Dead Spaces: The Big Uneasy 2.0 (24 page)

I
t was
a dark and stormy night.

A shot hadn’t rung out.

Yet.

She was having dinner with the mob.

Nell Whitby didn’t want to have dinner with Aleksi Afoniki and his creepy nephew, Dimitri. She didn’t want to have anything to do with any of them. Miss Manners had been no help with an invite minus an RSVP. So here she was. About to drive into the den of the Russian Wolf and his, um, evil cub.

The invite had been directed to her and her best friend, Sarah, but Nell hadn’t told her. Hadn’t planned to tell Alex either. You didn’t spit into the wind or expose your friends to the mob, even if one of the friends was a big tough cop.

Nell stole a peek at the big tough cop. Alex Baker had been showing up, off and mostly on, since her world spun off its axis into weird mob-relatives-ness. Even though the on times had gotten more frequent, there was a part of Nell that expected him to bolt at some point. He was a cop, the son of a cop, the sibling of legal types up the whazoo. She was related to two mob families and had been insistently invited to dinner with a third mob family. If that weren’t enough of a kiss of death for the relationship, Alex, the oldest of thirteen, had a serious kid phobia going. And she attracted kids like honey attracted ants. It was a hookup made in hell.

He’d probably break her heart. She kept telling herself to tell him no when he called. So far she’d not listened to herself. She hadn’t had a lot of cute guy in her life up to now, and he was the poster guy for cute. Dark hair. Tall, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. His eyes were an amazing blue and he had a stubborn, needs-a-shave jaw. Had tough guy down pat, but not bad boy. He wasn’t bad. He was good. He couldn’t leap tall buildings, stop bullets, or outrun locomotives. But he’d saved her life once or twice, made her heart skip with a look, and kissed her like he didn’t want to stop. How did a girl say no to that?

He looked at her and grinned, and yup, her heart skipped. Despite the skipping, she noticed that he didn’t look worried enough for a guy about to drive into the Wolf’s den.

“You’re not wearing a wire, are you?” Did she hope he was? The idea his many law-minded siblings might be listening in was a bit comforting, but not if it got them killed. Bullets did move faster than cars. It was the kind of physics even a former librarian could do.

He grinned. “Afoniki’d expect that.”

Not exactly a no. “But you’re carrying?” Did not seem like a good idea to go in without one of them armed and dangerous. She might be a bit wistful that she wasn’t the one. It’s not that she wanted to shoot someone again—she mentally winced over that memory—but it felt wrong to be the unarmed lamb among the Russian wolves. His grin widened. Armed, dangerous and cute enough to kiss. She half sighed.

“You nervous?” Alex slowed his truck and gave her a concerned look.

Lightning flashed against thick dark clouds, fitfully illuminating the brooding outlines of the mob mansion. It was such a cliché. How had they managed it? Did they have something on Mother Nature, too? She studied the appropriately sinister gates, their widening gap a bit too canine. The heavy rain made them almost foam. A cliché on steroids.

“I’m scared almost out of my mind,” she said lightly, as if joking, even though it was the truth. When his look of concern deepened, she summoned up a smile, though it had some wry to it. “If the old man is half as creepy as the nephew…”

She’d met Dimitri Afoniki about the same time the past bitch-slapped her. Hadn’t liked him before she found out he was a wise guy.

“We can leave,” Alex offered.

“And drive straight to Wit-Sec?” Just how offended would the wise geezer be if she stood him up? Did she want to find out?

Alex considered the question, then shrugged. “Maybe the food will be good?”

As if they’d sensed her desire to flee while she could, the gates snapped closed behind them with an ominous clang. Okay, maybe ominous was a bit dramatic. A lot of people knew where they were going, most of them related to Alex and packing weapons. If they disappeared, there’d be a lot of heat on the Afonikis. Of course, the fact that they lived in New Orleans seemed to indicate they could handle the heat.

Alex steered his truck along the drive that curved toward the house. It passed under a portico, then turned back toward the gate. Every light in every room of the house appeared to be on but it still managed to be unwelcoming. Some goons waited under the portico, and one of them stepped forward to open her door. The other goon opened Alex’s door and indicated his intention to park the truck for him. Or drive it off for stripping and shipping to Mexico. She should probably set her expectations low when breaking bread with a wise geezer.

At least she wasn’t related to Afoniki.

She hoped. Were there still secrets waiting to ooze up out of the past? Was that why he’d summoned her to meet some of her mob cousins in this so-called neutral territory?

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F
or more New Orleans fun
, try
Do Wah Diddy Die:

M
ickey Ross was not
a happy man.

He’d just come off a two-day stakeout and had the rumpled suit and unshaven chin to prove it. He was tired. He was cranky. And he wasn’t home in bed having that dream where the cover girl for Sports Illustrated was rubbing sun tan lotion onto his back.

