“You’re gonna get naked!” the club owner shrieked.

Sam knew she was in trouble when the cheap velvet drapes separating the howling audience from the stage started to open. The music grew deafeningly loud. So did the roar of male anticipation out front.

Now that she’d got the information she came for, she had to get the hell out of the building. Her hand closed around the exit door handle and she started to shove it open when a big paw grabbed a hunk of her hair and pulled her back.

“I paid you to strip.”

“How about you strip?” she yelled, applying pressure on the nerves at the base of his flabby bicep just above his elbow. He yelped in pain and released her. Sam waited for him to raise his left hand, but before she could act, a loaded bottle connected with the back of his skull and he collapsed.

Sam looked up into her husband’s furious face, seeing his eyes sweep over her almost-naked body. “What the hell are you doing here?”

For Matt Henke,

My pop culture and music maven,

besides being the world’s best son

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shirl Henke received her BA and MA in history from the University of Missouri and then worked at many different jobs, including running the circulation desk on a small daily, writing and editing “house organ” newspapers, administering a federal information programme for the elderly, and finally as a university instructor, teaching in four different departments.

Ever since she was a child she read avidly, everything from Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi adventures to the big historical sagas of the 1970s and 1980s. She always had ideas for stories and sold her first novel to Warner Books in 1986. Within two years, she was able to quit her day job. Now she can’t imagine doing anything but writing for a living.

She and her husband, Jim, share their cedar house in the woods with an utterly spoiled and very geriatric tomcat. As with writing, life without cats would be unimaginable. For therapy when she’s not at the computer, she cooks large dinners for their extended family, works in her garden and greenhouse and still reads avidly. When deadlines permit, she loves to travel. Visit Shirl on the web at www.shirlhenke.com.

Sneak and Rescue

SHIRL HENKE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sam and Matt’s second adventure was even more fun to write than the first and I could not have done it without the able assistance of many people and organisations. Any mistakes or excess of “literary licence” are my own.

The setting for this caper is the beautiful Miami metro area. I owe thanks once more to Detective Juan DelCastillo and the Miami-Dade Police Department for information about how my fictional homicide sergeant, William Patowski, might have conducted his investigation.

For the fictionalised Space Quest, its fans and the wider universe where they boldly go, I received creative inspiration from my son, Matt Henke, and the Atlas Chapter of the real international organisation.

I grew up listening to Elvis Presley’s music and there is only one “King.” But my Elvis Scruggs was pretty cool in his own way. I hope you think so, too. Who knows? He just might pop up in a future story. Let me know what you think: www.shirlhenke.com.

Chapter 1

“Quit hiding from me, you sneaky piece of junk!”

Sam dug through the stacks of receipts and file folders, frantic as a starving squirrel looking for its winter cache of nuts. One heavy binder slid off the chair in front of her and toppled dead center onto the neat piles of checks and bank statements spread out on the carpet. With horror, she watched an hour’s worth of sorting flutter into its former chaos. Muttering a curse beneath her breath, she listened more carefully. The muffled chirp of the new cordless phone was coming from behind a tower of IRS pamphlets piled on the love seat next to the chair.

“It used to be so much easier—just start at the jack and pull the phone through the rubble,” she muttered.

Crawling on hands and knees to the sofa, she tossed aside manuals with print so fine she couldn’t read them with the magnification of the Hubble telescope. “Might’ve known it was the IRS’s fault,” she said, seizing the phone, which had been wedged behind a cushion.

Just before the final ring set off her answering machine—if she’d remembered to reactivate it—Sam answered, “Ballanger Retrievals,” in her most professional voice. She pushed another stack of manuals onto the floor to create a narrow empty space where she could sit. The small sofa was so full of folders, pamphlets and papers that only the brown leather armrests were visible. Risking an avalanche that might bury her five-four frame if either side toppled, she gingerly leaned back, trying to catch her breath so she would not be huffing like an asthmatic marathon runner.

“Ms. Samantha Ballanger, please,” a male voice with a clipped upper-class accent said, as if accustomed to instant acquiescence. She’d heard the type before.

“This is Sam Ballanger.” If he expected her to have a private secretary to screen her calls, he was in for an unavoidable disappointment. After growing up poor in a big south Boston blue-collar family, Sam never wasted money on things she could do herself.

“My name is Upton Winchester IV, Ms. Ballanger. I understand you find and return runaways…discreetly.”

“Who referred my service to you, Mr. Winchester?” She always wanted to know her clients were legit and not wasting her time. Lots of wacko husbands who used their wives and kids for punching bags wanted her to haul the victims back. No dice. She’d seen too much when she’d worked as a paramedic and then a police officer after moving to Miami.

There was a slight hesitation on the other end of the line. “I was referred by Jayson Page Layton. Jay and I golf together,” he replied, expecting her to be impressed.

She was. Layton was a Bal Harbor real estate tycoon whose daughter had joined a religious cult and vanished into a commune in the Everglades a couple of years ago. Sam had literally wrestled an alligator while rescuing the poor kid from her nutcase captors, who’d been little more than child molesters and responsible for at least one dead cult member. That was Sergeant Will “Pat” Patowski’s take on it. He was her mentor at the Miami-Dade Police Department, where she had spent seven years as a police officer. The Kingdom Come “prophet” and his “deacons” were presently serving ten to life in the state pen at Raiford.

“What seems to be the problem, Mr. Winchester?”

“I’d rather not discuss the matter over the phone, Ms. Ballanger. Please come to my office at the Seascape Building, say—” he paused as if consulting his day-planner “—four this afternoon. Winchester, Grayson & Kent Accounting is on the fifteenth floor.”

She paused, as if consulting her own day-planner, which was a scratch pad and ballpoint buried somewhere in the income tax debris smothering her office. “Yeah, that’ll work for me. Oh, my retainer’s three hundred for consultation. If I take the case, I get three-fifty a day plus expenses,” she said, figuring any guy with a Roman numeral in his name could afford a little extra.

“Very well. I’ll expect you at four promptly.”

She found herself holding a dead phone. “Jerk,” she muttered. Obviously used to getting his way. But the address was in the Brickell high-rent district and he hadn’t haggled over the price. She scanned the wreckage of the room, looking for the yellow pages, then spotted the volume on her desk next to the empty phone charger. Two feet of books and other papers were piled on top of it.

“Screw it,” she said, getting up to dig for it. As she scooted out from between the piles of IRS manuals, they toppled, then slid with a loud series of thumps onto the mess on the floor. She managed to extract the phone book without disturbing the “ordered chaos” on her desk. Sam thumbed through the accounting section until she reached the Ws, then whistled. A full-page ad, tastefully done in black and white—or black and yellow, more properly—proclaimed Winchester, Grayson & Kent had been in business for over fifty years. Corporate taxes were their specialty.

“Yeah, I did smell money. Must be a family business. Too bad I didn’t up my fee even higher. Looks like Winchester could afford a lot more than three and a half bennies a day,” she said regretfully.

Her mother, God rest her Irish Catholic soul, used to light candles and pray for Sam to abandon her avaricious ways. Avarice was one of the seven deadly sins, after all. But stretching a beer driver’s income to feed six sons who ate as if each meal was going to be their last, Mary Elizabeth Ballanger never had an abundance of time to fret over her daughter’s vices. Sam had elevated what she liked to think of as “fiscal prudence” to an art form.

Her ruminations about family back home were interrupted by a loud crash, followed by an oath as the front door slammed. “Dammit, Sam, I thought we agreed you’d call that cleaning service while I was gone,” her husband yelled down the hall.

“Welcome home. I missed you, too, darling,” she called back, walking down the hall into the living room of their condo.

Matt Granger sat like a disgruntled yoga student, rubbing the toes of his right foot while cursing inventively. “A man needs steel-toed construction boots to walk in this sty.”

Returning from a weeklong assignment for the Miami Herald, he’d unlocked the door, juggling his suiter and laptop as he entered the dark room only to trip on one of an assortment of free weights Sam had forgotten to pick up. In a last-ditch save, he’d cradled his computer in both arms and pitched forward. He landed on an empty pizza carton.

“Let me guess. Double cheese and pepperoni, right?” He glowered at the orange stain on the knee of his best tropical wool worsted slacks. “You take these to the dry cleaners,” he said, knowing it would provoke her, but not caring at the moment.

“No way. I have some cleaning solution here that will take that out in a jiff.”

“Way. You’re not touching my Natazzi slacks with some junk you bought in the discount store.”

“Well, since they’re Italian, they go with pizza,” she said, stooping to pick up the carton and toss it in the general direction of an overflowing wastebasket. “You know, we could afford professional dry cleaning if you let me—”

“Let’s not go there, Sam,” he said, interrupting before she could restart the old argument. Why had he given her the opening? On the subject of money, his wife was as tenacious as a Boston bull terrier with teeth sunk into a letter carrier’s leg. “I have a ton of work to do. Kiss and make up?” he suggested hopefully as he climbed to his feet.

She gave him a grudging peck that ripened into a long, languorous welcome. When they finally broke apart, she said, “I’ve been too busy working on income taxes to think of the mess. It is April, and besides, I have a business to run, too.”

He looked around his once neat-as-a-pin bachelor pad. When had the hurricane hit? Everything from fast-food packaging to dirty laundry littered the room. He could only imagine what the kitchen looked like. No, on second thought, he didn’t even want to imagine it. “You promised to get a maid.”

“Do you know what they want an hour just to straighten up a little? I’ll get around to it.” She gestured vaguely.

“No, you won’t. Like you said, you have a business to run and so do I. We’re both gainfully employed, Sam.”

“We don’t make enough to afford a cleaning service…but we could if—”

“Don’t start with Aunt Claudia again,” he warned. “We can afford a damn maid—if any of them are brave enough to set foot in this landfill. And we don’t need the Witherspoon millions to live quite comfortably.”

Sam threw up her hands, cocking her head so she could look up at Matt. At six-six, he towered over her, but she never backed down. “You are nuts, you know that? First, after graduating from Yale, you turn your back on a trust fund Paris Hilton wouldn’t sniff at.” She ticked off number one on her finger, then moved to number two. “Whaddya do instead of living the high life in Boston? You enlist in the army!” Finger number three. “Now you bust your ass working the news beat at the Herald when we could have the deal of the century.

