Blood Orchid (11 page)

“What interview?”

“Didn’t Ed Shine call you?”

That let the air out of Holly.
“You’re
Ed’s candidate?”

“I answered his ad.”

“Have a seat, Hurd,” she said, trying to collect herself.

Hurd pulled up a chair and sat down. “I saw the ad yesterday, and I faxed Shine my résumé.”

“Oh,” she replied. She hardly knew what to say next.

“He seemed to think I had a pretty good background,” Hurd said drolly.

“Well, of course you do, Hurd. I mean… this is something of a shock; I thought you were on board until retirement.”

“That’s pretty much what I thought,” Hurd said, “but next year I’ll have twenty-five on the job, and I was thinking of going fishing, anyway.”

“You fish?”

“Figuratively speaking. I thought I’d start a little business or do something part-time that would bring me enough income that, combined with my pension, would make life easy. Shine’s job looked a lot more attractive than that.”

“What’d he offer you?”

“Half again what I’m making, plus a really good benefits package.”

“God, I might be able to get you a ten percent raise if I went to the council and made a special request, but I couldn’t come close to that.”

“I know, Holly, and it’s all right. I don’t think I’m underpaid here, and I’m certainly not unhappy working for you, but Shine’s job looks awful attractive from where I’m sitting.”

“Has he told you what your duties would be?”

“Security; that’s about it. Between you and me, I believe I’d have to work hard at staying awake. It’s certainly not going to be as interesting as working in the department. I mean, we’re probably not going to have floaters turning up, like this morning.”

“I hope to God not,” Holly said. “Palmetto Gardens has made us enough work for a lifetime already.”

“Blood Orchid,” Hurd said solemnly.

“Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting, and Ed keeps reminding me.”

“He especially wanted you to know that he didn’t come to me,” Hurd said. “I just read the ad like everybody else. I got the impression that he’s really interested in my taking the job.”

“With my approval, of course,” Holly said, chuckling.

“I’m sorry to put you on the spot, but…”

“Oh, Hurd, I’ll give you the kind of recommendation that would keep him from even thinking about hiring somebody else.”

“I appreciate that, Chief.”

“How could I do anything else? You’ve been all I could have asked for in a deputy chief.”

“Thank you.”

“When would you want to go?”

“As soon as you’re comfortable.”

“Hurd, I’m
never
going to be as comfortable with somebody else as I have been with you.”

“Thank you, again.”

“Tell me, who do you think would be good to replace you?”

Hurd looked at his feet. “Well… I thought about that, and—I hope this doesn’t sound egotistical—I don’t think there’s anybody in the department who’s ready for the job.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Holly said.

“They’re all too young and new at it. I admired your wanting to bring in young people, and I understood how that helped with your budgeting, since their salaries start lower, but I guess it’s kept us from having an obvious successor.”

“You’re right about that,” Holly said.

“Tell you the truth, it might be best not to hire one. You could parcel out my duties to three or four other people and get along without a deputy. Maybe before long one of them would start to look like somebody who could handle the whole thing.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Holly said. “At least, it would take the pressure off about searching for somebody to hire. I might get some flak from the city council, though, not having another experienced person around.”

“I could make a couple of phone calls that might help with that,” Hurd said. “I’d be happy to back you up. My advice would be to hang on to the part of the budget that pays me, though. The council will want to reduce your budget if you don’t replace me immediately. You could tell them that you’re just taking your time finding the right person.”

“You were always a better politician than I, Hurd,” Holly said, laughing. “That’s a very good idea.”

“Well,” Hurd said, standing, “I’d better get back to work. We ought to have something later today or early tomorrow on IDing your floater.”

“Okay, that’s soon enough.” She stood up and offered Hurd her hand. “You deserve this.”

Hurd shook her hand and went back to his office.

Holly sat down and called Ed Shine.

“Are we speaking?” Ed asked.

“Only just,” Holly replied.

“What kind of recommendation can you give Hurd Wallace?”

“Only the very best,” she said. “You’re very lucky to get him, and you’d better treat him right or I’ll arrest you on some spurious charge and put you in jail.”

