Angel Down Read online

  Copyright

  This ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.

  This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Angel Down

  Copyright © 2017 by Lois Greiman

  Ebook ISBN: 9781943772889

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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  http://www.nyliterary.com

  Praise for Lois Greiman

  "Dangerously funny stuff."

  Janet Evanovich

  “Simple sexy sport may be just what the doctor ordered.”

  Publishers Weekly

  "Lois Greiman is a modern day Dorothy Sayers. Witty as hell, yet talented enough to write like an angel with a broken wing."

  Kinky Friedman, author of Ten Little New Yorkers

  "What a marvelous book! A delightful romp, a laugh on every page."

  MaryJanice Davidson, NYT bestselling author of the Undead series.

  “Amazingly good.” (Top Pick!)

  Romantic Times

  “L.A. psychologist, Chrissy McMullen is back to prove that boobs, brass, and brains make for one heck of a good time…laugh out loud funny…sassy…clever.”

  Mystery Scene

  "Excellent!"

  Library Journal

  "Sexy, sassy, suspenseful, sensational!! Lois Greiman delivers with incomparable style."

  Bestselling author of To the Edge, Cindy Gerard

  "Move over Stephanie Plum and Bubbles Yablonsky to make way for Christina McMullen, the newest blue collar sexy professional woman who finds herself in hair raising predicaments that almost get her murdered. The chemistry between the psychologist and the police lieutenant is so hot that readers will see sparks fly off the pages. Lois Greiman, who has written over fifteen delightful romance books, appears to have a great career as a mystery writer also."

  thebestreviews.com

  "Ms. Greiman makes a giant leap from historical fiction to this sexy and funny mystery. Bravo! Well done!"

  Rendevous

  “A fun mystery that will keep you interested and rooting for the characters until the last page is turned.”

  Fresh Fiction

  "Fast and fun with twists and turns that will keep you guessing. Enjoy the ride!”

  Suzanne Enoch, USA Today best-selling author of Flirting with Danger

  “Lucy Ricardo meets Dr. Frasier Crane in Lois Greiman’s humorous, suspenseful series. The result is a highly successful tongue-in-cheek, comical suspense guaranteed to entice and entertain."

  Book Loons

  Chapter 1

  Wild Turkey rippled like amber waves inside Gabriel Durrand’s whiskey glass. Ambient noises dimmed as the palpable scents of civilization drifted seamlessly into earthier odors. The desert crept into his consciousness on a carpet of darkness, swallowing him by slow degrees.

  Sweat dripped into his eyes and trickled down his back, hot and slick, slipping into the waistband of his cammies. But he remained as he was, unmoving, barely breathing because this was it. He could feel it in the cramped muscles of his shoulders, on the itchy nape of his neck. They’d been living in this damned sandbox for five weeks now. Followed a hundred leads. Planned a dozen missions, but this would be the last.

  They’d finally run the bastard to ground. Abdul Wakil Ghafoor. Rapist, murderer. Soon-to-be corpse.

  It was oh-dark thirty. Sometime between too early and just about fucking time. The desert was as quiet as death. His comrades were nearby, but almost invisible. A squad of men with exceptional training and unsurpassed skills. He knew each of them as well as he knew himself.

  Jairo…the little Latino, strong as a bull, quick as a fox. Snipes…sharpshooter and new daddy, so proud it’d make you laugh if it weren’t for that dumb-ass niggle of jealousy every time he pulled out the photos.

  Intel…the genius.

  Shep…

  Close behind him, Shepherd’s stomach rumbled. The rangy Okie shifted his rifle, trying to ease the jacked-up tension that had been building in them all for a month. “If this fucker makes me miss breakfast, I’m gonna kill ‘im twice,” he murmured.

  Shepherd…the ass…and Gabe’s wingman since boot camp.

  “Quit your fucking swearing,” Gabe mouthed, and Shepherd grinned, teeth so white they nearly glowed. But they were well hidden, hunkered down behind a wall the color of puke. Forty feet away at one o’clock was a squat farmhouse constructed of the same material. Light spilled at a sharp angle from the building’s only window. Sporadic laughter could be heard coming from behind the closed door. Ghafoor had a hell of a sense of humor. As did his guards. There was nothing funnier to them than spilling American blood. But the hilarity would end tonight.

  Intel had traced them here.

  Reynolds had given the orders; no planes, no Humvees, no noise. Just a half-dozen seasoned Rangers armed with guts and patriotism.

  This would be a coup to negate the growing list of Middle Eastern snafus because this was an OFP. Their own fucking program. No one knew they were there. Not their mothers. Not their lovers, and sure as hell not the shit-bricks in Washington.

  Off to their left, Reynolds raised his arm. Camouflaged warriors eased out of nowhere, tightening the perimeter like a noose around Ghafoor’s scrawny neck.

  A new Land Cruiser stood nearby, shining in the moonlight. Reynolds motioned toward it, one quick jerk of his head. Snipes crept forward, M-4 at the ready as he reached through the open window, retrieved the keys, then nodded once and knelt, taking cover behind a chromed wheel.

  The rest of the detail found new positions, just as invisible, but closer now, every rifle trained, every muscle tensed.