“Your aunt—your very, very wealthy aunt—has forgiven you for being nuts. Or maybe she’s forgiven you because she knows I’m not nuts. She offered me—out of the goodness of her heart—a monthly stipend to stay married to you.”

“Stipend,” Matt snorted. “Try bribe!”

“Try allowance for the fodder and stabling of my jackass husband!”

Matt looked down into his wife’s stubborn little face. “You know, you mercenary little runt, if I weren’t kinda fond of you, I’d drop you off one of the causeways into the bay.” There were days that it didn’t seem like a half-bad idea. This was shaping up to be one of them.

“And if I weren’t afraid of getting a hernia, I’d do the same to you, you Godzilla-sized jerk…wait a sec, if you were fish bait, I bet Aunt Claudia would settle a widow’s jointure on me.”

Matt couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing in spite of the aggravation. “You’ve been reading those historical romances again. A jointure is something out of the last century.”

“Yeah?” Sam poked her husband in the chest with a stiff finger. “Aunt Claudia is out of the last century. Hell, she’s probably out of the nineteenth century!”

Matt grunted, rubbing his sore chest.

“Don’t bother me. I’m thinking.” Sam shushed him before he could interrupt. “With that money I could hire a maid…”

“And have our taxes done,” Matt added.

“That maid would give me time to work on my own damn taxes. You know it’s April and the vultures are circling.”

“We should hire an accountant. You don’t have to battle the IRS like the Lone Ranger—”

“Accountant! Damn, I’ll be late. Gotta scoot, sweetie,” she said, stretching up on tiptoe to plant another fulsome kiss on his mouth before she dashed down the hall.

As he watched her sleek little derriere disappear into their bedroom, Matt shook his head at her mercurial mood swing. He could never stay mad at her even when she drove him crazy. Their argument was over…but only for the moment. Matt knew she’d renew it. But he was damned if he wanted his eccentric millionaire aunt paying his wife to stay married to him!

Sam simply didn’t understand how hard he’d struggled to break free of the smothering boardroom mentality of his rich family. Being born with a silver spoon in your mouth choked some kids. The Grangers and Witherspoons were a stuffy bunch of humorless old farts who only mingled with “the better sort.” In other words, other Boston Brahmins. His great-aunt Claudia ought to know. She’d run away to Europe to escape. But since he was the last of the Granger men, she now felt it her duty to see that he fulfilled the very obligations she’d fled.

“Out of the goodness of her heart!” he parroted, kicking the offending pizza carton that had tumbled from the wastebasket. His aunt Claudia didn’t have a heart—a spleen, sure, but a heart? Ha! If he gave in to her manipulations, she’d have him back in Boston, in charge of the family brokerage firm, attending high teas and charity auctions! He was an adrenaline junkie, addicted to the thrill of chasing after a hot story. He had acquired friends in low places and liked it that way.

“I’ll never go back to that gilded cage—not even for Sammie. Damn, one week trying to be a society matron and she’d go crazy herself!” But he’d never been able to convince her that luring them back to Boston was Aunt Claudia’s ultimate goal. His aunt and his wife had bonded the first time they met. Small wonder. Claudia had made Sam an offer a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks couldn’t refuse—a ton of money.

In spite of the differences in their backgrounds, they were sisters under the skin—ruthless schemers. He loved them both to distraction, but that was all the more reason to keep them separated. Claudia a thousand miles away was a good thing. The very thought of the two of them united and working together made him shudder.

Abandoning the ongoing argument that was giving him an ulcer, he trailed her into the walk-in closet where she was hastily stripping off a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’re taking our records to a tax accountant,” he said, but could see she was too rushed to hear him.

Sam hated panty hose for a number of reasons besides the humid South Florida heat that fused them to her legs, but she grabbed a pair from an overflowing drawer. Shoving her way past Matt, she lay back on the bed and yanked them up her legs in one quick motion. “Gotta look like class to impress a guy with a ‘fourth’ tacked on the end of his name, after all,” she muttered to herself.

She made a quick scan of her sadly depleted wardrobe, then seized the first suit that she found, a little black number with a fresh cleaners’ bag over it, remembering gratefully that Matt actually took care of their dry cleaning. She started putting it on while she eyed the pile of shoes on the floor, praying she could find two size-six pumps, preferably the same color.

“An accountant won’t allow you extra deductions for looking great,” he commented as she pitched shoes right and left, trying to match up a pair of Via Spiga pumps.

After finding the second elusive shoe, she looked up at her husband. “Sorry, Matt. This tax man is a new case.”

She thought he muttered something about her being the case as he turned around and stalked down the hall toward their Dumpster of a kitchen. God, she hoped there was some coffee and a couple of bagels left in the fridge—or that he wouldn’t think to check until she was gone. Jamming her feet into the pumps, she ran a quick comb through curly brown hair and made her getaway.

Four in the afternoon in Miami was rush hour, but then the same could be said at four in the morning if you were driving on I-95. Convertibles with tops down and tanned halter-topped drivers with their hair whipping in the wind vied with leather-clad bikers racing up the wide highway. Both weaved in and out like demented triggerfish, changing lanes in front of semis who blasted them with deafening horns. Since her favorite uncle, Declan Ballanger, was an over-the-road trucker, Sam shared the semi-drivers’ irritation. She’d made numerous cross-country runs with him while she was in high school and college. The money had helped her pay tuition.

She was late and far exceeding the speed limit in her—or rather, Matt’s—sleek little Mustang. She had to admit the ride was pretty neat as she cut off a carload of college kids who should’ve been home studying and took the exit leading to Miami Avenue where she headed south, then angled east to Winchester’s posh building.

She paid an obscene amount at the underground parking garage and searched for an open space. Just as she was about to give up and park illegally in a crosswalk, a car pulled out. The guy riding her fender since she’d entered the deck squealed his brakes to keep from hitting her as she waited for the SUV to back carefully out of the tight space. Sam resisted the urge to give the guy behind her the finger.

“Jerk, get your own space.” She expected him to pass her and continue his search, but he just sat behind his darkly tinted windshield in a beat-up Olds that looked long overdue for the junkyard. When the soccer mom was gone, Sam executed a neat turn into the narrow space and jumped out of the car. The elevator was halfway to the other side of the deck.

“Should’ve worn flats,” she groused to herself, hiking down the opposite side of the long aisle. She hadn’t gone more than a dozen car lengths or so when she heard the sound of the Olds’ tires’ squeal as it came up behind her—fast. She whirled around and saw the crazy nut aiming directly for her! Should’ve worn joggers! Sam threw herself onto the hood of a shiny new Town Car and rolled over the side a second before the Lincoln’s front fender crumpled like tinfoil when the Olds sideswiped it.

The Town Car lurched sideways, almost crushing her between it and the Chevy truck parked next to it. Sam jumped on top of the pickup bed and started a game of leapfrog from car to car, trying desperately to get to the elevator as the Olds backed up for another pass. If the heels hadn’t been a splurge for her even though they were on sale, she wouldn’t have bothered to stuff them in her handbag after pulling them off. But she’d be damned if she’d loose a pair of Via Spiga pumps just because some loony wanted to play dodgem cars!

Shoes in, .38 snub nose out. She always carried the small Smith & Wesson on retrievals. But since the job she’d met Matt on had run them both afoul of the local Russian mob, she carried it everywhere now. She felt the fillings in her teeth loosen when the Olds bashed against the little Miata she was balanced on. “A thirty-story office building. It’s near quitting time, but does anybody walk out of the friggin’ elevator or drive by?” she muttered, jumping onto the roof of a much more substantial Dodge Caravan. “Damned yuppies all work overtime!”

Sam flattened herself to aim at the attack vehicle when it again backed up for another pass. She grinned when the passenger window rolled down. “Come to mama,” she crooned, drawing a bead on the big hairy fist holding a Glock out the window. Before he could fire, she did. A yelp of pain followed. As the Olds sped away, she only caught the first four figures of the letter-number combo on the plate. Even that was obscured by mud.

She drew a shaky breath when she heard the big engine’s noise fade in the distance. “Bet he doesn’t pay his parking fee.” But she’d also bet even if the video camera got a clearer shot of the plate as it busted through the wooden crossbar, it would be bogus. Still it wouldn’t hurt to check. She might get lucky.

Yeah, Ballanger. And you might win the lottery, too.

Sam slid off the dusty roof of the Caravan and started to limp toward the elevator. Suddenly she heard the sound of an engine coming up the ramp behind her. It couldn’t be. No, thank God, it wasn’t. A sweet little red Corvette driven by an elderly man barely tall enough to see over the wheel turned the corner and crawled past her. She leaned against the side of an old Buick and took a deep breath.

“Damn.” She looked down at her clothes to inspect the damage. It could be worse. She could be dead, she reminded herself as she started to fish the shoes out of her handbag and replace the gun.

When another car whined down the incoming ramp, Sam jerked her head up, recognizing that particularly powerful old engine. “The chutzpah of some people,” she muttered, diving behind the Buick as a shot grazed her thick mop of hair, then smacked into the wall behind her, dislodging a nasty chunk of concrete.

The Olds was back for a second try.

Chapter 2

This time the driver was doing the shooting. She could tell the shot had passed from the far left side through the passenger window. After she’d put his pal out of commission, he was apparently taking no chances, leaning toward the right of the Olds. If she stayed where she was hiding, he could smack into the car and crush her between it and the wall.

Glancing behind her, Sam could see a narrow pathway along the wall. The row of cars were parked far enough out to let her make a dash. The driver would have to back up or get out of his car to reach her. She spun and started to run while fishing frantically in her handbag for her cell. Damn piece of junk probably wouldn’t work in the underground garage, but anything was worth a try.