“I didn’t go after him, Holly; he came to me.”

“I know he did, and I don’t blame him a bit. I want to ask a favor, though.”

“Shoot.”

“I want to hang onto him until I can reassign his duties to others in an orderly way.”

“And how long will that be?”

“I don’t know; two or three weeks—a month, maybe.”

“Take as much time with him as you need, sweetheart.”

“You’re getting yourself a good man, Ed.”

“I’d rather have you.”

“You always know how to say the right thing, don’t you?”

“I try.”

“Bye, Ed.”

“Bye-bye.”

Holly hung up and sighed. Oh, what the hell, she thought, everything changes. Just make it work.

21

H
olly had hardly gotten home when the phone rang.

“I’ve got some perfect steaks and a couple of bottles of sensational red wine,” a male voice said. “You want to join me for dinner?”

“I don’t know who this is, but yes,” she replied.

Grant laughed.

“I’ll do almost anything for a good steak.”

“Really?”

“I said
almost.
”

“Oh. Seven o’clock? We’ll catch the sunset.”

“I don’t know how to break this to you, but your house faces east, and in this part of the world the sun sets in the west.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Those words exhibit a good attitude. Remember them. See you at seven.” She hung up, fed Daisy, and took her for a walk, almost as far as Grant’s house. It was a good-looking contemporary of wood and stone, not very Florida-like. It suited him, at least from the outside. She walked slowly back to the house, thinking about the evening ahead, while Daisy frolicked in the
dunes. By the time they were home, she had made her decision, at least tentatively.

Tentatively meant that, after showering, washing and drying her hair, and dressing fetchingly in short shorts and a low-cut T-shirt that showed a lot of belly, she put her diaphragm in her purse instead of in its final resting place. As an afterthought, she tossed in a condom, too. “Brazen,” she said aloud, checking the mirror for signs of wantonness. Then she walked back down the beach to his house.

She could see him through the sliding doors, dressed in Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt, barefoot, fixing something in the kitchen. She tiptoed up the stairs from the beach to the deck and rapped sharply on the glass, making him jump and drop a salad fork. He opened the door.

“An undercover agent must be alert at all times,” she said. “I could have snuck in, jerked down your shorts, and tattooed you before you even noticed.”

He flung an arm around her and kissed her lightly on the lips. “And what would you have tattooed on me?”

“KICK ME, I’M FBI,” she said, “in great big letters.”

“Thanks a lot, but you can jerk down my shorts anytime you like.”

“In your dreams.”

“Let me get you a drink, and I’ll start dreaming.”

She spied a cocktail shaker on the wet bar next to the kitchen. “I’ll get you one.” She found a bottle of vodka and some Rose’s sweetened lime juice, filled the shaker with ice, added six jiggers of vodka and two of lime juice. She put ice cubes in two martini glasses and swirled them around, then shook the shaker until her hands hurt from the cold. She dumped the ice from the now-frosted glasses and
strained the pale, green liquid into them. “Tie that on,” she said, handing him one.

He tasted the drink. “Oh, God, can I have another?”

“Easy, kiddo, we don’t know yet whether you can handle that one.”

He took a gulp, half emptying the glass. “Let’s find out.”

“What are you fixing?” she asked.

“A Caesar salad,” he replied. “I do it the old-fashioned way, in a wooden bowl, with a fork.”

“What else do you do the old-fashioned way?”

“Almost everything, especially…”

“Not in a wooden bowl with a fork, I trust.”

“If that’s what rattles your chain.”

She pretended to think about that. “No bowl,” she said, “but maybe a fork, and I get to hold it.”

He handed her a fork, and without another word pulled her to him and kissed her.

She leaned into him, finding what she’d expected, and she was astonished at how quickly her blood rose. She was already wet.

He put his arms tightly around her, pulled her to him, then lifted her a couple of inches off the floor and started walking toward a big sofa in the living room.

Holly went along for the ride, snagging her purse from the bar as they passed it.

Grant dumped her gently onto the sofa and, still kissing her, shucked off his shirt and shorts, while Holly helped him with her clothes. They were both naked in seconds.

