Concrete Desert (David Mapstone Mystery 1)

“I don’t want any.” She ran a finger down my face, tracing the curve of my cheek, mapping out my lips.

I looked at her. Her eyes were a subtle blue, something I had not noticed before, overpowered by the monochromes of her dark hair and clothes and white skin.

“I don’t know the human heart.”

“I don’t, either,” she said, and kissed me lightly.

“I failed in my marriage,” I said.

“Stop living in the past, History Shamus.”

“I’m thirteen years older than you. I don’t have movie-star looks or a sailboat. I don’t even have a real job.” I sighed. “I’m feeling pretty broken right now.”

“I like the way you’re broken,” she said, and kissed me again, our tongues touching lightly. “I know what you are.”

I started to open my mouth, but she put two fingers against my lips. “Shhhh.”

And so I took her in my arms, Lindsey Faith Adams, and kissed her like I’d wanted to from the first second I ever laid eyes on her.

In the morning, I cooked us breakfast, Mexican omelettes and English muffins, and we sat in bed eating and reading about the shooting in the Republic. As usual, the media got the story only half-right. Pasternak went out on the balcony and provoked a mockingbird, who fussed at him loudly.

“So what’s your unified field theory?” Lindsey asked.

“I prefer lying in bed with a beautiful naked woman, reveling in what a sexy, wonderful find she is,” I said. I felt sore in all the right places, all the forgotten, out-of-practice places. “Out there!”-I nodd

ed out the window-“they can all go to hell.”

Lindsey ate a forkful of omelette. “This is very good, Dave.”

“My theory?” I said. “Add Brent McConnico, the next governor, to our list of people who have landed in bad shit. I kept thinking this Copeland guy from the Metrocenter had to be tied into Phaedra’s murder. But I guess-and here’s where my theory runs out of track-he’s connected to McConnico, which means he’s connected to Rebecca Stokes, who was murdered forty years ago. But he’s no damned ghost.…”

“Something from that long ago still matters,” Lindsey said. She put some preserves on a piece of muffin and fed it to me. “Something matters enough to kill for.”

“So we get a break in one case, and it knocks the legs out of the other one. Shit. I just need to let that go. Let Peralta throw Julie in jail forever.”

She read my face and said, “You know this isn’t going to be a happy ending with Julie, don’t you, Dave? Are you sure you want to go there?”

I tried to smile. “You’re pretty smart for a computer nerd.”

“It’s the database of the heart,” Lindsey said.

“I’m with you,” I said, kissing her hand. “It’s where I want to be.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m glad for both of us.”

Afterward, I took our plates to the kitchen and then climbed back into bed. Lindsey draped a long leg across me. Young, taut skin-the most amazing feeling.

“So let’s tie up some loose ends,” I said. “Why did Julie say she was being followed?”

“We know she’s truth-challenged,” Lindsey said. “But if she’s on the level, maybe she first saw this guy Copeland when he was actually watching you.” She smirked. “She obviously thinks every man wants her. Then Copeland sees Julie with you and decides to find out if she’s important, so he follows her.”

Lindsey was under the covers, kissing my calves, running her fingers up my thighs. The exquisite softness of her hair brushed against me. Every pore of my skin was tingling. All my reasoning powers ran away and I just wanted to feel her wonderful lips and mouth.

“What about-Oh God, that feels so good-what about Metrocenter? That was about Rebecca Stokes?”

Lindsey popped her head out of the covers. “It made sense to think Copeland was after Susan Knightly and Phaedra. Actually, it looks like he was after you.”

“Then he really is a bad shot.”