The old car’s brakes squealed in protest as her would-be killer tromped them, then fired several more shots. Sam was grateful he wasn’t an aficionado of the target range as she ducked and dodged. Chunks of concrete exploded around her like land mines in Tora Bora. He slammed his Olds into reverse. She could hear the transmission groan in protest, but didn’t take time to watch as its driver followed her. At least backing up in the confines of the dimly lit garage forced him to take his eyes off her.

She made it to the cover of a heavy concrete support beam surrounded by cars. “Let’s see you ram this, sucker,” she said, crouching down behind the steel-reinforced barrier. She pressed 911 on the phone. Useless. She might have known. Resisting the urge to throw the cell at her attacker, she took a deep breath and held her .38 Smith &Wesson Chief’s Special with steady hands. She had only four shots left. Once those were gone, so was Sam.

Her buddy didn’t disappoint. He pulled the Olds almost in line with the beam, then slipped out the driver’s side. She could hear the door creak as it opened and see the changing pattern of light through the broken window. Using an old trick she’d learned as a beat cop in one of the city’s less than secure neighborhoods, Sam knelt down and peered beneath the cars, watching for feet.

Nothing like a broken ankle or leg to slow a guy down. She caught a blur of movement, but this one was smart enough to use the rear wheel as cover before she could line up her shot at the awkward angle. She heard some moans and curses from inside the car and recognized it as the distinct local blend known as Spanglish. The one she’d hit was still alive but not happy.

“Looks as if we have what you might call a Cuban standoff, doesn’t it, pally?” she asked. “Better get your partner to an E.R. before somebody calls the cops.”

Her suggestion was ignored. Then he put one foot outside the wheel. Sam took careful aim and fired a single shot at the weathered denim pant leg. Another string of hybrid oaths in a Spanish-English combo.

“Bingo,” she muttered as he hopped back to the car. From the quick leap he made, she knew she’d only nicked him, but that was good enough. The door slammed shut and the Olds took off like a rocket, careening around the corner and vanishing up the exit ramp, a lot faster than the old geezer in the ’Vette. She still only made out the first four digits on the dirty plate. Deliberately covered with mud? Probably.

Sam stood up and leaned against the cool concrete for a minute, collecting herself. Whoever had hired those gunsels meant business. Although she and Matt had made some nasty enemies in the local Russian Mafia, she doubted these two turkeys were connected. One or both of them might have .38 slugs in them—or at least a couple of real nasty gashes, maybe the first shooter a broken arm or hand. That meant they needed medical help of some kind.

She replaced the gun in her handbag and took out the Via Spiga pumps. Shoving the shoes over her mangled stockings, she sprinted toward the elevator to the first floor where her cell would work, then placed a call to Patowski to explain what had just transpired.

Pat was his usual gracious self. “Let me get this straight. You want me to run a check on all Miami E.R. s for a couple of Cubano shooters who you never even got a look at? Driving a rag wagon Olds, for which you only got a partial plate? These supposed Cubanos may have .38 bullet wounds? Hell, Sam, in the last hour you know how many shootings there’ve been in Little Havana alone? And how common .38s are? Talk about your needle in a haystack—why not ask me to pick fly crap out of black pepper?”

Sam sighed, glancing at her watch. “You’re right, Pat. It’s a long shot, but the one in the car I may have hit pretty solid. He wasn’t shooting when the driver got out.”

“What’s this all about? More mob stuff?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Just run the plate and see what you come up with, okay?”

After a martyred sigh, Patowski agreed. He owed her and they both knew it. She and Matt had helped him and his pals at the FBI break a case involving multiple homicides and stop a Russian mafia turf war extending from Miami to New York.

When she ended the call, she could see some of the well-dressed executive types in the exclusive office building giving her the eye. Sam could imagine what she must look like, but one glance at her watch and she also knew she didn’t have time to repair the damage.

She brushed at the dust and oil on her formerly immaculate suit with an oath. For once in her miserable life, couldn’t she look cool and professional? Muttering, “At least black doesn’t show grease stains,” she headed to the elevator and punched the up button.

A woman in a designer suit with a matching briefcase entered the elevator with her, practically stepping sideways through the wide door. She deliberately stood at the opposite side of the car as it began its ascent. “If you think I’m Typhoid Mary, you could’ve waited for the next car,” Sam couldn’t resist saying. Then she sneezed. Her fellow traveler quickly punched a second button and got off at the next floor. Sam rode to the fifteenth.

The elite offices of Winchester, Grayson & Kent were furnished in posh Danish modern, the redwood tones made more subtle by pale gray and mauve upholstery. Tall black urns filled with bamboo and those funny curlicues of decorative wood stood like sentinels flanking the massive reception desk. Abstract watercolors were strategically placed on the pearl-white walls, all of them by one artist, probably Scandinavian and most certainly expensive.

Several men in custom tailored suits occupied chairs that overlooked a solid glass wall with a splendid view of the Intracoastal. One glanced up from his Barron’s long enough to give her a sniff of distaste, then went back to the stock market reports. A woman with glossy blond hair sleeked into a severe French twist sat behind the reception desk. She obviously didn’t like Sam’s appearance, either.

“May I help you?” she said in a tone reserved for a vagrant who’d come to inquire if he could use the executive washroom.

“Sam Ballanger to see Mr. Winchester. I have an appointment.”

Looking highly dubious, the blonde checked the computer screen at her side to confirm. “That was for 4:00 p.m. It’s now—”

“Look, Blondie, I can tell time. I was unavoidably detained by a couple of bozos who tried to run me down, then shoot me in your parking deck. Next time that happens to you, let’s see if that fancy ‘do’of yours doesn’t get a little messed up, okay?”

Ms. Chandler, as the nameplate on the desk indicated, glared disbelievingly before she caught herself and forced a smile as genuine as the mauve silk floral arrangement beside her computer. “I’ll see if Mr. Winchester is still available. Please have a seat.”

But only if I promise not to get grease on the upholstery. Sam walked over to the window and looked at the stunning vista, all blue skies, gold sand and green palm trees in the distance. Miami Beach with its Art Deco pastels beckoned from across the water, a faded diva ringed by garish new high-rise condos. Her kind of town. She’d known it since her first trip here when she was thirteen and stowed away in the sleeper of Uncle Dec’s rig. He’d been mad enough to chew nails when he’d discovered her at a rest stop in North Carolina. Turned the air blue with his cussing, she recalled fondly. By that time it had been too far to turn back without sacrificing a big payload in Miami, so he’d called her frantic parents and reassured them he’d take good care of his favorite niece. She’d been grounded for the rest of her freshman year, but it had been worth it.

Her reminiscences were interrupted by Ms. Chandler. “Mr. Winchester will see you now,” she said. “Please follow me.”

The snotty receptionist looked as if she was trying to digest a bamboo stalk from one of those urns out front and walked as if another stalk was jammed where the Florida sun never shines. They moved down a long hall, footsteps muffled by two-inch-thick Karastan carpeting in a shade Sam would’ve described as Attica gray. Winchester’s nameplate was inscribed in polished brass on the door of the corner office. Of course. He was the senior partner, after all.

Chandler knocked deferentially and was bidden to enter. She stood with her back pressed to the door, careful not to let Sam touch her when she walked inside. A tall silver-haired man with the narrow face and long, straight nose of a blue blood stood behind an immense walnut desk devoid of everything but a leather blotter and a set of Montblanc pens.

“Ms. Ballanger?” He did not smile.

“Mr. Winchester?” she shot back. “Pardon my appearance—and tardiness.” She paused to glance back at the Chandler dame, who was slowly closing the door behind her. Like to eavesdrop, don’t you, honey? When Sam heard the muffled sound of the latch click, she continued, “I was involved in an altercation in your parking deck. Can you think of any reason someone would try to stop me from taking your case?”

He blinked. “Certainly not. What do you mean by ‘an altercation’?”

So much for well-bred manners. He still didn’t offer her a seat. Even Chandler had done that much. She took one anyway, directly in front of him and he reluctantly lowered himself into the custom leather chair behind the desk. She gave him a quick rundown on the attack in the downstairs garage, studying his response. Hard to tell if he believed her, or even cared.

“It could’ve been related to another investigation, but I’d appreciate it if you’d have the building security check their video cams at the exits between three fifty-five and four-ten or so.”

Winchester shook his head ever so slightly. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question. If you report this…even to the authorities, I’ll be dragged into something which has nothing to do with me. In fact—”

Sam put up her hand. “Okay, just a thought. The Olds is probably being fed into a compactor as we speak anyway.” She decided to omit her little conversation with Patowski since she didn’t want to lose what promised to be a lucrative job. She’d dealt with uptight types like Winchester before and knew how to handle them. As for a couple of dozen wrecked cars in the bowels of the building, well, let their insurance companies handle that.

“Who do you want me to retrieve and why?” she asked.

He hesitated, then replied, “Jay did recommend you highly.” Although he still appeared skeptical, he continued, “My son, Farley, is missing. The boy probably thinks he’s on a secret mission for the Confederation of Planets, but my guess is that he’s still somewhere on Earth—with my stolen Jaguar and his friend Elvis.”

“Elvis? Excuse me?” Sam couldn’t help the incredulous expression on her face.

“Elvis P. Scruggs. And don’t ask what the P stands for,” he snapped. “My son is only seventeen and has been under the care of Dr. Reese Reicht for the past five years.”

Sam waited for him to give her the rest of the story. He drummed a set of well-manicured fingers on the desk, as if debating. “Dr. Reicht?” she prompted.

“He’s a psychiatrist. My son sees flying saucers, spaceships, even imagines he’s part of some kind of intergalactic war.” He pursed his thin lips in a tight line, then scoffed angrily. “A secret agent for the Confederation of Planets.” At her blank look, he explained, “Farley is a…a Space Quest fanatic. Has been ever since he was a boy.”

“You mean he’s a movie buff—loves sci-fi films and television shows?” Weird, but not as weird as a pal named Elvis Presley Scruggs.

“I’m afraid Farley’s situation isn’t quite as simple as being an avid fan.” Winchester grimaced. The drumming fingers stilled when he realized she noticed the agitated movement.