“You mind if we skip the foreplay?” he asked, running his tongue over her nipples.

She opened her purse and took out the condom. “Skip it faster,” she said, stripping off the wrapper and
sliding it onto him, in the process spilling the contents of her purse onto the floor.

He glanced down. “Do you always take a Walther PPK to bed?”

“Only when fucking an FBI man,” she said, guiding him into her.

The next ten minutes passed at fast-forward, with no subtleties or anything else except straight sex, enthusiastically conducted. He came seconds before she followed, and they were both noisy about it.

“My God,” he said, rolling over on his back next to her. “I wasn’t expecting that so soon.”

“I was,” she said. “Try to keep up, will you?”

“I thought I did keep it up.”

“You certainly did, Junior G-Man. Now I’m hungry.”

They visited the powder room together, sponging each other clean and dry, then headed for the kitchen, still naked. Grant turned on the built-in restaurant-style grill and turned to the salad. “I need my fork back,” he said.

“Dammit,” she said, handing it to him, “I forgot to use the fork.”

“Don’t worry about it, I have enough holes in me already.” He separated a couple of egg yolks and dumped them into the wooden bowl.

She fingered a scar on his back. “This must have been one of them.”

“Key West,” he replied. “I wasn’t running fast enough. Fortunately, I had a partner in the bushes with a sniper’s rifle.”

“He was a little late, wasn’t he?”

“Believe me, we had a serious discussion about that later.”

“Just like the FBI to be a tad late when it counts.”

“You won’t get an argument from me about that.” Using the fork, he mashed some anchovies, then whipped them into the egg yolks with some Dijon mustard and some chopped garlic. Then he added olive oil slowly, until he had a smooth dressing. He added torn Romaine leaves, tossed them well, and Holly sat down to a table already set with a bottle of the Far Niente Cabernet waiting, breathing. Grant tossed the steaks onto the grill before sitting down.

“When was the last time you had dinner naked?” he asked, shoveling salad into his mouth.

She rolled her eyes in thought. “Well, let’s see; that would have been… never.”

“No kidding? Well, you certainly do it well, for a first-timer.”

“Funny, that’s what my first lover said.”

“What else did he say?”

“Modesty prevents me from telling you.”

“That’s what I like, a modest girl,” he said, reaching across the table and tweaking a nipple.

“Careful, buddy, or we’ll never get to the steak. You better marshal your resources for a while.”

“I’m marshaling, I’m marshaling,” he said, serving the steaks.

When they had finished their steaks and a bottle and a half of wine, she took a deep breath and sighed. “That was wonderful,” she said. “Is there a bed in this house?”

“You betcha.”

“Don’t tell me, show me.”

And he did.

22

T
hey lay on their backs in the moonlight, bathed in sweat, panting, on a bed that had been stripped of everything but the bottom sheet.

“It’s been a long time for you, hasn’t it?” he gasped.

“Over a year, but I’m always this way.”

“Always?”

“Can we do it again, now, please?”

“Oh, God, I’m going to die.”

“Not until I’m finished with you.” She rolled over, put her head on his shoulder and began fondling him.

He stopped her. “It has to rest.”

“How long?”

“I’m not sure. Weeks, maybe.”

“You should speak to your doctor about getting that pill that makes it possible for the impotent to get an erection.”

“Impotent? How can you say that?”

“Any guy who can’t do it three times in an hour and a half is in big trouble.”

He dissolved in what seemed to be a combination of laughter and weeping.

“Don’t worry, I’m not an impatient person. Take another ten minutes.”

“I’m going to die in this bed,” he said, “drained of all life by some new kind of vampire.”

“One that sucks semen from its victims?”

“Not just that; the whole life force.”

“I’ll bet you ten bucks I can bring you back to life in sixty seconds.”

“You’re on.”

A minute later, he said, “My money’s on the dresser over there; take whatever you want.”

She threw a leg over him and slid him inside her, moving slowly up and down. “Nice view of the ocean from here,” she said.

“From where?”

“From on top.”