  Reynolds pointed to Intel, crouched as he was behind an ancient, wind-gnarled olive tree.

  Just about ready, just about there.

  Intel hunkered back, entirely unseen, his voice loud and clear in the dark silence, an echoing Pashto warning to lay down their guns, to give themselves up.

  Then the Land Cruiser exploded. It leapt toward the sky on a rocket of flame. Fire engulfed Snipes like a glove. He shrieked, high-pitched with agony. The sound was chopped short as the vehicle landed.

  Scraps of metal rained from the sky. A flaming shard struck Gabe, ripping the rifle from his hands. He threw himself onto the sand, clawing for his frags, but his fingers were slippery. Unwieldy.

  Gunfire burst over them, torpedoing from behind. Reynolds grunted and spun, hitting the ground like a loosed boulder.

  Gabe scrambled around in a circle, spinning on his belly. White-hot gunfire ripped at them from a dozen inky locations, and through his skewed night vision goggles, he could see the blackened faces of the men who had outwitted them.

  To his right, Intel stepped out of cover and opened fire. Two Sunni rebels stumbled backward, bodies jerking to the staccato beat of his weapon. For a moment, the lone tree seemed to crackle with silver energy, then it split, ripping down the middle. Splinters burst into the air like fireworks. Intel leapt away, miraculously unscathed, rifle raised in astonishment.

  “Get down! Get the fuck down!” someone screamed, but before the words ended, Intel toppled backward, twitching erratically in the exploding light.

  And i
n that same eerie glow, Shepherd leapt forward. Gabe watched him race across the desert in slow motion, a hunkered, camouflaged sprinter on a heavy treadmill of sand. Powder-puffs billowed up from his boots as he labored toward Intel’s twitching body. Firelight echoed off his rifle as a dozen Taliban aimed to kill.

  Gabe found himself on his feet. He didn’t know when he’d located his rifle. Didn’t interpret his own actions. Didn’t hear his own incoherent roar as he raced toward the duo by the fractured tree, M-4 chattering as he ran.

  Someone shrieked a truncated curse. Shepherd dragged Intel to his feet. A splinter the size of a pistol muzzle was protruding from the wounded man’s throat, but he was still convulsing, limbs jerking out of rhythm, like Pinocchio gone mad.

  “Let’s go!” Gabe shouted and crouched down, spattering gunfire into the anonymous blackness.

  “Help me!” Shepherd rasped.

  But Intel had gone limp. “Too late!”

  “The hell it is!” Shepherd barked. “Grab his—”

  Gabe leapt to his feet and swung. The butt of his weapon struck Shepherd’s temple like a thunderclap. He stumbled back, shock stamped across his face as Intel’s body slumped to the ground. And then Shepherd fell, too, stunned and motionless. For one horrified moment, Gabe delayed, barely hearing the harsh beat of the guns behind him. Then he threw himself atop Shep’s prostrate form and opened fire.

  It was a nightmare of chaos, of pain, of terror and blood and anger and guilt.

  But finally the noise ceased, though the pain continued, throbbing like a bitching ulcer.

  “You okay?”

  Reynolds was bent at the waist, holding his stomach. In the periphery, someone was weeping, guttural gasping sobs that slowed gradually, becoming softer, intermittent.

  Gabe nodded, though he couldn’t remember the question. Blood was dripping onto his leg with mind-numbing regularity.

  “Are you sure?” someone asked, and with those words reality seeped like acid into his aching brain.

  He raised his eyes, letting the surroundings take hold of his faulty consciousness; the Blue Oyster, a semi-seedy club on the outskirts of MacLean, Virginia. A club where he’d been told to meet an agent named Eddy. An agent who could help save Shepherd’s ass. But Eddy hadn’t shown.

  Instead, a woman stood beside his table. She was blond and slim. Cute would be the term his sister would use, and that with some derision. The Durrand women didn’t do cute.

  “Sure,” he said and drew himself fully into the present, locking the past behind him in maximum security.

  The woman frowned, seemed to consider leaving then decided against it. “You spilled your drink.”

  It took him a moment to glance down, longer to realize she was right. Blood was not dripping onto his thigh as he had assumed. It was whiskey. A neat means of losing consciousness by the quickest possible route.

  “I’m fine,” he said and righted his glass, but she didn’t move away, forcing him to say more, to attempt civility. “Don’t I look fine?”

  She scowled. Ginger-colored freckles were scattered across her pert little nose like wind-blown confetti, and her face was shaped like a heart, making her look as if she’d just whistled off the streets of Mayberry U. S. A.

  His hands were trembling. He shoved them under the table for safekeeping. “Devastatingly handsome?” he asked. It was a line Linus Shepherd might have delivered. If Linus Shepherd were still around. If he hadn’t been such a damn fuckup.

  Suddenly Gabe’s eyes stung and his throat felt tight, but Rangers didn’t cry. Sometimes they got shit-faced and brawled in the street like rabid dogs. Sometimes they shot the tires out of their own damn vehicles, but they did not cry, and he’d left his Beretta at the hotel. So he would do none of the above.