Sam bet if he had any papers on his desk they’d be aligned in perfectly straight rows. She’d lay a lot better than even money that everything on his computer was organized in perfectly ordered folders and every single item could be pulled up in an instant. And he had a double backup system.

“Farley has been known to use drugs—and I am not speaking of the medications Dr. Reicht prescribes.”

“That could be serious. When did he disappear?”

Winchester gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Sometime in the past two days. I’ve been out of town on business. I returned late yesterday. The housekeeper informed me Farley hadn’t slept in his bed for the past two nights.”

A real concerned parent here. Doesn’t want the cops. No idea how long his kid’s been missing. “Does his mother have any idea when he took off?”

“I regret to say his mother passed away five years ago.”

The loss of a pet guppy would elicit more reaction from most people so she didn’t waste time offering condolences. “Any idea where he went? Is this Scruggs with him?”

“Yes. Farley’s been spending time with that illiterate cracker for weeks, perhaps longer.” The vagueness again irritated her as he continued, “Scruggs is from somewhere in the panhandle. Oh, I tried to put a stop to it, but my work requires me to be out of town frequently and my son has always been…difficult.”

With a dad like you he oughta be impossible. “You think Scruggs is Farley’s drug connection?”

“I don’t know. I do know that he’s a thief and I discovered quite recently that he may have spent some time in prison. In any case, Rogers, my chauffeur, informed me that Scruggs took my vintage Jaguar. Since Farley was in the passenger seat, he didn’t question it. That was Monday afternoon. When I was going over my personal records this morning, I found twenty thousand dollars had been withdrawn from a savings account to which my son has access.”

“You’re sure Farley took it?”

“Yes, and I’m equally sure Scruggs encouraged him, but I won’t press charges. I simply want you to recover my money, my car and my son. Quietly. No headlines. Do you think you can do that, Ms. Ballanger?” He glanced at his Rolex, indicating the interview was over.

“I’ll do my best to bring back your son, Mr. Winchester. But I will need a few names and numbers—his doctor, your housekeeper and chauffeur, the registration info on the Jag.”

He nodded, turning to the console at the side of his desk and pressing a button. “My personal assistant will be happy to furnish whatever you need.”

Sam stood up. Winchester didn’t bother. Neither did he offer to shake hands. “About my fee—”

“Ms. Ettinger will take care of that, as well. Send a bill.” With that he swiveled his chair around and opened his computer.

She’d been dismissed like a chambermaid in an English melodrama! “Where do I find Ms. Ettinger?” Sam said to the back of his head.

He didn’t turn around. “She’ll be along.”

As if on cue the door opened. A wraith-thin woman with gray hair pulled into a painfully tight knot on top of her head and the worst overbite Sam had ever seen, said, “Please follow me, Ms. Ballanger.” She didn’t smile, either.

The kid may be into Space Quest, but his old man and this staff could play in zombie movies.

Chapter 3

Ms. Ettinger furnished Sam with every name and address she requested, sniffing with obvious distaste when she came to Scruggs, whose last known domicile was in a trailer park in Liberty City. Sam had the distinct impression the old harridan imagined that she lived in a trailer, too…or under a rock.

Grinning cheerfully when she took the proffered fat retainer check from the older woman’s bony fingers, Sam couldn’t resist saying, “It’s been fun, Ettie. Let’s do lunch sometime.”

“Ettie’s” glasses slipped to the end of her thin nose when she jerked her head back at the moniker. Adjusting them, she peered over the tops with squinty eyes and said, “You may exit the premises that way,” pointing to a narrow door at the end of the hallway.

I’ll be lucky if it doesn’t open on an elevator shaft with a fifteen-story drop. Sam turned the knob cautiously and saw the door led to a dimly lit hallway near the service elevators used by cleaning staff. Considering how scruffy she looked, Sam was not surprised Upton hadn’t wanted her offending W, G & K’s elite patrons again.

Maybe she should use the service elevator. That had been Ettie’s clear intent. No way. She rounded the corner to the main hallway where the light was better and perused the directory. “Hmm, the shrink has an office a couple of floors up,” she murmured to herself, wondering if he was available. Maybe she’d hit the ladies’ room downstairs first and repair what she could before tackling a guy with an M.D. and Ph.D. behind his name. Half the alphabet, Roman numerals—did all rich guys have to be such pains in the ass?

Matt had come from money but he didn’t want any part of it. And she’d fallen for him. But he was part of the club when it came to the pain part. All that lovely money just going to waste in Aunt Claudia’s bank and he’d extracted a promise from Sam that she’d forgo the loot to become his wife. “He caught me in a weak moment,” she reminded herself as she rode the elevator to the main level. A weak moment all right…in bed.

Just remembering that interlude brought a silly grin to her face. She quashed it and pushed open the door marked Ladies. Once she eased up to a mirror in the washroom and inspected the damage she knew why everyone was treating her like a leper. Her hair was standing up in clumps, her suit was grease stained and ripped, and one cheek was bleeding slightly from where sharp pieces of concrete had grazed her when that goon had shot at her and hit the wall.

She wet a bunch of paper towels and set to work cleaning herself up, then went into one of the classy marble stalls and stripped off the snagged panty hose, jamming her bare feet back into the Via Spiga pumps. One knee was skinned and a dandy bruise on her shin had already begun to discolor. Oh, well. She glanced at her watch. It was late, but if she was lucky, the doc would still be in his office treating patients. Shrinks didn’t usually keep nine-to-five office hours.

Luck was with her. The receptionist, a plain middle-aged woman with a sweet smile, informed her that Dr. Reicht was with a patient at present, but would see her shortly. Upton Winchester must have called ahead. Reicht’s suite was not as large as W, G & K’s, but it still reeked of money. The smaller reception room was furnished with heavy oak chairs. To keep potentially violent patients from busting them up if they went off their meds?

The decor was all done in neutral tones of beige, tan and white as if a deliberate attempt had been made to offend no one. A wide array of magazines lay fanned across a massive coffee table. Ignoring the enticement of reading about the lifestyles of the rich and famous, she checked over her meager notes on Farley Winchester.

Age seventeen. High IQ, low self-esteem and a probable drug habit, if his father was to be believed. She’d been provided with a photo, taken several months ago, according to the harridan. He looked like a geeky kid, the kind the jocks made fun of in high school. Tall, skinny, bad complexion, even horn-rimmed glasses, for Pete’s sake! And he was dressed in some kind of weird getup with insignias on the shirt and a wide leather belt. It looked like cheap polyester fabric accessorized with plastic.

Not exactly a preppie, are you, kiddo?

Was it a “Spacer” uniform? Hopefully the good doc could give her more info before she set out to snatch the kid from Elvis’s clutches. Her perusal of the photo was interrupted when a short, stocky man opened the inner door and said, “Ms. Ballanger?”

Reicht had a fringe of graying tan hair ringing his oversize head. Sam guessed that was a requirement to hold the brains for acquiring all those initials after his name. There were pouches the size of Pony Express saddlebags under his eyes and he possessed jowls that would be the envy of an English bulldog. Reicht’s eyes were obscured by a hedge of eyebrows that flowed uninterrupted across his forehead. He wore a rumpled tweed jacket and even had a meerschaum pipe protruding from one pocket. Jeez, talk about a walking stereotype!

Sam stood up and offered her hand, which he shook heartily, grinning as he ushered her into his sanctum. “Please hold my calls, Heidi,” he said to the secretary.

The office was as cluttered as its owner, with piles of folders and loose papers scattered everywhere. She could identify with the unholy mess, but there was something about him that gave her a hinky vibe. “I assume your friend Mr. Winchester told you why I’m here,” Sam said as he offered her a seat.

“Indeed, he did. Most regrettable, most regrettable…” He seemed to lose his train of thought for a moment, then continued. “Farley requires close supervision and regular medication to keep in touch with reality.”

“I don’t think Mr. Winchester pays his housekeeper for babysitting while he’s out of town.”

“Mr. Winchester and I have agreed that Farley might do well in a private clinic, but such things take time to arrange. Of course, he’s been hospitalized on several occasions in the past….” Again his voice trailed away.

“Didn’t do any good?” she suggested.

“Well, you do understand about physician-patient confidentiality, Ms. Ballanger?”

“Yes, professional ethics and all. Like attorney-client, priest-confessor or P.I.-employer. Since his father’s green-lighted me to find him, I need to know what I’m dealing with before I retrieve him.”

The doctor sighed. “Farley has been delusional since childhood. Approaching his majority, he’s shown no improvement. In fact, he’s become worse.”

“You mean the Spacie thing? How long’s he been a Space Quest fan?” she asked.

“For as long as I’ve been treating him. Nearly…eight years. All he’s ever wanted to discuss during our sessions is that show and its characters. It’s his reality and the real world has ceased to exist for him…if it ever did.”

“His father said he tripped on drugs.”

Reicht nodded. “Cocaine, heroin, even methamphetamines.”

“What—no Drano? I used to be a paramedic and we never like handling guys high on meth. Any idea who his dealer is?”

“Farley has made some…less than appropriate friends recently. I suspect one in particular.”

“Elvis Scruggs?”

The giant caterpillar of an eyebrow crinkled when Reicht frowned. “Yes. When one is young, disturbed and wealthy, one can be victimized.”

“Do you think Scruggs kidnapped him?”

The doctor shook his head. “Probably not. The boy would go along with any harebrained scheme Scruggs proposed, I’m certain. Farley’s highly suggestible, particularly when he’s high on illegal drugs.”

“Suggestible to cleaning out one of his daddy’s bank accounts?”

“If someone like this Elvis Scruggs urged him to do it, yes. You understand why you must bring him home. I’ll see that he goes back on proper medication and provide supervision. In fact—” he began rooting around on his desk, pulling out a sheaf of papers with a grunt of satisfaction “—I have the forms here for Homeside. It’s a fine facility. I’m on the staff,” he added as if that guaranteed it.

“Will his father agree to commit him?” she asked.

“Of course. We’ve been discussing it for several weeks. Oh, we don’t call it ‘commitment’ any longer. The term is too…pejorative. Homeside is just as the name implies—a home away from home for troubled individuals.”

