I shrugged as I tugged my shorts on. “Whatever. I don’t need you anymore, anyway. It’s not ten yet. The resort driver said he’d come get me. I’ll sort this case out on my own.”
“Ugh!” she screamed at me, pounding her fists down by her sides like a petulant teenager. Her face was red and her hair wild as she stood there next to me, panting slightly due to her little outburst. I found myself suddenly mesmerized by the way the outline of her black bra rose and fell behind her white tank.
“You’re sexy when you get mad,” I said with a cocky little grin and a tipped head. “But I’m sure you hear that from all the fellas, don’t you?”
I had to duck then, so her jab didn’t hit me. As I crouched, a searing pain shot through my backside, my bullet wound reminding me that it was still there.
“Okay, okay,” I said. Chuckling, I held a hand over my head as she followed me to the motel door. “Mercy, mercy!”
“No mercy for you, Drunk,” she bellowed, tearing a pillow off the foot of the bed and swinging it at me.
Her ineffectual efforts made me laugh. “You realize I still have the gun, right?”
“I don’t care!” She hit me with the pillow again. “You’re the most frustrating man I’ve ever met!”
I grabbed my holster off the small side table in front of the window and slid it into the front of my pants. “It’s because you want to kiss me, right?” I holstered my gun and held my hands out wide. “There. Now there’s nothing stopping you, sweetheart.”
She stared at me then, dumbfounded. “Is that seriously all you ever think about?”
I couldn’t help but nod. It was the truth after all. “Pretty much, yes.”
“Okay. Then I’ll make you a deal.”
I rubbed my hand against my bristly chin and grinned. “I like the sound of this already.”
“You tell me what I want to know, and I’ll have sex with you.” She said it bluntly, like a prostitute might. A simple exchange of information for sex.
Of course Little Drunk immediately liked the sound of that. Big Drunk wasn’t so sure. I’d sort of expected better out of the ex-CIA agent standing in front of me, which told me she was probably lying. “You’re lying.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged and sat on the bed, rubbing the spot next to her seductively. “Maybe not.” Her voice turned sexy in what seemed to be the flick of a switch.
I rolled my eyes. “The CIA make you take a class in seductive reasoning?”
With her feet still planted on the floor, she fell backwards onto the mattress. “Fuck you.” She’d had enough of me.
I stared at her torso then and wondered what she knew. Even though I knew I could probably find the maid and clear my name, another part of me realized I could probably do more than that. I could probably help find Jimmie’s killer. And maybe, if we pooled our resources, she and I could do it together. I sat down on the bed next to her and leaned back, so our torsos lay side by side. I turned my head to face her. “Okay, listen. I have information you want, and you have information I want. Can’t we just get along and work together?”
She covered her face with her hands. “But I don’t want to work with you, Drunk. You’re careless and stupid.”
I winced. “Like I’m dying to work with you? You’re egotistical and vicious. You’re like a pit bull. Some people like them, but I’ll never understand why.”
“Shut up. I own a pit bull. Pit bulls are awesome.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, that figures.”
She turned her head then. “Listen. Benny is full of energy, full of life. He loves to go jogging and has the best disposition. He’s the most loyal animal you will ever find. So call me a pit bull. I have no problem with that.”
I looked at her. If that was what a pit bull was like, she really was like a pit bull. The woman was full of energy, full of life. I could see her being loyal if anyone ever got past the rough exterior she liked to cling to. “Okay,” I said quietly, looking into her serene blue eyes.
“Okay?”
I nodded as she stared back at me. “Okay, I’ll shut up.”
We stared at each other for a while then. Only the steady hum of the window air conditioner filled the room. Finally she gave me a half-smile. “I wanna know what you know.”
“Same,” I said quietly.
She rolled over onto her side and held her right hand out towards me. “Truce?”
“Truce.”
41
The full moon reflected off the ocean, providing just enough light to be able to see the surf in front of us as we strolled quietly along the beach barefoot. My toes slid through the sand while the ocean waves lapped gently against my ankles. The warm breeze coming in off the Atlantic felt good rustling my hair. I let out a relaxed sigh, quite possibly my very first of this trip. It was exactly what I’d pictured my honeymoon to look like.
Except, of course, the woman next to me wasn’t Pamela.
She was Nicolette Dominion—a crazy CIA agent gone rogue. Whatever. I put that behind me as I moved the bucket of chicken to my other hip so that it was between us. “Another drummie?”
She rubbed her stomach. “Oh God, no. I couldn’t. I’m stuffed.”
I shrugged. “More for me.” I took out another piece of the Colonel’s Extra Crispy and gnawed down, savoring the crunchy taste of home. After calling a truce, we’d both agreed we needed food and booze before being able to properly relax enough to actually open up to one another. And imagine my surprise to discover that there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken on Paradise Isle, and it was located on a boardwalk, along a public beach.
I hadn’t had to do any convincing when I’d suggested we leave our shoes in the car and take the bucket of chicken and the bottle of tequila down to the water. She’d actually been first to untie her hiking boots and pull off her socks.