  “Yet boyishly charming?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said, then, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you. I just thought you might… I’m sorry,” she said again and retreated to a table behind him and to his right.

  He let her go, refilled his glass from the handy bottle nearby and wondered why the hell he was such a damned wienie. She was built like an all-American Barbie, for God’s sake, and he wasn’t dead. Not yet.

  At least that’s what Shepherd had said before shipping off to Bogotá with Miller the Moron. Before half of Miller’s men had come back in body bags. Before Shepherd had gone MIA.

  Goddammit! Gabe gritted his teeth against the hard rush of memories. Against the pain and guilt and hopelessness.

  But he wasn’t dead. Not yet, he remembered, and closing his eyes for an abbreviated eternity, grabbed the Wild Turkey by the throat and rose to his feet.

  Chapter 2

  Linus Jeremy Shepherd didn’t bother opening his eyes. He’d just awakened from a dozen vicious dreams, but he knew where he was in hell. Caught, abandoned, chained like a slavering hound.

  He didn’t test his bonds but shivered instead, chilled by the tropical heat. Or maybe it was a fever. He’d been shot. Again. Which was just damned unlucky. Or it could be that Durrand was right for once, and Shep was an idiot.

  He smiled grimly at the idea of admitting the truth and wished like hell Durrand were there to give him shit about it. And maybe, while ol’ Gabe was hanging around, the damned know-it-all could get him the hell out of there.

  Yeah, that’d be sweet. They’d take down these rebel bastards, bullets buzzing like mosquitoes. Then they’d fly home, first class, Wild Turkey at their elbows and long-legged stewardesses cuddled in their laps. Shep might even join the mile-high club….again.

  Curling more tightly beneath the reaching branches of some big-ass deciduous, he shivered spasmodically and scowled into the mud, confused. Maybe they weren’t called stewardesses anymore. Dammit, everything was fucked up. But things were really FUBAR if he couldn’t remember the important stuff. What was their pc title? Air commanders? Flight assistants? Flight attendants! That was it. He smiled, teeth chattering, dreams drifting mistily past as leggy fly-girls strolled through his boggled mind. He didn’t want to piss anyone off. Especially not the big-haired blonde with the sassy come-and-get-me smile.

  He didn’t want to do anything but make her happy.

  And maybe, if he were really lucky, survive the night.

  Chapter 3

  Strawberry blond. That’s what she was, Gabe thought. She glanced up at his approach. Her eyes were green, her brow furrowed. The expression made her look like a perturbed schoolgirl, bent forward as she was, pen poised over a square cocktail napkin. It was in pristine condition but for her blocky handwriting.

  “I wanted to apologize,” he said and motioned jerkily with the Wild Turkey back at his just-abandoned table. “About before. I’m not usually so antisocial.” That was probably not true, he thought, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “No problem.” Sliding the napkin out of sight, she crumpled it in her fist. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said, and despite the fact that his life was going to hell with the speed of a damned torpedo, he almost smiled, because she hadn’t been quite quick enough removing the napkin; he’d read the first line.

  “Drafting a resignation letter?” he guessed.

  “No. Not at all,” she said and cleared her throat. “You want to have a seat?”

  “A Dear John letter?” he asked.

  She shook her head and glanced away as he sat down. “Why would you think that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Acceptance speeches rarely begin with ‘Dear Dickhead,’” he said.

  For a moment, he thought she’d sputter a denial, but finally she smiled. A little flushed and as fresh-faced as a Girl Scout. “All right,” she said. “I am resigning. Sent the email three hours and…” She checked her wrist. It was absolutely devoid of a watch. She shrugged, unconcerned. “…seventeen minutes ago.”

  He stretched out his aching right leg. “Resigning from what?” he asked.

  “My desk job,” she said and took a sip. “Do you want to know why?”
/>   “I’m going to assume it’s because your boss is a dickhead.”

  “That’s right.” She leaned forward suddenly, and in that moment of abrupt animation she reminded him of every woman who made life worth living. Or a living hell. “And do you want to know why he’s such a dickhead?” she asked but continued before he could respond. “It’s because I’m a woman.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She leaned back in her chair, brows raised. “Am I sure that’s the reason, or am I sure that I’m a woman?”

  He was pretty confident of her gender but didn’t mention the fact. “Seems to me people are dickheads for all sorts of reasons,” he said.

  She watched him as he drank. Her eyes had softened a little. Maybe he’d rushed to judgment. Maybe they weren’t just green. Maybe they were forest green. Or fresh asparagus green.

  “What’d they do to you?” she asked.

  He flexed his right hand, almost tempted to tell her, to let her pity cushion the pain but he tested a lie instead. “They passed me over for a promotion.”

  “Me, too!” she said and smacked the table with enough force to make him wonder how much she’d had to drink.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. That’s why they’re dickheads.”

  He watched her mouth form the words. He couldn’t help himself. Perhaps it was because he was wasted. But perhaps it was because there was something about hearing obscenities fall from her sweet-cherry lips that was weirdly erotic. Not that he could do anything about eroticism at that precise moment.

  “Because I’m qualified,” she said and slammed down the remainder of her drink with a scowl. “I’m more than qualified.”