by Jude Hardin
“Me?”
“Yes. She thinks you’re hot.”
“Which one is your girlfriend?” I said.
“The one in the white shirt.”
After the song, I joined the women at their table and struck up a conversation with the one in the white shirt. I’d been glancing her way all night, wanting to approach her but thinking she was out of my league. She was ten years younger than me, probably, with long black hair and beautiful brown skin. Eyes as warm as cinnamon toast. We talked about Area 51, about the possibility of a cover-up, that maybe the government was hiding a bunch of extraterrestrial aliens and their spaceships out there, joking about it, finally deciding that the government wasn’t clever enough to cover up its own ass in a snowstorm.
After a while, the band played another slow song, “Spiritual” by John Coltrane. One of my favorites.
“Would you like to dance?” I said to the pretty young woman in the crisp white shirt.
Her name was Juliet.
And she said yes.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Joe Konrath is the author of more than twenty novels and dozens of shorter works in the mystery, thriller, horror, and science fiction genres. He’s sold over three million books worldwide, and besides Jude Hardin he’s collaborated with bestsellers Blake Crouch, Ann Voss Peterson, Henry Perez, Tom Schreck, Jeff Strand, Tracy Sharp, Bernard Schaffer, Barry Eisler, Ken Lindsey, Garth Perry, Iain Rob Wright, and F. Paul Wilson. He likes beer, pinball machines, and playing pinball when drinking beer. www.jakonrath.com
Jude Hardin is the author of the Nicholas Colt thriller series. He graduated from the University of Louisville in 1983 with an English degree, and currently lives and works in northeast Florida. When he’s not pounding away at the computer keyboard, Jude can be found pounding away on his drums, playing tennis, reading, or wandering the streets of Vegas in a sequined white jumpsuit. For periodic updates and special offers, please sign up for Jude’s newsletter at eepurl.com/zn1XD or visit my website at judehardinbooks.com.
EBOOKS BY JUDE HARDIN
NICOLAS COLT THRILLERS
Colt
Pocket 47
Crosscut
Snuff Tag 9
Key Death
Rattled (short)
Racked (short with J.A. Konrath)
Lady 52 (with J.A. Konrath)
Blood Tattoo
Sycamore Bluff
OTHER WORKS
Bad Nurse
Ghost
Fire and Ice (Dead Man #8 with Lee Goldberg)
iSEAL
A Time For Dying
EBOOKS BY J.A. KONRATH
JACK DANIELS THRILLERS
Whiskey Sour
Bloody Mary
Rusty Nail
Dirty Martini
Fuzzy Navel
Cherry Bomb
Shaken
Stirred (with Blake Crouch)
Last Call (with Blake Crouch)
Shot of Tequila
Banana Hammock
Jack Daniels Stories (collected stories)
Serial Killers Uncut (with Blake Crouch)
Suckers (with Jeff Strand)
Planter’s Punch (with Tom Schreck)
Floaters (with Henry Perez)
Burners (with Henry Perez)
Truck Stop (short)
Babe on Board (with Ann Voss Peterson)
With a Twist (short)
Street Music (short)
Jacked Up! (with Tracy Sharp)
Racked (with Jude Hardin)
Straight Up (with Iain Rob Wright)
Babysitting Money (with Ken Lindsey)
Abductions (with Garth Perry)
Beat Down (with Garth Perry)
October Dark (with Joshua Simcox)
Cheese Wrestling (with Bernard Schaffer)
CODENAME: CHANDLER SERIES
(WITH ANN VOSS PETERSON)
Flee
Spree
Three
Hit
Exposed
Naughty
THE KONRATH/KILBORN HORROR COLLECTIVE
Origin
The List
Afraid (writing as Jack Kilborn)
Endurance (writing as Jack Kilborn)
Trapped (writing as Jack Kilborn)
Haunted House (writing as Jack Kilborn)
Erotica writing as Melinda DuChamp
Fifty Shades of Alice in Wonderland
Fifty Shades of Alice Through the Looking Glass
Fifty Shades of Jezebel and the Beanstalk
The Sexperts: Fifty Grades of Shay
The Sexperts: Girl With A Pearl Necklace
OTHER WORKS
Symbios
Timecaster
Timecaster Supersymmetry
Wild Night is Calling (short with Ann Voss Peterson)
Shapeshifters Anonymous (short)
The Screaming (short)
Draculas (with Blake Crouch, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson)
Disturb
65 Proof (short story omnibus)
Crime Stories (collected stories)
Horror Stories (collected stories)
Dumb Jokes & Vulgar Poems
A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
Be the Monkey (with Barry Eisler)
Grandma? (with Talon Konrath)
RACKED
by J.A. Konrath and Jude Hardin
A private investigator, a police lieutenant, and a man wearing a Bugs Bunny mask walk into a bar…
Unfortunately, it’s no joke when Bugsy rigs the barrel of a twelve-gauge pump to the back of the bartender’s neck.
Together for the first time in this explosive, lightning-paced tale of greed, betrayal, and blood-soaked terror (not really, but it’s a fast-paced and funny mystery-thriller), Florida PI Nicholas Colt (CROSSCUT, KEY DEATH) and Chicago cop Jacqueline Daniels (WHISKEY SOUR, SHAKEN) team up to stop the robber before another shotgun shell gets RACKED.
COLT
by Jude Hardin
October 21: just an ordinary day, unless you’re a former rock star…
The sole survivor of a plane crash…
A private investigator working out of a camper…
For Nicholas Colt, October 21 is an unlucky day. A day for nightmares. It always has been, and this year is no exception.
Someone is brutally murdering the offspring of an anonymous sperm donor, and Colt’s missing client is next on the list. With less than four days to find the young man—and, with a pair of drug-addicted study partners, a violent motorcycle gang, a stalker ex-girlfriend, and a host of other obstacles standing in his way—Colt faces the most challenging and deadly case of his life.
WHISKEY SOUR
by J.A. Konrath
Lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels is having a bad week. Her live-in boyfriend has left her for his personal trainer, chronic insomnia has caused her to max out her credit cards with late-night home shopping purchases, and a frightening killer who calls himself ‘The Gingerbread Man’ is dumping mutilated bodies in her district.
While avoiding the FBI and its moronic profiling computer, joining a dating service, mixing it up with street thugs, and parrying the advances of an uncouth PI, Jack and her binge-eating partner, Herb, must catch the maniac before he kills again…and Jack is next on his murder list.
WHISKEY SOUR is the first book in the bestselling Jack Daniels series, full of laugh-out-loud humor and edge-of-your-seat suspense.
Sign up for the J.A. Konrath newsletter. A few times a year I pick random people to give free stuff to. It could be you.
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LADY 52
Copyright © 2014 by Jude Hardin and Joe Konrath
Cover and art copyright © 2014 by Carl Graves
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any rese
mblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the authors.
March 2014