Diamond In The Rough (Moonlight Detective Agency Book 2)

by Isobella Crowley

Wasn’t it?

  When he’d first made the calls, both of the boys responded with excited incredulity. It had been three months since he’d so much as spoken to Craig and more like five months in the case of Justin, probably since the man tended to break shit—and not only empty liquor bottles.

  “Holy living crap,” Craig had gasped over the phone, “this cannot be. The David Remington actually wants to go out on the town again. We all figured you were fucking dead.” He’d broken off into snickering at that, as though it amused him to think that David must be deceased if he wasn’t partying and attention-whoring and setting money on fire.

  Although he had only requested the presence of Craig and Justin, he had explicitly instructed them to tell as many other people as they wanted that he was back. Word needed to get out. Anyone who wanted to watch the shitshow ought to be in the vicinity of Times Square tonight.

  They had money to spend, egos to bruise, and memories to create. Taylor had instructed him to be publicly visible. And what place was more public or more visible than the Center of the Universe?

  Already, they’d bumped into a few old acquaintances who, satisfyingly, had lingered to gossip after the three of them moved on.

  Yeah, between tonight and my appearance at the Hidden Garden, all the beautiful elite ought to be aware of me again very soon. Maybe that Ocren chick and her stories will even help.

  They took their two new female friends out for even more booze, then invaded a drugstore for the sake of going somewhere that sold merchandise at this hour and bought random pieces of cheap crap with no intention of keeping it.

  “I say,” Justin exclaimed in a really bad fake British accent as he pulled a foot brace off the rack. “It appears this medical device is only in the thirty- to forty-dollar range. With useful implements at such a low cost, I fail to see why there’s any debate over health care for the poor in this country.”

  The two girls cracked up at that.

  Remy led the posse to the counter, where a tired-looking young woman tried to ignore their jokes and the excessively personal questions they probed her with. Her expression resigned, she rang up the foot brace. Remy paid for it easily.

  The quintet stumbled into the street.

  “Justin,” he ordered, “I’m holding you to your word. About health care for the poor. I hereby command you to donate that piece of crap to whichever homeless person happens along next.” He gestured vaguely toward the street.

  “Okay,” the man agreed. He hauled his arm back with a dramatic flourish, grunted as if in slow motion, and tossed the brace, still in its packaging, across the pavement, where it clattered against a shuttered storefront.

  Guttural, spitting laughter erupted from them all.

  Craig, who had the lowest alcohol tolerance of the three, put a hand on Remy’s shoulder to steady himself. “Shit, man,” he drawled. “It’s good to have you acting like your old self again, David. It really is.”

  His gut tightened a little at that. It stung.

  I really was this bad, wasn’t I?

  He pushed the concept from his mind and continued his rampage.

  Soon, dawn began to break and some of the businesses reopened. More tourists and shoppers, workers, and other random humans began to swell the avenues.

  “Hey,” Justin suggested, “let’s do more charity. I think I saw a news camera somewhere over there.”

  They invaded a fast-food restaurant, demanded enough food to feed a dozen people, and stumbled out into the square where they loudly distributed the sandwiches and hash browns to anyone they happened to come across and especially people who didn’t look rich.

  “There, there,” Remy proclaimed and raised his voice to almost a shout, “don’t worry, hungry little worker bee. The Remingtons will see to it that you don’t go without nourishment today.” He shoved an egg-based concoction into the mitten-covered paws of a guy who looked like he probably worked for the Road Commission and who accepted it with a few blinks but without complaint.

  Next, they bought the two bitches an assortment of needlessly expensive cosmetics at Sephora and some high-end athletic shoes for themselves. Finally, they selected jewelry for all.

  “Justin,” said Craig, “you were right. There is a news camera. Let’s monopolize their time.”

  By now, several people had actually stopped to watch the posse, laden as they were with bags and trinkets and given their obvious inebriation and general loudness. Remy was surprised they hadn’t had an encounter with the NYPD yet.