Now our bucket of chicken was almost empty, there were no fewer than a dozen shots of tequila missing from the bottle, and we were almost starting not to hate each other.
“So she actually called you?” asked Nico. “Fucking brass balls, that one.”
I nodded. “Right? I couldn’t believe it either. I told her not to call me anymore, and I told her to stop harassing my folks.”
“Want me to punch her in the throat for you?”
“Aww, Nico, you really do like me, don’t you?” I slung an arm casually over her shoulder.
She didn’t even let it rest there for a second before she shoved it off her. “Hey, hey, hey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I just have a proclivity for punching people in the throat.”
I eyed her out of my peripheral vision. “See? I knew it.”
She laughed. “Joking. Joking. I just really think it’s crappy what she did to you.”
I’d told her the whole blessed story. Of course I’d left out the vow of abstinence part. I didn’t need her to feel that sorry for me, and there was quite a lot of embarrassment that went along with admitting that I hadn’t been sexually active for the better part of three years. “Well, thank you. I’m glad you understand why I came on to you so strongly on the airplane.”
“I didn’t say that, but—”
“Hey!”
“No, I get it.” She laughed and laid a hand on my arm. “I get. You’ve been through a lot the last couple of days.”
“I have! And it’s supposed to be my honeymoon, but here I am trying to figure out why everyone on this godforsaken island wants to kill me.”
“I don’t want to kill you.”
“You don’t?”
She shook her head. “I mean, I did. I just don’t now. Now that I understand you really don’t know what’s going on.”
“I’m kind of piecing things together. Okay, barely piecing things together,” I admitted, swinging my eyes upwards.
She stopped walking and took a swig of the tequila.
I stopped beside her.
“Are you ready to talk about what you know?”
I took the bottle from her a
nd took a swig myself. It burned on the way down, but I appreciated how the more my throat burned, the less my ass burned. I was almost starting to forget I was being chased around by a bullet wound. “Yeah, now I’m ready.”
“Should we sit?” she asked.
I looked around. The choices were minimal. Beach or ocean. “I don’t see a bench.”
When I turned back around, Nico had already copped a squat on the sand. “Okay,” I said, sitting down next to her and putting the bucket of chicken between us. I extended my long legs and crossed them at the ankles, leaning back into the breeze, I looked out over the ocean. “It’s a nice night.”
“Yeah, it is,” she agreed. She wiggled herself around in the sand and scooted her butt so she was seated next to me and facing in the same direction. “I haven’t had any time to sightsee while I’ve been here. It’s been all work and no play.”
“Well, at least there’s no risk of Nico becoming a dull girl,” I said honestly. “I don’t think you could ever be a dull girl.”
Nico giggled and leaned her head sideways over her shoulder, only inches from my own shoulder. “Aw, Drunk. Did you actually say something to me that was nice?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, I swear,” I promised, holding up three fingers in a Boy Scout salute. “It was an accident.”
“Well, I liked it. You should be nice more often.”
“I am nice. Most of the time. You just happened to get off on the wrong foot with me.”
She nodded. “Ditto that.”
We were quiet for a few minutes. I don’t know what she was thinking about, but I was pondering whether or not I still wanted to sleep with her. Nico broke the silence. “So, you’ve learned some new things about Jimmie’s murder. You wanna share them?”
“I’d feel more comfortable if you show me yours first.” I wasn’t a complete idiot, after all.
“Fine,” she sighed. “I work for a very wealthy man in Maryland, and Jimmie stole something very valuable from my client. In fact, I have reason to believe he was in the United States stealing similar items from other people as well.”
“Ah. A cold storage key?” I asked, even though I had no clue what the hell a cold storage key was.
She spun around in the sand to face me. “All this time you knew what I was looking for?”
Playing it cool, I lifted a shoulder. “I figured it out.”
“Drunk!” she breathed. “All this time I thought you were just a fucking numbnuts.”
I swallowed hard. “Thanks?”
“You know what I mean. I bought your shtick. Hook, link, and sinker. Damn. I guess you’re not quite as stupid as I gave you credit for.”
I looked at her then. “Again, thanks!”
She giggled. “So. You’ve got the key. How many of them are there?”
“Two for sure. I’m not sure what the third is.”
“What’s it look like?”
“It’s a thumb drive of some sort.”
She nodded. “That’s a key too.”
“You wanna explain to me what a cold storage key is?”
“You don’t know?”
“I mean, I…”
She giggled. “Drunk, you have no idea what any of this is really about, do you? You just know someone put something in your bag and now the bad guys are trying to get their hands on it.”
My mouth opened, but no sound came out. I dropped my hand into the sand and then looked at her. It was time to just put my cards on the table. “Not a fucking clue.”
She shook her head with a faraway smile. “Okay. Here’s the deal as far as I can tell. Jimmie was hired by someone on the island to go to the US and steal these cold storage keys.” She took a deep breath and another swig of tequila before she continued. “As cryptocurrency became bigger and more valuable, people began to hack them. Cryptocurrency isn’t protected like a bank is protected. If someone robs a bank, you’re still going to get your money. It’s protected by the FDIC. If your Bitcoin is hacked, you’re out the money. There’s no tracing it. It’s just gone. So lots of people started storing their Bitcoin fortunes offline, where they can’t be hacked. They store them on what’s called a cold storage key. Then, in order to hack it, the thief would quite literally have to come find your key and steal it.”