That might explain why the kid took off. It sounded to Sam as if his father’s house and the loony bin would hold about equal appeal. Still, the poor kid couldn’t be allowed to run around the country dressed like a sci-fi movie extra high on meth, with an ex-con chauffeuring him while he fleeced him.

Unlike Winchester after her interview, Reicht didn’t dismiss her. She would’ve preferred that he had when he launched into a panegyric on Homeside and how happy poor Farley would be once he was tucked safely in the marvelous facility. When he got warmed up, the doc really loved to hear the sound of his own voice. Finally, she glanced down at her watch.

“Sorry, Dr. Reicht, but I have another appointment shortly. Gotta run.”

“You will make Farley your first priority, I trust?” he asked intently.

“You bet I will. I’ll call if I need any more info. Thanks.”

As she rode down on the elevator, Sam considered the weirdness of the day—a pair of psychos tried to kill her, a snotty pencil pusher managed to snub her while enticing her with a hefty fee, the shrink played on her sympathy for a poor crazy kid. Did the thugs in the Olds have any connection to Farley’s case? Doubtful, but Sam never assumed anything.

And something niggled at her about the shrink, too. He put on a nice-guy veneer, the complete opposite of Roman Numeral, as she’d dubbed Winchester. Still Reicht was a cipher. Of course, he was a psychiatrist and that might explain the creepy feeling he gave her. Some of them were as loosely packed as their patients. She made a mental note to have Matt check out Homeside while she was searching for Farley.

The last thing Sam Ballanger ever intended to do was to deliver a client into a worse situation than the one she snatched him from.

“Yeah, that’s right, a 1980 Jaguar XJ6.” Sam ticked off the license plate number to an old friend at Metro-Dade Police Headquarters. “Bright maroon. Oughta stand out like a black tux in a room full of brown shoes.”

As she tapped a pencil against the edge of a front tooth, waiting impatiently for the cop to check the computer records, Matt watched his wife. Sam arched her back against the wreck of a swivel chair she insisted on keeping when she moved in. In spite of her small one-hundred-ten-pound body, the springs creaked precariously when she tipped it sharply backward. Her bare feet were propped up on the cluttered desk in her office and she was wearing a ratty old pink chenille bathrobe that he teasingly called her “Linus blanket.”

He eyed the ugly bruise on her shin and the scrapes on her cheekbone, worried but knowing there was no way short of putting her in one of those custom straitjackets she used on retrievals that he could keep her safe. They argued about her dangerous job almost as much as they did about his aunt’s money. Correction. She argued about the money. He argued about her safety.

Matt glided into the room and began massaging her shoulders while she leaned forward and jotted down information. What was a guy supposed to do with a bullheaded female like Sam? She wouldn’t even take his name—unless he agreed to “really let me in the family by accepting Aunt Claudia’s offer.” She’d signed Sam Ballanger on their marriage certificate. The woman had the instincts of a first-rate blackmailer—or a criminal defense attorney.

Sam hung up the phone and laid her head against his flat abdomen. The man even had a sexy navel. “Mmm, that feels good,” she murmured as he bent over her for an upside-down kiss. “Even better.” She held his head in her hands and returned the kiss for a moment before spinning her chair around and considering the notes she’d scribbled on the page.

“Any leads on your lost boy?” he asked, then couldn’t resist adding, “Or on those two goons who tried to play crash-test dummy with you?”

“Strike out on the Olds, but I figured it would be. Bogus plates. I asked Pat to keep checking. Doubt he’ll turn up much on them, but he just might on Elvis Scruggs. I did come up with where Farley and Elvis are heading. A vintage Jag stands out almost as much as a flying saucer.”

“And a guy named Elvis doesn’t?”

“Depends on what part of the country you’re in. Nobody remembers him but thanks to my hacker pal, Ethan Frobisher, we have a trace on cash flow to back up the runaways’ destination. Seems Farley’s been using several of Daddy’s credit cards. Hotels, meals, ATM withdrawals in Tallahassee, Nashville and Louisville. The last was in some hick burg in southern Illinois. Then I used that info you so kindly dug up for me on the Net.”

She tossed him the printout of Space Quest conventions he’d pulled off the Internet for her. One was circled. “Big one in St. Louis. Starts tomorrow.”

He shrugged. “Your crazy job’s going to get you killed. I don’t know why I aid and abet you.”

“’Cause you can’t get enough of my bod,” she said, grinning as she stood up and wrapped her arms around his waist.

“You’re the trained health professional, Ms. Paramedic. What do you think?” he asked, prodding her with an erection that always grew like Pinocchio’s nose when she got within a dozen yards of him.

Sam rotated her pelvis against him and chuckled. “I think if I don’t take care of this immediately, you could suffer a serious…backup.”

“Speaking of backing up…” he said, turning her around while nibbling small kisses across her eyelids and down her nose to her throat. He backed her through the door and down the hall to their bedroom.

They were so engaged in the hot exchange neither saw the obstacle until their feet were tangled in it. They went tumbling across the threshold and landed on the carpet. Somehow Sam managed to come out on top. She always did. Matt looked down at what they’d tripped over—the ruins of her good black suit.

“As long as we’re down here, might as well make the ride worthwhile,” he said, rolling her onto her back.

Chapter 4

Sam let him pull off her old chenille bathrobe while she worked the snap on his jeans and carefully lowered the distressed zipper. By the time his tongue danced from one bared nipple to the other and back, she had worked the denim over his buns and he kicked the pants away. She arched into his delicate caresses as she buried her hands in his thick black hair, urging him on.

“Talk about steam-cleaning the carpet,” she murmured. “I’m gonna have rug burns…again.” She didn’t sound particularly concerned.

“It serves you right,” he growled as he felt her hands play along his back, down to curve around his butt. “Hussy.”

“Hunk.”

“Sammie, oh, Sammie,” he murmured, gliding inside the sleek wetness of her body.

Was it always this good? Only with Matt. Always with Matt. Sam wrapped her legs around him as he moved in her, slowly, gently. She could feel the springy hair on his chest abrade her sensitized breasts, making her nipples tingle and draw into even harder little points. “I’ll…give you…exactly one hour…to cut this out,” she whispered breathlessly.

But when he started moving faster, she bit his ear and said, “An hour, remember? I can’t last…if you don’t…ahhh.”

“Who says you have to last?” he asked with a wicked chuckle, feeling her body spasm around his. Matt concentrated on control. Dames did have the advantage when it came to coming. And his little Sammie had to be the world’s champ.

When he renewed his sensual assault with slow precision, Sam took a moment for the world to stop spinning. Then she took control. She was little but she hadn’t earned a black belt in judo without developing some serious moves of her own. With one heel and a lift of her hip, she rolled them over until she was on top, breathless, grinning triumphantly down at him.

“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.”

“You? A geek?” That was the very last thing she could imagine her six-six sexy husband ever being. “Get outta here!”

Matt could see the humor in the situation as he looked at her amazed expression. “My height was a bigger number than my weight in junior high. I wore braces and needed correctional glasses—though at least they weren’t as ugly as these.” He looked down at the askew horn-rims on Farley Winchester. “I can identify with the kid. Sometimes other galaxies can hold a real appeal.”

“Maybe just being born with a silver spoon doesn’t make up for other stuff,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Your parents died when you were nine, right?” He nodded. “And Aunt Claudia popped in and out of your life like Auntie Mame?”

“Why do you think I went to private boarding schools all those years?”

She sighed. “I thought all Beacon Hill kids just did. Dumb, huh?” She walked over to him and laid her head against the steady beat of his heart. “I’m sorry, Matt.” Before he could reply, her head shot up and she looked him straight in the eye. “But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on Aunt Claudia’s offer. Ten K a month just to stay married isn’t anything to sneeze at. Think of it as her penance.”

His expression turned grim. “Episcopalians don’t do penance. And even if they did, she wouldn’t. Forget the money. We’ll never agree about it.”

“You’re right about that, but don’t think I’m gonna give it up,” she said stubbornly. Feeling him tense in anger, she paused. “Okay, let’s give that topic a rest for a while.” She began tracing small circles on his bicep with her fingertips. “About doing some checking for me…”

“What do you need?” he asked, resigned. With her out of town, he’d be bouncing off the walls as soon as he finished his current assignments.

“This whole thing smells kinda funny. If Farley withdrew twenty large from one of his daddy’s bank accounts, why are he and his pal Elvis using Winchester’s credit cards instead of spending the cash? Even if the kid’s spacey, er, a Spacer, a guy like Scruggs has to know how easy it’ll be to trace them. Besides, according to the doc, the kid’s crazy, not stupid.”

“Good point.” Matt rubbed his chin, considering. “You said something earlier about the shrink giving you bad vibes. Maybe I’ll check him and your ‘Roman Numeral’ guy out while you’re gone.”

“You’re the greatest—even if you were a geek before I met you,” she said with a cheeky grin. “Oh, yeah, about being a geek, I wouldn’t know a Reemulan from a rhinoceros. Fill me in a little about that stuff.”

“Reemulans have pointed ears, not horns. I can explain what you need to know about the Confederation of Planets, their allies and their enemies.” He began a lengthy discourse on the warlike Reemulans and their logical, peaceful cousins, the Vulcants. Both civilizations felt mere Earthlings were both technologically and ethically challenged. “Then there are the Klingoffs—”

“Are they anything like jackoffs?”

“Sort of, yes. Barbaric, living by a primitive warrior’s code but highly advanced in technology. Everyone in the galaxy thinks they’re animals.”

“They the ones who look like they have turtle shells glued to their foreheads?”

“I see you’ve watched a smidgen of the shows.”

“Went to a movie once—on a date. I didn’t get to pick the show,” she retorted. “Never went out with the guy again, either.”

Matt regarded her with a smirk. “Ironically, it’s Earth that first came to understand their culture and accept it. Come to think of it, you wouldn’t make a bad Klingoff warrior woman.” He pulled a volume from the shelf in his office and handed it to her.

