Boyce laughed out loud. “I knew she could do it,” she said.
Boyce was sitting in the sun, cross-legged in a yellow, faded, sun-bleached bikini working on a book of crossword puzzles. Her dark hair was down and streaked by the sun. Her skin was glistening with sunblock and was becoming a deepening brown except for the puckered white dimple on her side where the bullet had entered. The sun had brought out a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her muscle tone was coming back. We had started with just getting in the water and paddling around. Eventually, we graduated into longer and longer swims, and now she could keep pace with me in the sprints. She said I cheated by using my swimming foot.
She put her book aside and stretched languidly. She came to her feet.
“I’m going to get a beer, would you like another one?”
I lifted my bottle, “Still working on this one.”
She leaned over and kissed me, and as she turned and walked to the stairs I noticed that her ribs weren’t as prominent, and the bottoms to her suit weren’t as baggy.
Elena let out a shriek and she had a fish on the hook.
“Fish on!” Blackhawk yelled.
Blackhawk started to reach for the fly rod and Elena barked something at him that I couldn’t make out, but whatever she said, he jerked his hand back and looked at me with a grin. She worked the fish, the rod bending almost in two. She finally got it to the boat and swung it aboard. It was a small catfish.
“Oh, my God,” she shrieked. “That is so ugly!”
Blackhawk was laughing. He looked over at me and put his hands out and made a shrugging motion like, what do you do?"
A moment later Boyce came up the stairway with a beer in one hand and my phone in the other. She had a puzzled look.
She handed me the phone. “There’s a woman on the line that says a Colonel wants to talk with you.”
I took the phone, “Hello, Martha.”
“Hello Jackson,” Martha said. “Hold on, he wants to talk with you.”
I could hear the phone being passed.
“Jackson?” the Colonel said in that gruff voice of his.
“Yes sir?”
“What are you and number two doing just now?”
Following is an excerpt of
the next exciting Jackson Blackhawk novel
THE LIBRARIAN, HER DAUGHTER, AND THE MAN WHO LOST HIS HEAD
by Sam Lee Jackson
Available at samleejackson.com
It was full on dark and the parking lot, which by now was half empty, was illuminated by lights attached to the roof line of the bar. She had parked her city issued boat of a vehicle next to where the Mustang had been. The streets were empty. I think they rolled them up at ten. As we reached her car she moved to the driver’s side then stopped and turned to look at me. I had my hand on the passenger’s door. I stopped.
“You know, things don’t have to be much different,” she said.
“True,” I agreed.
“I am very fond of you,” she said.
“And me of you,” I said.
She leaned on the roof of the car and stared across at me.
“You know, one thing I have been thinking about for some time.” She hesitated.
“What have you been thinking about for some time?”
The dim light softened her features. She was quite lovely. This made her even more so.
“All the time we were together we never used the word love.”
“Really?” I said.
“Really,” she said.
“Commitment issues?”
“Probably.”
She turned her gaze across the parking lot and I turned to follow it. The dipshit that had been staring at Dahlia had come out of the bar and was staring across the lot at us. Two of his buddies joined him.
She looked back to me.
“You know I’m a cop through and through.”
I smiled, “I know that. I understand that. And, I guess I am whatever I am.”
“Bon vivant, raconteur, man of the world.”
“Unemployed boat bum.”
“Speaking of that, you never did tell me where you get your money.” Again her gaze moved to behind me. I turned and the three men were making their way toward us. Boyce moved around the car and came up beside me.
“Friends of yours?”
“Not hardly. Saw them for the first time tonight. The short one is named Calvin. He’s a cousin to the guy that lost his head. I think they have been drinking a long time.”
“I’ll handle it,” she said.
I laughed. “The last time you said that you got shot.”
“I’ll duck this time.”
The three men spread out a little as they came up to us. We waited. When they got close Boyce said, “Calvin, you don’t want to bite off more than you can chew.”
He peered at her, “Do I know you?”
“Not yet,” she said. “But if you have more in mind than just getting in your cars and going home, you will.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means you really need to turn around and go away,” I said.
He glared at me.
“We don’t need you Phoenix pukes coming up here and getting in our business.”
“Calvin, go home now,” Boyce said.
He turned his head and spit on the ground. “Shut up bitch!”
When his head came back around, Boyce slammed him in the nose with the heel of her hand. She stepped into it, the punch traveling about fourteen inches. In a punch like that, the thing is to try to punch through the target. His head snapped back and he went backward, and sat down hard. Blood was gushing from his nose. The other two were so stunned they didn’t move. When they did, they looked back at Boyce, and she had moved her jacket aside to show the badge on her belt, and the pistol on her hip.
“Get him up,” she said.
They stood, stunned, looking at her.
“Now!”
They each took an arm, and pulled the dazed Calvin to his feet. His eyes were glassy and he was very unsteady.
“If you boys don’t want to spend the night in jail, I suggest you take good old Calvin and yourselves out of here.”
The two wouldn’t look at her. They started the stumbling Calvin across the lot. She looked at me and I was grinning.
“That’s all it takes to amuse you?” she said. “Give a guy a shot in the beezer and you’re a happy camper?”
“Maybe I do love you.”
“Shut up.”
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The Girl at the Deep End of the Lake Page 23
