Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

Now he was pressing her so tightly between the van and himself that she could hardly breathe. She had never allowed herself to speculate about any man’s sexuality, not for years, not since she’d become a career woman in a man’s world. He was right about one thing: she was all business, all working mother, all bureaucrat and civic servant. And hunter.

He released her, drawing his left hand down her arm to her hand. His right hand tilted her face to the side. Then his mouth touched her neck over the carotid artery. Every move was music, slow and controlled and perfectly pitched. Not a kiss, a slow-burning brand.

She was back in a crowded high school hallway, a gangly, thick teenager watching the petite bowhead girls as they ransacked their lockers between classes. Giggling and brushing back the careful curls from their necks to show off small lurid bruises. Hickeys. The tattoos of a quarter century ago. Badges of sexual initiation. She knew now that these marks demonstrated the boys’ passion and possession more than the girls’. Good Hispanic girls were too repressed to feel passion, but they were good at pretending to it. And they welcomed visible signs of possession, of their own dangerous desirability. Hickeys were the one pimple an adolescent girl could be proud of.

She had never had one.

A departing headlight raked across their figures like a spotlight. She used the distraction to push him away. “Vampire,” she accused.

“Vlad the Impaler,” he answered.

How could he find sex so amusing, she wondered, especially this explosive kind that defied all previous behavior, all roles, all reason? Maybe he found her amusing.

“You just want to screw me.” The accusation, the situation demanded an ugly word for it.

“Right. I just want to screw you.” He said the words emphatically, separately, with an undertone of surprise.

Somehow the surprise made the vulgarism sexy, not dirty, as he looked at her mouth, then her eyes. “But I won’t. Not until you just want to screw me as much.” He had perfectly imitated her tone but his words were an invitation, and hers hadn’t been.

She caught her breath. Words were just another weapon to her, but they didn’t work for her like this, not in emotional clinches. Only on the street, where they were ugly and effective.

“Don’t try your bedroom games on me,” she said contemptuously again, softly. She meant the contempt for the games, not the bedroom, but she had to wonder if one hadn’t rubbed off on the other for her long ago.

“Bedroom games,” he agreed. “We’re well matched, Lieutenant,” he repeated. “Shall we call it a draw for now?”

The “shall” reminded her of his Continental adventures. Her law enforcement instincts had always told her he could have been, could be, involved in something serious. Something big-time. International. Now she knew it.

She scuttled away along the metal wall, more repelled by herself than by him. He would try anything; she didn’t have to.

“You’re a criminal.”

“Sometimes. To some.”

She shook her head, didn’t look at him. “Get out of here.” Said as shortly as she would dismiss a snitch.

He left, as she said, as he had always wanted to.

And in that momentary turning away, she leaped, kicked a foot out from under him, followed up with a hard knee to the small of the back as he went down, had his right thumb in a painful lock as she forced his arm into an ugly angle behind his back, used her free left hand to slam his head into the asphalt and stun him long enough to grab the handcuffs out of her Excaliber fanny pack, snap the left wrist in, jerk it hard over to…finally…meet the pinned right wrist and…presto.

One magician, hogtied on the rocks.

Molina sat back, both winded and revved. Practice makes perfect, and God knew she had done her share of takedowns in L.A., but that had been years ago.

This one felt better than all of them put together.

For a moment she gloried in being a successful street cop: quarry run down, pinned down, about to go downtown.

She caught her breath and rose, bending to grab his elbow and force him to his feet. She kept his arm in custody while she retrieved the Glock from the truck hood.

“Not leaving your license number?” he asked.

She didn’t answer, just hustled him along to her car, trying not to grin in triumph.

Moments later she realized that not once during the whole confrontation — not once — did she ever consider going for her ankle gun.

Not bedroom games, she said to herself, breathless but satisfied. Just old-fashioned, street-smart police work.

Hallelujah Chorus

As I gaze upon my Miss Temple sprawled on the asphalt, coughing and spitting like a half-drowned red tabby, I feel a strong surge of pardonable pride.

Thank Bastet that I decided to pause at Baby Doll’s en route to my rescue mission for Midnight Louise!

It looked dicey for a minute or two, when I feared Miss Temple would not heed my clarion call for some reason. Luckily, I had arranged for backup.

Although I have not worked with this gang long enough to unleash them on a perpetrator in an orderly disorderly fashion, they certainly were in fine voice and alerted Miss Temple just in time to upset her attacker.

Our continued caterwauling attracted more help of a human nature, but rather than stick around to answer for such a scruffy band of companions, I decide to press on to the next crisis.

“So that is your live-in,” a hoarse voice growls in my ear. “Not much for size or looks. And I think she’s deaf. Have you had her tested by the vet? I presume a privileged fellow like you has a vet.”

“You are not seeing my Miss Temple at her best angle, Ma. Upright. And she has heard me perfectly well on previous occasions. Must be that awful howling music pouring out of Baby Doll’s. We better split before someone mistakes us for street musicians and starts hurling projectiles at us.”

At that I jump down from the fence and back into the mean streets, all in the hopes of ending the discussion. My dear mama, I discover, has enough wind to trot alongside me and still belabor my plans, my significant other, and sundry other details about my person and life.

I begin to wonder if this raid on Los Muertos will be worth it.

I Once Was Deaf but Now I See

Temple pushed down on the heels of her hands.

She couldn’t see, but at least she didn’t hear that horrible shrieking anymore. She had a queasy suspicion that she had contributed to it at the end there.

No one was touching her either.

She pulled herself up against the van and tried to open her eyes.

Blinking, burning. She forced her eyes ajar an eyelash-width again, catching her breath.

Then two hands grabbed her arms above the elbows.

She inhaled to screech, solo, when someone shook her slightly.

“Hey. Tess. It’s okay.”

The voice sounded familiar.

She forced her eyes wider despite the searing saltwater they drowned in.

Rafi Nadir. She was wrong! He was here and he had always been the one.

She pulled away, screamed, kicked, punched, spun her ring, grasping for the pepper spray canister again.

“Hey! Simmer down, Tess. It’s okay! I decked him pretty good. He’s out until someone wants him talkative.”

Him?

Temple gasped, stopped flapping like a fish out of water. (She would never eat fish again.)

She tried to focus on the dark asphalt at her feet, between the two vans.

A long figure lay stretched out facedown.

While she stared, Rafi Nadir whipped out a cell phone and dialed 911. “Mugging suspect down at Baby Doll’s strip club parking lot, Paradise and Flamingo. We need a squad car fast.”

He kept the phone to his ear and frowned at Temple’s gaping expression. “If it hadn’t of been for those nutsy alley cats serenading the strip club from the fence, I never would have noticed you fighting this creep in the shadows here. Don’t you know better than to park your car between two behemoths like this? Put yourself in the dark, a perfect target for a mugger, or worse.”