“Thanks,” she said sarcastically, flipping through the color photos and text about Space Quest in its various incarnations. “I can see why the kid’s schizoid. This is weirdsville, but it’ll give me enough background to fake it when I get to the convention. All I have to do is wait for a chance to snatch Farley.”

“Be careful. If Scruggs did hard time, even as a kid, he won’t want you taking away his meal ticket.”

“I always come out on top, remember?” she purred, planting a quick kiss on his mouth.

Sam drove a specially equipped Ford Econoline van, an old model with an engine her uncle Dec had helped her soup up. It could go from zero to sixty in less time than most fancy European sports cars and had been remodeled to serve the nurse-transporting-a-patient cover she used on many retrievals. The paneled back was furnished with a unique set of restraints to hold her “patients” securely while she drove.

Going against Matt’s advice, a frequent occurrence since they’d met, she headed out that night for St. Louis. It would be a long pull and the “Con” as he called it was set to begin the next day. Who knew where Farley and Elvis would head after that? Sam wanted the kid safely in her grasp while she could still reach him. Maybe they were saving the twenty K to skip to Mexico, for all she could figure.

Clutching a twenty-ounce paper cup filled with thick black coffee, heavy on the sugar, she headed up I-95 and hit the Florida Turnpike. Dawn was a faint glow on the horizon when she felt the blowout yank the steering wheel from her grasp. Cursing, she quickly corrected, grateful for her uncle’s training, then pulled to the side of the road. Wonderful. A stretch so isolated she could dehydrate before Road Assistance found her.

With no time to waste, she climbed out of the van and opened the back doors. This was hardly the first flat she’d changed, but dammit, it was costing her time! Sam wondered why the hell the tire had blown. She’d checked them carefully, always did before she drove. “Probably some litterbug tossing a beer bottle out his window a few miles back,” she snarled, placing the jack under the rear bumper.

Before she could start working the jack, headlights appeared on the horizon. Although she’d been careful to pull well off the highway, Sam had been drilled by her uncle Declan to always be wary of dozing motorists when the flat was on the left side of the vehicle. The inbred precaution saved her life. Still squatting, she glanced up to see the car veering directly toward her.

Sam dropped the jack and flung herself across the berm into the marshy weeds of the ditch.

Chapter 5

The car grazed her van, leaving faint dark smears on the white paint. Not a direct hit, but the speed of the encounter rocked the Ford’s suspension. By the time she climbed from the muddy ditch, pulling briars and dry leaves from her clothes, the car had vanished into the distance. She couldn’t even tell what make or model it had been. Too busy leaping for her life.

“What the hell is it about me and cars lately?” she muttered, thinking about the incident in the parking garage. Did someone want to stop her from retrieving Farley? She watched the horizon for lights as she walked to the front of the van and pulled out her cell. Dead zone. Big surprise considering she was smack in the middle of nowhere. May be best not to call Matt and worry him. And what could she tell Patowski or any of her cop buddies?

She hadn’t a clue about the car, other than that it wasn’t the Olds. That ancient rust bucket couldn’t have moved that fast without the driver putting his foot through the floor-boards and breaking a leg. And it had been an indistinct light color. The paint deposits on her van were dark.

“Damn, it’ll cost a bundle to get this baby repainted.” She would add the expense to Winchester’s tab, but having a quality paint job done took time and aggravation. Just in case the jerk decided on another crack at her, she dug her snub nose .38 out of the glove compartment and shoved it into her belt before returning to the jack.

“Maybe I’m being paranoid. Just some drunk or dumb kid showing off for his buddies,” she said. But all the while she fixed the flat, she kept an eye on the highway.

Sam caught a few hours sleep that night in a cheap roadside motel. By late afternoon the following day, she was past Atlanta, heading toward the Tennessee line. Scenery was great and traffic light. She hummed along with a Cole Porter tune on her CD player, watching a big Caddie coming up behind her. Fast.

“Who does that jerk think he is, Mario Andretti?” she muttered.

The highway wound its way through some very mountainous terrain with steep drop-offs and sharp turns. Definitely not the place for a big luxury sedan to be doing ninety. “Your funeral, buddy,” she said as the Caddie pulled abreast of her. She slowed to let him pass as they approached a beaut of a curve.

But he didn’t pass. Instead the black sedan started to crowd her, veering dangerously over the line into her lane. A quick glance at its right side showed scrapes and flecks of white paint. “Shit!” she gritted out, punching the accelerator.

All the wiggle room available to her right was a couple of feet of berm and then a flimsy guardrail. The drop-off below was a minimum of fifty feet. She could easily have outdistanced the heavy car on the uphill grade with her specially modified engine if not for the wicked curve coming up much too fast. But the Caddie driver’s intent was clear, even though the tinted windows hid him from view. This bozo was out to finish the job he’d begun the preceding day.

“Uncle Dec, I hope you weren’t exaggerating when you explained what this suspension can take,” she said, along with a short prayer as she cut the wheel sharply and tromped the gas pedal again. Her speedometer approached triple digits. She’d left the Caddie behind but he was closing once more. If she dared to slow down to negotiate the curve, he could rear-end her and blast the van through the railing. Sam and the Econoline would fly over the edge like a Canaveral rocket.

But the landing would be a lot rougher.

She felt the van’s two left wheels leave the ground as she entered the sharpest angle of the curve. Sam literally leaned to the left as she held the accelerator steady going into the final turn. When the wheels hit the pavement again and the van surged straight ahead up the road, she murmured, “Thank you Uncle Dec. Who’d a thought St. Jude was a mechanic?”

The Caddie was dropping back quickly when she checked her side-view mirror. Too far away to get a plate number, which would no doubt be as bogus as the one on the Olds. She felt the adrenaline rush begin to fade and took several deep breaths, calming her jangled nerves. It had been a lousy twenty-four hours.

At least she didn’t have her usual scalding cup of joe between her legs, she considered philosophically. Now that would’ve been a really painful way to touch up her bikini line. She tried the cell as soon as she saw a tower on a nearby mountaintop. Dialing 911 she was patched through to the local highway patrol. Somehow Sam had a gut feeling that the black Caddie with its incriminating exchange of paint would be long gone before they could spot it.

On impulse, she dialed Matt. “Hi sweetie… Oh, no, nothing much. I’m about halfway to St. Louis… Yeah, should get there tomorrow. Just wondering if you’ve had time to check out Winchester or Reicht yet… No, no particular reason… What do you mean, ‘something’s wrong’? Nothing’s wrong,” she replied, crossing her fingers on the steering wheel and the cell.

If Matt knew two more attempts had been made on her life, he’d go ballistic and protective all at once. Then he’d fly to St. Louis and mess up her retrieval. If she only knew what was going on, she could handle it. So she omitted a few pertinent details…okay, she lied to him.

Matt gave her the info he’d dug up. “Haven’t had time to get beyond the society stuff, pure PR fluff on ‘Roman Numeral.’ He’s on every civic board and committee from here to Tallahassee. Lots of political clout. Reicht’s a different matter. Found some interesting dirt on him right off—but then you might not think so.”

“Huh?” Sam responded to his voice on the other end of the line.

“Seems our boy’s being investigated by your heroes, the IRS,” he said with a sarcastic chuckle.

Sam pathologically hated the IRS. They had audited her twice in the past five years. It seemed some of her “retrieval expenses” didn’t meet their criteria and she’d had to cough up a couple of small fines. To Sam, fines were like parking tickets. No such thing as a “small one.” “Bloodsuckers. You’re right, it could make me like the guy a little. What malfeasance is he supposed to have committed?”

“Can’t get Ida Kleb to say but I’m working on her.”

“Ida Kleb?” she echoed with an incredulous laugh. “Shouldn’t that be Rosa Kleb?”

“You mean the KGB agent from the James Bond movies?” he asked. “Fits the little troll to a tee. All she needs is the poisoned knife sticking out from the toe of her shoe when she kicks you.”

“Sounds charming. But I have complete faith in your way with the ladies. Find out what Reicht’s up to. Maybe he’s just a tad careless with his records. His office was a bigger mess than mine.”

“Not possible. That stockpiled warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark isn’t a bigger mess than your office, Sam. And you have more stuff stashed inside.”

“You’re a funny man, Granger. Oughta go on Letterman.” She cut the transmission, saying, “Call me if you turn up anything new.”

If the good doctor was stiffing the Infernal Revenue, she could care less, but there could be more to it or to poor Farley’s civic-minded father. But both men stood to gain if she quietly brought the kid back for treatment. That’s what Winchester was paying her to do. A better bet was Scruggs. He and young Winchester were living large if the credit info she’d received was accurate. For certain she’d like to know where he’d spent those seven missing years and if he had any pals with an affinity for big cars and reckless driving.

The sun was a big gold ball centered just above the gleaming silver of the Gateway Arch when Sam crossed the Poplar Street Bridge over the Mississippi and entered downtown St. Louis. The traffic was horrendous and everyplace she looked, orange construction site barrels were either lined up or knocked aside as commuters made their headlong dash during rush hour. The place resembled a life-size pinball machine.

“Just like Miami, only fronting a river instead of an ocean,” she muttered, dodging a barrel that a car in the oncoming lane had nudged in her direction. The van hit a pothole so deep she felt the jarring travel from her tailbone clear up to her front teeth. Yep, just like Miami. Once on city streets, she glanced at her map, getting her bearings while stopped at a red light. The city’s convention center was located a couple of blocks north.

She navigated up Washington and immediately figured parking might be an issue. But she was certainly in the right place. A huge neon marquee with bold red letters running across it proclaimed, WELCOME TO SPACECON XIV!! Farley and his dad had something in common—Roman numerals. How sweet. She found a parking lot and paid the extortionist at the booth, only willing to part with a sawbuck because it went on the expense account.

The price of admission nearly choked her, but Sam coughed up her credit card and accepted the three-day pass. It might take her that long to find her target in a crowd this big. The enormous hall was filled with several thousand Spacies. Oh, and were they ever! Maybe bringing Matt might not have been such a bad idea. He understood this aberrant behavior, liked it even. He’d assured her that physicians, attorneys, business executives and other successful professionals actually attended Space Quest Cons.