He looked at where he didn’t want to be, but the waiting area of the New Orleans International Airport didn’t fade to something more pleasing. Nor did the stuffed pig dangling at the end of his arm vanish into the nightmare realm where it belonged.

Mickey glared down at it. Bad enough for a cop to be keeping company with any pig, but this pig, well, if it’s lurid pink and purple surface was any indication, it had never been a beauty. Time had rubbed away the fluff from its surface and left one sorry black eye hanging by a single thread over the patchy remains of a black grin on its square snout. Its tattered ensemble began and ended with a limp ribbon knotted around a fat neck.

In an effort to distance himself from his ratty companion, Mickey held it by the tatty end of the ribbon and twirled it with more than a hint of vindictiveness.

In between twirls, he pondered the unkind fate that had landed him in this fix. If Eddie hadn’t decided to end sixty years of bachelorhood, he wouldn’t be waiting for a damn flower girl for the damn wedding, with only a stuffed pig for an introduction. Who flew in a little girl for a geriatric wedding anyway? New Orleans was full of little girls who’d probably love tossing petals. But no, they had to import one, then pick a total stranger to collect her—with an obnoxious pig as the icebreaker. Convenient that Eddie had discovered pressing business in Mandeville tonight.

The least he could have done was warn him about the old ladies. How could his own uncle send him into battle, into that minefield of weirdness, without even a warning? A minefield that had kept going off in his face no matter what he did, a horror—except for the one small oasis of sanity known as Miss Gracie, who had saved him from the stuffed dragon, but not the pig.

He just wished he knew where Eddie’s Unabelle—was that a name to make a guy flinch—fit in with the Seymour’s. She didn’t seem to be a relative. She was just...there, like a black hole. He sure hoped the lights were on in her upper story for Eddie or he’d learn there were worse things than a lonely retirement.

A stir at the gate quickly became arrival as passengers filtered off the plane. With the end in sight, Mickey straightened in hope.

That’s when it occurred to his weary brain that a stuffed pig might be a less than adequate introduction to the kid. What had possessed the parents to entrust their kid to the uncertain care of three batty old ladies? He studied each small, whining arrival, wondering which one was his. A security guard loomed up on one side and he had to produce his badge.

The case against Eddie just kept building.

A woman emerged from the breezeway and paused to get her bearings. Mickey straightened in an utter and complete moment-of-silence respect for the best legs he’d ever been privileged to lay eyes upon. The cop part of him was vaguely aware she was in her late twenties, maybe early thirties, almost of a height with him and the possessor of a slender build. Her hair was dark and cut short around a face made interesting by its square jaw and straight, dark brows. Mouth was nice, too. Full and lush and lined in red.

He left off admiring her legs to contemplate her mouth, but his attention was drawn lower again when the legs went into motion. Brief appearances by her thighs, between the slash of her dark skirt, had him tugging at a too-tight tie. It took him a few seconds to realize that she’d stopped right in front of him.

With extreme reluctance, he dragged his gaze back to eye level. Her head was angled, her gaze directed toward the pig with a seriousness it didn’t deserve. Just for a moment, something in the angle of her jaw had him wondering if he’d met her, but he dismissed the notion. A guy couldn’t forget those legs.

His gaze drifted down again, but he flashed back to attention when she stepped closer, her nose bare inches from his, her lashes lifting with lust-building slowness to reveal emerald green depths.

His tie tightened to near strangulation level, but he couldn’t move, let alone do something about it. Green eyes were always trouble for him. Too bad proximity and hormones took the edge off caution. If his partner, Delaney, were here, he’d recognize the signs of Mickey on the verge of falling in lust again. But Delaney wasn’t here. The lucky bastard was in bed.

Carpe Diem. Mickey knew his smile was his best opening gambit and produced it with practiced ease. “Hello.”

Luci studied the smile, recognized the confidence and the intent behind it. She’d met smiles like this one. Smiles that were confident of their charm. Smiles that expected weak knees and a cessation of rational thought. It was fortunate she had a built-in immune system to charming smiles and didn’t ever do rational thought. It went with being a Seymour, though her knees, just for a moment, signaled a willingness to depart from the norm. She reminded herself she was the result of a departure from the norm and said, “That’s my pig.”

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P
auline Jones had
a tough time with reality from the get-go. After “schooling” from four, yes FOUR brothers, she knew that some people needed love and others needed shooting. Pauline figured she could do both. Romantic suspense was the logical starting point, but there were more worlds to explore, more rules to break and minds to bend. She grabbed her pocket watch and time travel device and dove through the wormhole into the world of science fiction and even some Steampunk.

Now she wanders among the genres, trying a little of this and a lot of that, rampaging through her characters' lives like Godzilla—because she does love her peril (when it's not happening to her). Never fear, she gives her characters happy endings. Well, the good characters. The bad ones get justice. 

For more information about Pauline and her books, visit her website at
www.paulinebjones.com

For more information:

• @paulinebjones
  
• AuthorPaulineBairdJones