  The camera was attached to a three-person crew who were conducting lame slice-of-life interviews with random New Yorkers—or visitors to the city—asking them what were probably banal questions designed simply to fill time on the morning news.

  He spearheaded the charge. Before the news crew even knew what hit them, he and his entourage had barged directly in front of the camera, displaced the guy they’d been talking to, and shoved him aside.

  “Hey!” Remy yelled, “check this out!” He grabbed the fur-coated chick’s arm and lifted it so that her bag, overflowing with pricey makeup, dangled in front of the lens.

  The lady doing the interview mouthed wordlessly before she attempted to intervene. “Excuse me,” she said sharply, “this is live. We’re doing—”

  Justin interrupted her. “We’re doing good works. Canadian bacon sandwiches for all.” He doubled over, giggling.

  Craig added, “Never let it be said that the New York elite don’t care about the common man.” He snickered.

  Remy realized he had to top them both. “Yes,” he pronounced, “it’s true. From our own pockets, we have fed the hungry of this great city and also donated a foot brace to a nearby sidewalk. But fear not for our own finances, because all that crap cost like, I don’t know, one percent of what we spent on this.”

  He held out a big-ass jewel set in a gold ring between his thumb and forefinger. “Seriously, look at this thing. I don’t know what kind of gem it is, exactly. But it cost a ton, so it must have been worth it.”

  “Okay,” the newswoman snapped, “that’s enough. We’re leaving. Charles, kill the camera.”

  Remy held his companions back as the news crew closed shop and tramped off toward the other side of the square. Suddenly, he didn’t feel like any of this was all that funny anymore.

  “Fuck,” said Justin, “it’s been way too long since we had this good a time.”

  Realizing that they hadn’t eaten any of the food they’d previously purchased, they agreed to get breakfast at a higher-end establishment. Justin led the two girls into the restaurant first, and Remy lingered in the rear and pulled Craig aside.

  “Hey,” he began in a low voice, “I’m not feeling that great, to be honest. I think I need a couple more minutes of fresh air. Go ahead without me and I’ll be in shortly, okay?”

  Craig, still mostly drunk, stared at him for a second before he smiled. “Okay, David. You’re on a roll, though, seriously. Don’t disappoint us now.” He turned and disappeared into the building.

  Remy’s nostrils flared as he inhaled the cool air. As soon as the last of his companions was gone, he turned and hustled down the sidewalk, cut across to the next street at the earliest opportunity, and continued to put distance between himself and his temporary crew.

  “God,” he muttered. “I went out of my way to act like a really bad caricature of my old self, and they ate it up with relish. I don’t even know who my old self is anymore at this point. Ugh.”

  He almost wished he could simply disappear. Or, like the face-snatcher he’d tracked down not long ago, adopt a completely different appearance and identity.

  But that was impossible. Instead, once he reached an area where there weren’t quite so many humans around, he looked for a taxi. Even with all the other bullshit he’d purchased, he was fairly certain he could afford the ride back to his apartment. It wasn’t too far.

  A yellow cab approached and the driver’s demeanor suggested he was looking for reliable fare
s. Remy looked toward the windshield and raised a hand in the universal gesture for “I need someone to drive me the hell out of here.”

  Instead, someone pounded into him.

  “Oof!” The impact knocked the air out of his lungs and him off his feet. His head spun while his body careened forward. The city and its buildings and traffic all became rapidly darting, brightly colored blurs and in horror, he realized that he was hurtling directly into the middle of the street.

  Horns honked and cars swerved. The taxi he had tried to hail pulled out into traffic, almost T-boned a Chevy, and the driver accelerated and sped away.

  Dark, wet asphalt loomed, and Remy struck in the next second. Painful waves of shock exploded in his wrists, shoulders, and part of the right side of his face. He rolled along the pavement. More car-horns blared.

  In the midst of a roll, he glanced up dizzily and saw his attacker.

