kept her from seeing her attacker. She started to kick out anyway but his voice stopped her at the last second.
“If you kick me there, you’ll be as sorry as I’ll be, Sam.”
“Matt! You idiot! I could’ve made you sing soprano if I hadn’t stopped. Sometimes you have the brains of a starfish!”
“This from a woman alone in a hotel room who goes in the shower and leaves the door guard unlatched? You think you’re Janet Leigh by any chance? Keep being that careless and you’ll end up like she did in Psycho.”
“You’re the psycho. What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Miami.”
“After two attempts on your life en route here and then a kidnapping that nearly turned you into road kill, you think I was gonna stay home like a good little boy? And, I might mention that when I stopped at the convention center everyone was talking about a shoot-out in one of the theatres. Of course, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Ignoring the question to which she knew he knew the answer, she changed the subject. “You picked the lock. You know how to disable those door guards, too,” she accused. “I taught you.”
“Did not,” he said, pulling her into his arms and digging one big hand into the suds covering her head, massaging her scalp.
“Did, too,” she practically purred as she let her soap-slicked hands glide across his broad shoulders and down his chest. He’d stripped before entering the bath. Who cared how he got inside the room? She wanted him inside her!
Matt reached for the soap and started to do maddening things to her breasts, teasing the nipples into hard points, then letting his hands travel around her hips, cupping her buttocks as he pulled her against his erection. The pouring water rinsed the shampoo from her short hair when she tipped her head back and looked up into his face. She reached one hand up and wrapped it around his neck, pulling herself up to kiss his lips.
With the water raining down fiercely, they devoured each other’s mouths like two starving people, angling their heads one way, then another, tasting, plunging, their tongues dancing madly together. He backed her against the smooth warm tiles as she held on to his shoulders. Using her arms for leverage, she hoisted her body up and wrapped her strong athletic legs tightly around his hips, opening herself for him. Their kisses grew rougher as he plunged deep inside of her.
Steam rose in pulsing clouds as they moved together, fast and hard, then slow and languorous. He stepped back, holding one arm securely around her waist while she arched her upper body away from him. The water poured over them as she rolled her hips and let her nails dig into the thick muscles of his shoulders. He bent his head and took a nipple in his mouth, sucking fiercely, then moved to its twin.
“Aah, Matt,” she groaned, tightening around him, feeling him fill her. “Do it, yes, yes…”
He loved it when her voice faded breathlessly away like that, as if she were helpless, but when it came to his wife, Matt Granger knew he was the one who was helpless. Damn, but he loved the woman! Couldn’t get enough of her. When he felt her clench him so intimately, he followed her over the edge, barely able to keep his legs from buckling.
They remained motionless as the waves of bliss gradually subsided and the water started to grow cool. At las
t Sam slowly slid down his big body, her hands locked behind his neck as if she never wanted to let him go. “I should be mad with you,” she said dreamily, “always interfering with my work.”
“Occupational hazard. I’m a nosy newsman, remember?” he said in a low voice. He snatched a towel and started to dry her off.
Sam practically purred like a cat, too utterly content to think straight. “All I remember is… Say, we have a king-size bed.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” he replied with a wicked chuckle. “Voracious wench.”
“Wench?” she echoed. “That sounds like something from one of those history books you read,” she said, leading him toward the bed.
“More like from one of those historical romances you read.”
The cell hadn’t beeped forty minutes later.
Hoping Edward was earning his money and Farley was still tucked safely inside the room down the hall, she explained recent events at the con. “Can you believe Jenny Baxter and her brood of vipers are here?”
“Dribbles?” A big grin lit his face as he digested the picture of Sam smeared with Worm Groton.
“Okay, let’s forget that—it’s a dead end. I couldn’t ID the gunmen in that regalia, but I have Farley rounded up…almost. What I can’t figure is Scruggs. One minute he’s this hick, the next, he’s a crafty ex-con. Any luck finding his missing seven years?”
“Afraid not, but I do have some more dirt on Reese Reicht, M.D., Ph.D.”
“Yeah?” Sam was sitting yoga style on the big bed. She grabbed a notepad and pencil from the nightstand. “We have prescribing illegals and tax evasion. What else has our good doctor been up to?”
“Patowski was mum, but I have other sources on the force. Homicide’s investigating his connection to a suspicious death. Cold case file that just heated up again.”
“Damn, I knew Patty was holding out on me! What are they after?”