Looking at some of the middle-aged bodies and listening to educated accents, she was inclined to believe it must be true, but the costumes! Reemulans with pointed ears and superior scowls mingled with turtle-foreheaded Klingoffs carrying katliffs—dangerous curved blades with points on both ends. The damned things were big enough to slice and dice a mastodon.

One enormous lizardlike creature covered with glistening scales shambled along the aisles like a malevolent Barney, only green instead of purple. But the scariest of all were the junkyard rejects decked out with wires and pieces of glass protruding from bodies encased in metallic suits. She glanced around and found a relatively normal-looking kid dressed in an Eastley Masher Spacefleet ensign’s uniform. He was selling Klingoff “blood milk” steins. “What are those guys?” she whispered.

He looked at her as if she’d asked what year it was, but then again, most of these people probably thought it was the twenty-third century, so who gave a flip? “Cybs. You know, Cyber organisms,” he enunciated slowly. At her still-puzzled expression, he elaborated, “They’re part human but integrated into the Cyber Collective. Enhanced cognitive abilities and superior strength.”

Yeah. Pretty hard to tell who was on or off his meds in a joint like this. Granger, I can’t believe you were ever this much of a geek. And to think he didn’t understand baseball. Or car engines!

“I am one of the Folean Web. Would you care to link with me?” a short, stocky guy dressed like an oversize Pillsbury Doughboy asked, ogling her breasts.

“How’d you like me to tie your link in a big fat knot?” she muttered, shoving past him. At least a guy making a pass was normal behavior, even if he did it sci-fi style. Then again, maybe he hadn’t asked what she thought he had. Who knew? These people were all nuts. Made Halloween on Lincoln Avenue in Miami Beach seem like a Republican convention.

She scanned the program issued at the entrance and tried to figure out where Farley Winchester might be. If he wore his Confederation uniform, he’d be a cinch to ID, but she’d have to walk her feet flat to locate him. The best course was to access registration information.

“Frobisher, help me, buddy.” He could hack the info in seconds. She dialed her cell, leaving a message on his machine, explaining what she needed. Fro had had a crush on her since they attended St. Stanislaus in sixth grade. If he didn’t come through, she’d have to wander the aisles of this menagerie for the next three days—maybe get carved up by a katliff or eaten by a Borne.

On that gloomy note, she doggedly set out again, cruising the next aisle where a white furry creature sporting long tentacles on his-its head conferred with a pair of pointy-eared Vulcants. Matt had explained the difference between Vulcants and Reemulans. She felt proud of herself for remembering.

Emboldened by her crash course, she smiled at the Vulcant and said conversationally, “Nice makeup job.”

He stiffened and raised one eyebrow, inspecting her with disdain. “This is not ‘makeup,’ madam. The plastic surgeon charged me two thousand apiece to reshape my ears and a thousand for the rebrow work. I can assure you I am a true Vulcant,” he said in a cultivated voice.

Sam nodded. “Whatever you say, mister.” Oops, did one call Vulcants mister?

She scooted off fast, melting into the crowd but still feeling the Vulcant’s icy stare following her. I thought only Dobermans and boxers got their ears docked! She wondered if the surgeon had shortened a tail on the guy while he was busy cutting. This scenario was starting to get to her, but a job was a job. She had to find Farley and get him out of here before someone grafted a tentacle to him—or worse.

“The only thing I can figure is that they registered under assumed names.” Ethan Frobisher’s voice came over the line sounding distinctly frustrated. He didn’t like coming up empty when he hacked. “No one named Farley Winchester or Elvis Scruggs is registered for the con.”

Sam tapped her toe on the cement floor, trying to think while a kaleidoscope of creatures paraded by. Some sort of laser show complete with fake explosions vibrated through the huge center. She held her free hand over her opposite ear and spoke into her cell. “Is there an official convention hotel? From what I could see, there are a dozen places around here.”

“That’s an easy one. The Holiday Inn Select and the Renaissance St. Louis Suites are both listed,” Fro replied, almost panting his pleasure at being able to supply an answer.

If Sam had read the program closely, she could’ve found this out for herself, but she had to throw him a bone. “Say, Fro…you aren’t…naw, never mind.”

“A Spacer?” he replied, figuring that was her question. “Yes, I really dig the shows, especially the original episodes. The science is weak, of course. Worf drive could never work that way, but the philosophical issues they explore—”

“Uh, I know, Fro. Matt agrees with you.” The minute she said it, Sam could’ve bitten her tongue. She knew how jealous of her husband Ethan Frobisher had become. She didn’t need to rub salt.

But he surprised her. “Way cool! I’m happy for you, Samantha. Sounds as if you found an intelligent guy after all.”

On some issues. But she wasn’t about to discuss her and Matt’s divergence of opinion about Space Quest or her quest for Aunt Claudia’s money. She thanked him and signed off, then checked her program guide. The Holiday Inn was closer to the America’s Center, but the Renaissance offered more luxurious accommodations. Farley and Elvis would go for the high end.

Loudspeakers were blaring that the con was closing for the night and lights were blinking the ten-minute warning. The crowd had thinned. Sam watched the swarms of what she’d loosely term humanity filing out of the big convention center. Other than the Confederation’s Earth officers, no one was even vaguely recognizable, thanks to latex masks, complexions dyed every hue from maroon to bright green, padded costumes, even additional appendages in some cases.

“And let’s not forget the ones with antennae or wires,” she muttered. How the hell was she going to find Farley in the middle of the madness? She only had two more days.

Then an idea hit her. The lure of a big payday always brought out a real creative streak. Sam walked into the warm evening air and headed to the parking lot to retrieve her van before that pit-stop pirate charged her for another day. By the time she reached the Econoline, the place was so deserted she could have heard a pin drop.

But what she heard instead was the sound of footsteps dashing up behind her.

Chapter 6

She’d had to leave her .38 and the stun gun in the van because of metal detectors at the America’s Center. Damn! Sam whirled around, crouching, prepared to use fists and feet to do some serious hurt to her attackers. At the last second she pulled her punch. They were midgets, under four feet tall, and looked like oversize balls of brown cotton candy.

“Sam, don’t you recognize us?” the taller of the two piped up as the smaller one behind her started jumping up and down, clapping her hands and asking, “What are you doing here?”

Then Sam saw an adult figure puffing to catch up to them…as usual. “Jenny?” she asked incredulously, recognizing the voices of Jenny Baxter’s two daughters, Tiffany and Melanie. A plump woman dressed in one of those uncomfortable spandex suits complete with high jackboots and a fake weapon strapped to her waist, nodded.

“Hi, Sam,” she said, tugging on the inseam of the unflattering pants as she drew near.

Sam looked down at the taller kid swathed in what she could now see was brown fur. “Tiff?” Then turned to the littler one. “Mellie? What are you?”

“Oh, you silly, what are you doing at a Space Quest con if you don’t know we’re Dribbles?” Mellie asked.

“You know, the little furry animals that keep making more until Captain Turk’s ship is filled with them?” Tiff supplied in the same tone of voice that a person might use to explain why woodpeckers don’t like concrete posts.

“And I’m Harriett Mudd, the lovable but unscrupulous space merchant who brought them aboard,” Jenny said brightly.

Sometimes Sam thought Jenny’s voice was the only thing bright about her. “Uh, yeah, I get it. You’re big Spacer fans, right?” She groaned inwardly. On the case where she’d met Matt, Jenny and her two dragon kids had been nothing but trouble, nearly getting Matt killed by the Russian mob. “I thought you and your sister were living in San Diego,” she said.

“Oh, we are, but the girls begged to come to the con.”

“Is it safe? I mean, you know…” Sam groped for words, not wanting to bring up the girls’ father, who’d kidnapped them two years earlier.

“Oh, my ex got caught passing bad checks in Salt Lake. He’s doing three to five in a Utah state pen,” Jenny said blithely.

“Are you here to snatch somebody?” Mellie asked eagerly.

Great. All Sam needed were Larry, Curley and Mo bollixing up her retrieval as they had with Matt. “Nothing I can tell you about,” she replied, trying to think up an excuse to keep them out of it. “But I am attending the con. Er, it’s research for a case back in Miami.”

“If you’re going to snatch somebody at the con, you’d better wear a costume or you’ll never get close to whoever it is,” Tiff said, not fooled for a minute by Sam’s denial.

Sage wisdom from an eight-year-old. “I guess I could rent one,” Sam replied uncertainly.

Jenny shook her head. “Every good costume in town’s already been taken, but I have a great one for you. Why don’t you come back to our suite at the Renaissance and we can fix you up? Oh, if I was you I’d leave your car parked here. During the day it’s almost impossible to find a vacancy and the hotel’s just up the street. We have plenty of room. My sister insisted on paying because she and her son had to cancel at the last minute.”

What the hell? It was where she was headed anyway and there’d be no dodging their interference if they ran into her later and figured that she was after a guest. “Okay, I appreciate it,” Sam said as they started walking. “Say, what kind of costume do you have? I sometimes have to move quick and those…” She paused, gesturing to the girls covered head to toe in fuzz. “Well, anything like that would stop me.”

Jenny laughed but before she could explain, Mellie blurted out, “Mommy thought she looked fat in the outfit.”

“Believe me, it won’t keep you from kicking ass,” Tiff said cheerfully.

“Young lady! I won’t have such language,” Jenny replied with a genuine bite in her voice. “You apologize to Mrs. Granger at once.”

To Sam’s surprise, the girl meekly bowed what looked to be the top end of her “dribble” and said contritely, “I apologize for using a bad word.”

Now wasn’t the time to explain that she hadn’t changed her name when she married Matthew Granger. “Apology accepted,” she said with a grin.

“Tiff’s being good because Mommy says she won’t take us on the Questar battle simulation day after tomorrow if we don’t behave,” Mellie piped up.

That explained it, sort of. Whatever a Questar was.

Ida Kleb was a wiry little woman with a bulldog’s face and gorilla-size hands that looked capable of snapping the neck of anyone who crossed her. She wore a perpetual scowl and her gray eyes cut like lasers. No one in the IRS messed with her. Matt wasn’t about to break that rule. He stood in the door of her cramped little office, looking from Kleb to her austere surroundings. All the papers in the room were lined up with razor-edged neatness as if even inanimate objects understood her demands.