“Okay, so you’re saying Jimmie stole your boss’s key.”
“Exactly.”
I nodded. “Okay, well, that makes sense. I’m shocked your boss sent you all the way down here to retrieve the key, though. How much was it worth?”
“I don’t know about the other two keys, but as of the current price of Bitcoin, my boss’s key is worth seventeen million dollars.”
The blood drained from my face as I looked at Nico. “S-seventeen million?”
“Yup. That’s why I have to get it before Jimmie’s Aussie friends get their grubby hands on it. Once they’ve gotten the key, they can transfer the money to their own accounts and the money’s gone. Then there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it.”
“So if those guys were friends of Jimmie’s, why’d they kill him?”
“I assume because when they met up, he didn’t have what they wanted.”
“And he told them who did,” I said knowingly.
“Exactly.” She crawled in front of me with a smile on her face. “But, Drunk, this is amazing news! You’ve still got the keys! Now all of this can be over.”
I tilted my head sideways. “I do still have the keys, and they’re hidden in a very safe place. I wish it could be so easy as to just give yours back to you, but that doesn’t change the fact that these guys want the keys too. And Sergeant Gibson thinks I killed Jimmie.”
She slumped down into the sand. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. So if you want your keys back, I’m gonna need your help proving my innocence.”
“Proving your innocence…but, Drunk—”
I held a finger to her lips. “Please, Nico. I know you don’t want to help me, but—”
She pulled away and took my hand down from her lips. “No, I want to help you Drunk.”
“You do?”
She nodded and kneeled up in front of me. “I do. I’m in. First thing in the morning, I’ll help you. Okay?”
I looked at her skeptically. The moonlight glowed behind her head, giving her hair a shining halo, like an angel. “Is this the alcohol talking?”
“No, not the alcohol. I wanna help you. You deserve it. None of this is your fault. Alright?”
I nodded and sat up straighter in the sand. “Alright. Thanks, Nico.”
She smiled and then crawled forward so she was kneeling over the top of my lap. Wordlessly, she dropped her head towards mine. Her silky black hair poured across my forehead. And then I felt her lips brush over mine softly.
My breath dammed in my lungs, and the steady staccato in my chest drummed faster. I hadn’t expected her to kiss me.
Nico’s lips wrapped around my bottom lip, and she gave a gentle suck. When I felt her tongue invade my mouth, I wrapped my arms around her waist and squeezed her tiny frame against me. It felt good to feel the heat of a woman against me again. Every instinct in my body told me to flip her over into the sand and quench my thirst.
But I resisted.
I knew she was probably just trying to pull one over on me, and I didn’t have the heart to get played yet again. I snaked one hand into her hair and gave a gentle tug while I pulled my head back slightly.
Our mouths parted.
She looked down at me. Wanton lust filled her eyes.
I slid my hand off her waist and down the front of my pants, where I retrieved my weapon. I held it out to her.
Nico took one long look at the gun. My silent offer of surrender. The ball was in her court now. “I don’t want it,” she murmured. Her blue eyes swung up to look over my head. She glanced in both directions down the boardwalk before leaning over me again. This time she whispered in my ear. “Not here.”
42
Friday
, February 23, 2018
I realize that what I’m doing here is telling you a story about my life, and it would be wrong of me to leave out some of the juiciest, most relevant parts of the story. With that being said, some things should be left to the imagination. So I’ll just let you imagine the amazingly epic moment when my three years of celibacy came to a dramatic and awe-inspiring grand finale. I could have given you every detail about how smooth Nico’s skin felt pressed up against my bare chest and beneath my fingertips, and I could have expounded on how she moved on top of me like a bucking bronco rider, but I won’t. This isn’t a porno, after all, and I’m a gentleman.
I will say this, however. Waiting three years to have sex is stupid and makes absolutely no sense. While the buildup is epic, the grand finale is over far too quickly to make up for the previous three years of celibacy. It’s like cooking dinner for a hot chick. It takes you all day to clean your apartment, go grocery shopping, do the prep work, and the cooking, and then you’re done eating in ten minutes and on to the bedroom. And then you’re left wondering why you’d gone to all that trouble in the first place, when you could have just taken her out to dinner and gone back to her place instead.
But it is what it is.
I hit the note.
I popped the cork.
And then I did it all over again, two more times that night and one more the next morning. Just to make sure my shit was still on point.
And by the way I had her singing, it was.
So the next morning, I rolled off her and headed naked to the shower. The bandage she’d used to patch up my bullet hole still clung to my backside, but now the white gauze was pilly and the tape curled at the edges—a byproduct of the friction between my ass and the bedsheet.
“Drunk! That. Was. Amazing,” she breathed, her glistening breasts heaving in the sliver of morning light that poured through the shades of the scuzzy motel room. “You might be the worst cop I’ve ever met, but you certainly make up for any inadequacies on the street in the bedroom.”
Drunk on a Plane Page 19