  It was a man—or something shaped like a man—clad in brown boots, dark-blue jeans, a black hooded sweater, and a black ski mask. He was average-sized and nothing about him was strange or suspicious aside from the mask.

  “Shit,” Remy groaned as another car raced toward him.

  He rolled back the way he’d come and narrowly escaped the path of another oncoming cab as brakes and tires squealed. The vehicle rumbled over a pothole to swerve around him and displaced traffic in another loud eruption of horns. A car on the other side of the road veered halfway onto the sidewalk before it righted itself.

  Before he could find his feet, the masked man was on top of him.

  “Hey,” he protested when the dark figure’s arms clawed at him, “do you know who I am? I work for—”

  “Yeah,” a voice rasped, and the man’s hands caught him by the shoulders. “I do know.”

  He shoved and Remy catapulted wildly most of the way across the street, his arms and legs flailing desperately.

  “Fuck!” he cried. Again, he crashed onto the asphalt and tumbled head over heels and again while cars honked and drivers wrenched at their steering wheels and slammed on their brakes.

  The masked man was somehow airborne. Remy crawled to the sidewalk and dragged himself upright using a lamppost, but his assailant had vaulted over the entire street in a single superhuman bound.

  They sent a goddamn vampire or werewolf, was all he could think. Taylor thought someone working for our enemy would approach me. Instead, it looks like they’ll kill me.

  The plan had worked a little too well.

  Moving so fast he could barely follow him, the masked man reached his side. “Hold still,” he commanded.

  Remy did not hold still. Instead, he snatched up an orange traffic cone and swung it toward his attacker. It really was a shitty weapon, but there wasn’t anything else nearby and he wasn’t about to go hand-to-hand with someone who clearly had preternatural abilities.

  His assailant was already gone before the traffic cone could touch him. He dodged instinctively to the side and from somewhere behind him, the man’s fist lashed out and struck the lamppost he’d used for support. The metal shrieked and bent.

  “Oh, crap,” he gasped as the dark form lunged toward him again.

  He half-tripped over his own feet and fell into the street, directly into the side of a moving car. It wasn’t moving very fast but an object with that much mass still had significant velocity and kinetic force behind it.

  Remy was flung off his feet again and spun as the car tried to stop, the brakes screeching. The vehicle wheeled to block traffic. The driver, a woman who was on the verge of total panic, attempted to unbuckle herself to check on him but she seemed to have frozen.

  A shadow moved and the mysterious attacker loomed over his prostrate form. He was, by now, feeling the fact that he’d had his ass kicked by both man and car and could barely move. The assailant would succeed.

  Sirens had blared distantly for a moment already but now, out of nowhere, they seemed almost on top of them. In one corner of his vision, Remy saw flashing red and blue lights.

  The masked man hesitated. A tremor of rage and frustrated will to action rippled through him and his blue eyes blazed. In the next instant, he seemed to blur and was gone.

  Remy lay where he was in the street near the curb. An SUV had stopped in front of him, so he was momentarily safe from being run over unless some other vehicle rear-ended the SUV and knocked it into him. The lady driving the other car behind him finally managed to loosen her belt, opened the door, and stepped into the street.

  “Oh, my God.” She moaned. “Are you okay? I didn’t see you I swear, I didn’t see… What were you doing?”

  He coughed and tasted blood on his lower lip—hopefully from the lip itself and not from his lungs or stomach. “Hailing a cab,” he replied.

  A police car drew up alongside him and cast its rotating lights of scarlet and azure over the curb. Judging by the still-growing blare of sirens, at least one more cruiser was on its merry way.

  The woman froze again as the doors opened and two cops emerged.

  “Wellllll,” a voice began. “Mr Remington. It’s been a while since we’ve had to respond to one of your various disturbances. Old habits die hard, don’t they?”

  Remy groaned and tried to sit but failed. “Good morning, officers. And yeah, they do.”