“You, again, Mr. Granger. I’ve already told you, our investigation of Dr. Reicht is confidential. Go find something else to write about for the Herald.”

“I’m not here on a story. I thought maybe you and I could have an exchange of information about the good doc.” Her eyes narrowed to tiny slits, seeming to move as if she were a Cylon Centurion from the original television series Battlestar Galactica. Matt smiled inwardly. Guess Sam was right. I’m still a geek.

“Any information you possess about Dr. Reicht you are obligated to give the Internal Revenue Service.” Kleb stared up at him as she walked around the desk. Despite the disparity in their heights, she was utterly undaunted.

He couldn’t help looking down at the rounded toes of her sensible shoes, wondering about a poison dagger for an instant before he replied, “Whatever happened to First Amendment rights for the press?”

“Nowadays, it doesn’t have any,” she shot back, standing almost toe-to-toe with him.

He refused to back away, but he did raise his hands in mock surrender. “Look, I just want to help. He’s involved in a case my wife’s working on and I’m looking out for her safety. I found out a few things that might help your investigation…if you help me, it might protect Sam.”

“You go first,” she said.

“You play chess?”

She turned and shuffled a stack of papers, straightening them even though they didn’t need it. “I don’t have time for hobbies, Mr. Granger.” Then, crossing her arms, she placed her big hands around her elbows and waited him out.

“Could I at least sit down?” he asked, eyeing a battered chair in front of her desk. Ida nodded and returned to her own counterpart behind it. Matt was stalling, figuring the odds of getting anything useful out of this cagey dame. Might as well go for it. “I did a little digging through a source with ties to the drug scene.” She might buy it since he’d done a big exposé on Russian and Colombian mobsters last year.

“Go on,” she prompted, tapping a sharpened pencil impatiently on a blotter.

“The doc’s been a naughty boy. He couldn’t disclose all of his income the last couple of years because it’s drug related. He’s got a lot of very rich patients with expensive recreational habits—illegal recreational habits.” He watched her for a reaction. The best she gave was one minute twitch of an eyebrow.

She tossed the pencil across the desk to cover it up. “We knew that, of course. You’re wasting my time.”

“I don’t think you did.”

“Give me the names of these patients.”

“Tell me what tipped you to go after him first,” he countered.

After sleeping poorly on the Hide-A-Bed in the sitting room of Jenny’s suite, Sam had arisen with two kids jumping up and down, yelling at each other while their mother entered the room carrying the promised costume. Sam took the outfit and headed to the bathroom to change into it. When she walked out the door and looked into the full-length mirror across the room, she flinched. “I look like a hooker from South Beach,” she said, then could’ve bitten her tongue.

“What’s a hooker, Mrs. Granger?” Mellie asked.

“Sorry, you’d think I didn’t grow up in a house with six younger kids,” Sam said to Jenny, not about to admit that her street-tough south-Boston brothers knew a lot more than that when they were Mellie’s age.

“A hooker is a bad lady,” Tiff explained, although from her expression, her mother and Sam figured she really wasn’t sure.

“But Lt. O’Hara isn’t bad,” Mellie said.

“I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that this getup’s uncomfortable.” Sam tugged at the spandex miniskirt and tried to shift the plunging neckline of the uniform so it didn’t reveal quite so much of her “best assets,” as Matt liked to call them.

“You can see why I decided the costume wasn’t for me,” Jenny said with a blush. “The skirt fit me like a girdle. I don’t know what I was thinking when that rental clerk talked me into it, but I still thought my sister was coming and Tess would look great in it—just like you do. Harriett Mudd’s pants and shirt worked a lot better for me.”

“Well, at least I can move in it,” Sam conceded. The low boots that came with the outfit had small heels but not enough to bother her if she had to sprint after Farley. I’ll probably catch pneumonia in that air-conditioned hall. But with any luck, she could locate young Winchester and be back in her nurse’s scrubs, transporting her “patient” home by afternoon. All she had to do was give Jenny and her girls the slip.

“How about room service for breakfast?” Jenny asked. The girls immediately chorused agreement.

“Er, I don’t do breakfast. I’ll catch something later,” Sam said.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” Tiff parroted like the merit-badge-winning Girl Scout she was.

“You’re right, kiddo, but if I’m gonna stay in this uniform, maybe I’d better skip it just this once. I’ll see you on the floor, okay?”

She left as Tiff insisted she’d have waffles and Mellie demanded French toast. Their mother fecklessly insisted they have yogurt or eggs for protein. Sam knew Jenny’d lose. She always did.

The outrageous Lt. O’Hara costume worked to her advantage. When she slithered up and leaned over the registration counter, the young clerk’s eyeballs bulged out of their sockets and his tongue practically lolled on his keyboard. After flashing Farley’s photo, she had her “cousin’s” suite number in a flash. But when she arrived at the room on the fourteenth floor, which was really the thirteenth, her luck ran in that direction. A maid was already busy making up the beds.

Farley and Elvis had departed for an early start at the con. “What were they dressed like? Could you describe their outfits?” she asked the smiling young woman with the fresh-scrubbed face of a kid working her way through college.

Cyndi, as her name tag identified her, rolled her eyes. “I loved Alien and Lord of the Rings, but these guys are way out there, if you know what I mean—oh, I didn’t intend any offense,” she hastily added, looking at Sam’s skimpy “uniform.” “Er, are they family?” she asked, dubious.

Sam grinned. “Not a chance in hell. One’s a car thief, the other’s a druggie.”

That alarming news oddly seemed to reassure Cyndi. Kid must really need this job bad.

“Well, the shorter one had this icky bulging forehead and a long brown fright wig, big bushy eyebrows and thick, dark makeup. The taller one wore white fur but he didn’t look like the Easter bunny, believe me. Had these antennae sprouting out of his forehead and extra arms—kinda like a big hairy white spider.”

Sam paged through her memory and recalled the photo plates from the reference book she’d brought. “A Klingoff and a Pandorian. Great. Two of the most elaborate costumes. I’ll never recognize them on the floor,” she muttered. “Do they ever come back to the room to chill, have lunch, anything like that?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I work the early shift so I can get to SLU for classes starting at ten. But you might ask Tilda. She’s the floor super and keeps a pretty close eye on what happens with the guests.”

Sam thanked Cyndi and went in search of Tilda, who was as crazed as most of the staff was coping with hordes of people in otherworldly costumes roaming the hallways. All she learned about Farley and Elvis was that they usually returned to their suite and ordered room service around midnight.

Since her odds of locating her target in full Klingoff regalia were less likely than winning the lottery, Sam decided to wait until he and his Pandorian pal returned to their room that night. In the meanwhile, she had escaped Jenny and her girls. They meant well, but this was business and she couldn’t risk having a pair of out of control kids and their noodle-kneed mom get in the way of her earning Roman Numeral’s hefty fee.

With any luck—and heaven knew she was overdue for some—she’d have Farley in custody and be all the way to the Tennessee border by dawn’s early light. Making sure they were gone, Sam used the key they’d given her and slipped into the suite. Her first impulse was to leave the costume behind along with the hasty goodbye note she scrawled on hotel stationary, but she reconsidered.

What if she blew the snatch and had to go back on the floor? No need to stand out. She pulled a wad of cash from her wallet and carefully counted out what she thought was a generous rental deposit. Once she had Farley back in Miami, she’d figure a way to get a receipt from Jenny and add it to Roman Numeral’s bill. Stuffing her personal belongings in her travel bag, she headed back to her van.

Just as she was stashing her gear, her cell rang. Recognizing Matt’s number, she picked up. “Hi sweetie,” she answered brightly.

“How’s St. Louis?”

She looked at the cloudless sky. It was 10:00 a.m. and already the heat was starting to fuse spandex to her skin. At least there wouldn’t be much of it to peel away. “Hot, hot, oh, and did I mention hot?”

“Got a little info on Reicht.” He explained about the illegal prescriptions the doc was peddling. “He’s a supplier for a lot of rich clients, according to my sources.”

“Which we know are always impeccable. The IRS nail him for not reporting illegal income?” she asked. “God forbid they should care about his contacts with drug dealers.”

“She was pretty closemouthed, but I don’t think Kleb knew about the drug thing yet. They started investigating him after stumbling across some large money transfers out of country.”

“He could be a drug dealer,” Sam said, digesting the surprising news. She paused a moment; then a thought occurred to her. “Say, you don’t think he might be blackmailing patients? All kinds of dirty little secrets the rich and crazy in Miami might be spilling to their shrink.” But she reconsidered. “Nah, somehow, I don’t think that fits. Oh, he probably does what your sources said, slipping padded scripts to his patients, but that wouldn’t be enough money to blip the IRS radar.”

“Ah, Samantha, great minds work along the same courses. Guess our meeting was fate.”

“Only if Aunt Claudia is its agent. She paid me to put you on ice, Granger,” she reminded him.

“It was a lot more complicated than that,” he reminded her, then headed off another argument about his aunt’s money by saying, “What’s going on there? Any sightings yet?”

“You ever try to tell one Klingoff from another? They look as much alike as Mary-Kate and Ashley, only with turtle shells glued to their foreheads.”

“That would be tough. An international con like this one must draw thousands. You might have to wait until its over and they’re out of costume,” he said.

“No way. I have their room number. Tonight I’ll be on the road with Farley in the back of the van all safe and secure. But I won’t turn him over to Reicht…or to his loving father right away. The old man doesn’t want the kid anyway. I need a good shrink.”

“I’ve told you that ever since we met, Sam.”

“This from a guy who married his kidnapper. I’ll ask Pat to find me a legit doc to take care of the kid.”

Matt snorted. “I’ve met Patowski. He’ll suggest a state asylum and a lobotomy.”

“Yeah, you have a point,” she admitted grudgingly. “Okay, you find Farley a doc. Deal?”

“Right. Oh, and Sam, don’t do anything crazier than usual. Deal?”

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