Midnight Special Coming on Strong - By Tawny Weber Page 0,5
mouth went dry.
Oh, baby.
Those were definitely some sexy shoulders. Right there, above a very nice ass. The shoulders were bare, and Marni was pretty sure it was a crime that the ass was covered.
She’d never wanted anything more than her career.
Until now.
* * *
“I DON’T HAVE TIME for this crap.”
Hunter glared at the doctor, then shifted the same threatening look at his boss.
“You should have thought of that before you messed yourself up again. What were you doing chasing some low-level art fence? It has nothing to do with the Burns case, dammit.” Looking as frustrated as Hunter felt, Deputy Director Murray took the clipboard from the doctor’s hands and flipped through the chart. As if he could change the diagnosis by reading it himself. “You should have taken the time off like I ordered.”
“That was an order? I thought it was a suggestion,” Hunter countered with a grin. At least, it was supposed to be a grin. But the good doctor, his hands now free of the clipboard, was poking at Hunter’s ribs again like some kind of sadist. They were cracked again, dammit. He knew it, the doctor knew it, Murray knew it. Poking wasn’t gonna change that fact any more than Murray glaring at the chart was going to change the diagnosis of further damage to Hunter’s inner ear.
“You’re supposed to be on the West Coast to testify in a week,” Murray snapped, shoving the metal file at Hunter in accusation. “How are you planning to make that happen now that you’re on the injured hero’s no-fly list?”
“Seriously?” Hunter asked the doctor. “I can’t fly at all?”
“Not unless you want to risk losing your hearing, collapsing in the air or possibly bleeding from the brain.” The doctor offered a cheery smile to go with that dire prognosis before stepping out of the room and closing the door behind him.
Well, none of that sounded appealing.
Hunter’s brain, still thankfully not bleeding, raced. He had to get to California for that trial.
Charles Burns was a nasty piece of work who thought he was going to skate on the current charges. He’d already won the first round by having the case tried in California, claiming that was his main residence and corporate headquarters. His defense team was the best dirty money could buy and the crooked CEO knew that the worst he’d do was a couple of years and a fistful of fines.
Unless the FBI could pull together all the pieces that had exploded in their lap last week. Pieces that would add racketeering and, if Murray had his way, attempted murder to the list of charges. Burns was so sure that he’d gotten away with murder. The creep had no idea that Hunter had rescued the victim he’d left for dead just before the building exploded. It was up to Hunter to turn a botched homicide into enough evidence to not only put Burns behind bars for life, but take down his entire operation for good.
He had an ace in the hole to make that happen. By hauling Burns’s victim out of the explosion last week, before she was blown into tiny bits, he’d secured the devotion—and a huge amount of insider information—from the rumored late Mrs. Burns. In return, he’d promised that she’d stay dead.
“Beverly Burns only agreed to hand over her husband’s books, files and passwords in exchange for not being brought into the trial.”
Murray waved that away.
“And she’s yet to hand it all over. At this point, she’s offered up maybe, what? Seventy percent of what she said she would? She’s holding out the rest for a cushy life of luxury in witness protection. To hell with that. I don’t care if she’s interested in testifying or not. We have ways of making people talk.”
His eyes narrow with dislike, Hunter asked, “Don’t you need a heavy accent and a flashlight when you say shit like that?”
Murray sneered. Hunter’s flippant remarks were just one more thing the deputy director didn’t like about the man he saw as his subordinate.
“Look, I want this guy put away. We have a witness who can guarantee that. Just because you’re all comfy cozy with criminals doesn’t mean we should coddle her at the expense of the case.”
“Comfy cozy?”
“Black Oak, California,” Murray shot back. “Three known criminal elements, and you let them go. Hell, you were best man at one of their weddings last year, weren’t you?”
“Caleb Black was DEA and is now the sheriff of Black Oak. Hardly a criminal element.”