  Chapter Ten

  Times Square, New York City

  Alex staggered around a concrete corner, seeking the concealment of the alley’s shadows, and slipped easily into their deceptive darkness. He could move faster than other humans. It was one of the perks that came with the otherwise shitty job of being Moswen’s slave.

  A trash dumpster appeared before him as he bolted down the alleyway. Without even slowing his stride, he leapt high, soared over it, and struck a rattling metal fence beyond.

  His hands and feet linked into it and for a second or two, he hung there as if perched and debated whether to climb over and keep running or vault himself upward and climb to the top of the building to the left.

  “Keep it simple, stupid,” he gasped to himself beneath his ski mask and swung over the fence. He landed lightly on the ground beyond and sprinted deeper into the darkness. By now, the voices and shuffling bodies and police sirens had already faded away behind him.

  He paused to catch his breath in an especially gloomy corner.

  “Fuck,” he muttered after a couple of gulps of air. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. None of this is going like it should. How the hell was I supposed to know the cops here have such a good response time? Or did the prick simply get lucky?”

  He’d tailed Remington for a little while now. It hadn’t been too difficult to track his movements. The spacker always seemed to be accompanied by his pet fairy, though.

  With her around, any kind of attack was far too risky. Despite their small size and harmless appearance, the Fair Folk, as Moswen had mentioned, possessed enormous magical powers, which they sometimes used to protect mortals who paid for their services or whom they simply happened to like.

  Last night and this morning were the first time he had seen the man without his little preternatural companion. Now, he’d decided, was the time to strike.

  Even then, he’d waited for the proper moment. The rich prick had completely surrounded himself with people. Even with his augmented abilities, Alex might have had trouble abducting the man with his mates hovering by his side and dozens of witnesses nearby. He’d skulked and watched and waited until at last, the two of them could have a brief moment alone.

  But he’d failed.

  “Fuck,” he cursed one last time. He sprang toward the nearest building, seized the external metal staircase, and used it to hurl himself upward to cling to the wall. The morning sun hadn’t reached his position yet. No one would see him unless they somehow expected to see a man climbing a tall structure the way a lizard climbs a rock.

  He supposed that transporting this Remington guy would have presented problems of its own—the man certainly had a big mouth. But the risk would have been
worth it. He was Taylor Steele’s assistant. Some of the rumors even suggested they were lovers.

  “God,” he muttered as he clambered past curtained windows and felt the breeze grow stronger with the elevation. “I don’t know what she sees in him if that’s the case. Who knows?”

  What all the rumors agreed upon, though, was that Taylor was one of the most important individuals in New York’s preternatural community. Maybe even the most important.

  With her human boy toy as hostage, Alex could have lured her into a trap. Moswen would be very pleased. She might even finally allow him to return to Israel—or better yet, to Australia, although that seemed unlikely since he’d pledged his entire life to her.

  “I need to find another way,” he rasped. The top of the building was in sight. From there, he could scout his path back to his shitty motel room. “Another way to get at that vampire bitch. Taylor, I mean, haha. Something that will grab her attention.”

  He scrambled onto the roof and kept himself low so as to not be silhouetted against the morning sun.

  “And then,” he said, “I need to find a way out.”

  As soon as the words left him, he almost panicked. Anyone who happened to be reading his mind could interpret that in several different ways.

  “A way out of trouble with the cops,” he added hurriedly before the burning pain in his chest could rise. “Of course.”

  NYPD Times Square Precinct, New York City

  Remington rubbed his temples and blinked to ease his eyes. He didn’t think he’d really drunk all that much last night, but perhaps exhaustion had made it worse. After all, he’d been up all night and passed out for only a couple of hours after the arresting officers deposited him in a holding cell.

  He sighed, a long, ragged sound like something an old dog would make. “How long now,” he wondered out loud, “has it been since the last time I was in one of these places, anyhow? I can’t fucking remember.”

  Of course, he’d been to jail many times. At least ten or twelve, something like that. But it was difficult to recall many of the details.