Shirl Henke - Sneak And Rescue

“How…the hell…do you…do that?”

“In judo, it’s called mat work.” She chuckled, running her hands proprietarily across his hard pectoral muscles and tracing the narrowing pattern of black hair in its downward descent.

“We gotta…work out…more often.” Now it was Matt’s turn to be breathless. The view inspired it. He looked up at the most sensational pair of knockers he’d ever seen, standing high and firm above a slim waist and flared hips that perched neatly over him. Oh, my, yes…yes! Her sensational body, especially the breasts, had been the first thing he’d noticed about Sam Ballanger the day they met.

The day she kidnapped him at gunpoint.

But as she worked her magic on him, kissing and caressing, moving only the way she could move, memories of that incident faded. He felt the wild exhilaration building. When she tossed her head back and cried out his name, he let go with everything in him.

Sam lay prostrate over his much larger frame. When her heart returned to some semblance of a normal beat, she raised her head and looked over at the clock. “You’re off, Granger. Only fifty-four minutes.”

He came up from the carpet with her in his arms, growling, “Then I’ll just have to practice more.” With that he tossed her onto the bed and dived after her.

When they’d finally exhausted each other, they lay side by side on the pillows. Sam reached up and smoothed one devilish black curl away from his forehead. She always liked this time afterward. The quietness. Just pure relaxed enjoyment, being together with no words necessary. Raised in a big boisterous family, Sam was good at arguing, always had a quick comeback. She’d had to, as the only girl and the eldest of seven Ballanger children. But she’d never learned flowery talk. Didn’t want to. And with Matt she didn’t need to. If only he would come to his senses about Aunt Claudia’s money, everything would be perfect….

Pushing that disturbing thought away, she said, “I should get back to Pat about Elvis. He may have something for me by now.” She didn’t move.

“Yeah, I guess you should.” He didn’t move, either, even though he had two deadlines tomorrow. Just because he’d been nominated for a Pulitzer for his exposé of Russian mafia activities in Miami didn’t mean he could rest on his laurels. Besides, the Pulitzer Committee didn’t meet to decide the winners for four months yet.

They lay quietly until the annoying beep of the bedside phone broke the spell. Matt reached one long arm behind him and groped for the accursed thing, then pressed Talk and grunted, “Granger here.”

Sam recognized Patowski’s cigarette-roughened voice on the line but waited until Matt handed the phone to her. “Speak of the devil and up he pops,” he whispered grumpily, climbing out of bed and grabbing his jeans. She admired the view of his bare buns while he slid worn denim up his long legs and stalked off toward his office.

“Whatcha got for me, Patty?”

“Don’t call me Patty,” Patowski groused, starting their usual ritual of ethnic insults. “I’m a Polack, you’re the Mick,” he added, beating her to the punch.

Sam rolled off the bed and walked into her office, seizing a notepad and pencil as he talked.

“Your pally Elvis P. Scruggs—by the way the P doesn’t stand for Presley—it’s Peter—he had an interesting childhood. A local bad boy from grade school on in some podunk township in the panhandle. Took a joyride in the sheriff’s patrol unit, snuckered to the gills on moonshine.”

“Guess that might tend to piss off the local constabulary,” Sam said dryly.

“Especially since the sheriff was his father.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. Old man was a real hard-ass. Wanted to charge him with GTA but since he was still a minor, it didn’t stick. Sealed court records. I had to do some pretty fancy footwork to come up with the bits and pieces I got.”

“That your subtle way of saying I owe you, Pat?”

“You damn betcha you do.”

Sam knew he was right in spite of the recent help she and Matt had given him breaking the Russian mafia murders. As an officer on the Miami-Dade PD, she had been blamed when a hot dog rookie on the force had been killed. Patowski had gone to bat for her, knowing it had been the kid’s fault, not hers. Sam had still been cashiered, but by then she had been ready to move on anyway. Too many of her fellow officers had blamed her for the botched takedown. Besides, her retrieval business had proved to be far more lucrative.

“What’s our boy Elvis been up to lately?” she asked Pat.

“He did some time in a pretty rough juvvie facility up there, then dropped off the radar screen. No record of him until he turned up here a few months ago.”

“Usually that kind of bad actor rides the down bound train straight to hell, but Scruggs has no other records as an adult you could locate?” she asked.

“Maybe he went out of state. Out of the country. Or, maybe wrestling gators in that detention facility scared him onto the straight and narrow. Who the hell knows? Oh, one thing—you said he was twenty-one?”

“That’s what I got from my client, who had him investigated. Not very well, it seems.”

“He could pass for it, but the sucker’s twenty-eight if the records from Tallahassee are accurate. Birth dates aren’t something they usually screw up.”

Sam hummed, doodling on the notepad, talking to herself. “Wonder what went on for those seven years?”

“Track him down and find out, I guess. That’s what they pay you the big bucks for, isn’t it?” Patowski asked sourly.

“Yeah, Patty, it sure is,” she replied cheerfully. “Thanks. I owe you.” Before he could curse at her again, she hung up. “Looks like I’m headed for St. Louis.”

Standing in the doorway, Matt listened to her musing. “I’m going with you,” he said.

“Nix on that. I have work for you here.”

“I have an editor who sort of expects me to turn in stories by deadline. The Herald pays me for that.”

“Then you obviously don’t have time to drive to St. Louis with me.”

She had that gotcha look in her eyes. “Look, Sam, are you sure this kid’s just a Space Quest fan run amok? I mean, he’s not a psycho or anything, is he?” His wife was sometimes selective with what facts she provided him.

“Just a poor geek. Look at his picture, for crying in the night.” She pulled the snapshot from the clutter on the desk and offered it to him.

“That’s a Confederation Ensign’s insignia,” he murmured.

“You know about this Space Quest junk?” she asked, amazed.

“It isn’t junk. It was a great series—still in syndication. And the films have made millions. Five spin-off shows since it premiered.”

Sam burst out with a guffaw before she could stop herself. “You were a Spacie!” she exclaimed.

His look became at once thunderous and defensive. “The term is Spacer and yes, I was a big fan. Anything wrong with that?”

Sam was hard put to find a glib answer. “I never got the chance to find out. All we ever had on television at our house was baseball and boxing. Mostly, I worked part-time jobs growing up. Not much time for television.” Now she was the one sounding defensive, so she shifted the subject. “But dressing up in those crazy regalias and going halfway across the country to conventions. Kinda weird, if you ask me.”

“I don’t see anything wrong with attending a Spacer Con. I always thought it would be fun.”

“Then why didn’t you go?” she asked, puzzled.

Matt cleared his throat, then looked her in the eye and confessed, “Aunt Claudia wouldn’t let me. She didn’t want me doing anything that’d make me more of a geek than I already was.”