I’d been having a lot of odd encounters with homeless people of late. Well, lots of my encounters with homeless people were odd. Especially the one where that guy threw a mustard burger at my windshield as I sat at a stoplight. I didn’t even do anything to that man. He was all screaming through my plastic window.

But maybe these encounters were a sign from God. Maybe he wanted me to work with the homeless. Or, and I was thinking outside the box with this one, maybe they were all some kind of elaborate setup to take pictures of me with these people, so that they could later blackmail me into doing something illicit. Normally my thoughts wouldn’t have veered in quite that direction, but they did this time. Probably because there was a man sitting in a beige sedan parked down the street with a wide-angle camera pointed directly at me.

Oddly enough, I’d been seeing that same beige sedan a lot lately, too.

He seemed to have snapped the shots he wanted. He lowered the camera and was scrolling through the shots when I knocked on his window. Hard.

He jumped and flailed a bit at being surprised.

“Who the fuck are you?” I said, practically screaming at him. I was not going to take being set up lying down.

Of course, there was an added benefit to screaming. With any luck, it would garner the attention of anyone who happened to be close by. If he came at me, I’d have witnesses.

I took two quick seconds to scan the area. Probably something I should have done before provoking a stranger who could’ve had an AK-47 stashed in his undies, for all I knew. Luckily, there was a man taking out the garbage of a little café that sat beside Calamity’s. He paused from his task to look on with mild interest.

No Reyes, though. I guess the only thing he sensed, the thing that called him to me, was a spike in adrenaline. I tried to stay calm so as not to summon him. He’d had a busy night what with all our sexual energies colliding like atoms in the sun. And then there were the men in masks. Add to that the whole toothpaste debacle, and Reyes should be about as exhausted as I was.

I refocused on the paparazzi. “What the fuck, dude?” I yelled when he turned to put his camera on the passenger seat. He put his key in the ignition, and for some reason—my reflexes being so catlike and all—I tried to open the door. I had every intention of dragging him out by his hair and beating the truth out of him. Thankfully his door was locked, because at some point during my walk over, I lost all sense of reality. His engine roared to life, and before I could utter another curse word, he peeled out, narrowly missing my toes.

I stood stunned for a solid minute. He was not just on some mission to set me up—as he drove past, I saw his jacket in the backseat. It had a badge clipped to the pocket. He was a cop.

9

I don’t know what I’d do without coffee.

Probably 15 to 20 in the state pen.

—BUMPER STICKER

Son of a bitch.

Were the cops setting me up?

I hurried back to Misery, hoping to catch the other guy, as he was clearly part of whatever was going on—but he was gone as well. I slammed the door shut and cursed under my breath before realizing my bag was still there. The guy could so easily have taken it. Thank God for small wonders.

When I opened the door again, Artemis had moved to the backseat. She stared straight ahead, pretty as she pleased, as though she’d really wanted the backseat the whole time. “I’m sorry, girl,” I said as I climbed in. “Mr. Andrulis, I don’t usually yell and slam doors, but being surveilled in what clearly is some kind of setup makes me cranky.”

He didn’t answer and I was really starting to feel bad for the guy. He had to be chilly.

I started up Misery, let her idle a solid five seconds—which was four seconds longer than usual—then backed out of the parking lot in search of a man with an inferiority complex.

* * *

When I stopped by the bond enforcement agency Garrett Swopes most often worked out of, the receptionist told me he was on a sting to apprehend a fugitive. I asked the pretty girl, who was far too young to be working at a bond enforcement agency, where that would be.

“Oh, I can’t tell you that, Ms. Davidson,” she said, popping her gum. “My uncle would kill me. He told me so. Said he’d cut my throat in my sleep if I ever gave you any information on any of our cases.”

“Wow. That’s a little harsh. Your uncle, huh?”

“Yeah. He hired me temporarily to see if I’d work out.”

“Do you?” I asked, giving her the once-over. “I mean, you look like you do.”

She blinked, trying to grasp my meaning. “Do I what?”

“Work out.”

“Oh,” she chuckled. “Yeah, they warned me about you. But I can’t tell you where he is. You won’t get anything out of me.”

She went back to popping her gum and filing her nails, and I nodded. “I think you’ll work out just fine, honey. Swopes wouldn’t happen to be at an apartment complex on the corner of Girard and Lead, would he?”

Her mouth dropped open. “How—?”

Well, that was all I needed. “Thanks, hon. Tell your uncle hey for me.” I waved as I went out the door. Poor thing. She had all the details written in triplicate in front of her. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I could read upside down.

Hopefully she’d figure it out eventually. She’d have to learn fast if she planned on working for her uncle. He was quite the skiptracer himself in his day. He’d had a rep for having hard knuckles and a jaw made of steel. Sadly, his nose was not made of the same indestructible substance. It’d been broken more than once and sat slightly to the left of his face, but he was a cool guy.

Still, why would he tell his niece not to give me any info? We’d been friends for a long time. And I’d apologized for that whole pineapple debacle months back. He really needed to let it go. Resentment like that tended to fester. He’d get an ulcer if he wasn’t careful. That was kind of my specialty, though. Causing ulcers. Everyone had to be good at something.

* * *

I pulled in behind Garrett’s black truck and turned off Misery. I’d lost Artemis somewhere around Central and Juan Tabo. She saw a cat. Garrett was standing at his tailgate with two other men. They all wore badges around their necks identifying themselves as bond enforcement agents. I quickly realized one of the men was the receptionist’s uncle, Javier. And he’d told her not to give me any info. I hoped I wasn’t getting her in trouble.

They turned toward me en masse. Garrett Swopes was a tall drink of water with mocha-colored skin and sparkling gray eyes. He also had incredible abs. Not that I was interested in him, but it was hard not to notice his abs when he answered his door shirtless all the time. That could be because I’m always showing up at his house in the middle of the night. Weird how I always needed him around four in the A.M.

He’d been in the middle of pulling on a bulletproof vest. This guy must be bad. It took a lot to get Swopes to wear Kevlar.

It took a moment for Javier to recognize me. He frowned and said something to Garrett, pointing toward me repeatedly. Garrett let him rant, nodded, then waved me to him. The third guy I didn’t know. He was at least part Asian and looked like he’d been in one too many bar brawls. But really, who needed all those teeth? It was overkill if you asked me.

I climbed out of Misery and sauntered over to them with a nonchalant smile.

“How did you know where we’d be?” Javier asked.

“I didn’t. I just knew where Swopes here would be and I need to talk to him. You are just a bonus.” I batted my lashes at him.

His brows snapped together. “You didn’t bring any C-4, did you?”