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Chapter 1

Vincent D’Agosta took another sip of his Bud and let his eyes wonder around the bar he’d ducked into on his way home. It was a cop hangout, decorated primarily with bullet-riddled silhouettes from various firing ranges. He wondered why they didn’t just hang bloody corpses on the walls. The bar also boasted framed (and only complimentary) NYPD headlines from the Times and the Post, some with pictures of bloody corpses. There were also photos of the city’s top cops, past and present, a motley collection of mostly balding, paunchy clones whose faces all seemed to resemble the one D’Agosta shaved every morning. He saw several uniformed cops and several more detectives, and a few women who may have been police groupies. The women sat in pairs, sipping drinks and eyeing the men in uniform like starving cannibals.

One particularly striking woman sat alone, two empty booths from his, sipping a white wine. Vincent found himself staring at her. Hayward had been out of town at a seminar for a week and he felt lonesome and horny. It was amazing how little time it took to get used to a regular sex life again, and how little time it took to get amazingly horny when it was interrupted. But he figured that, had he just come from an orgy, he would’ve noticed this woman anyway. She was just the type that got noticed.

Red hair to her shoulders in a beautiful hue, not screaming fire engine or jack o’lantern orange; smooth skin of that very fair, blushy shade that only the luckiest natural redheads possessed; even, somewhat delicate features; wide cornflower-blue eyes ringed with thick, long lashes. Her rosy lips were slightly thin but beautifully shaped, and pouted prettily over the rim of her wine glass as her expressive eyes roamed the somewhat dim room. She wore a silky blouse the same cornflower-blue as her eyes. It rested softly over pert, rounded breasts with the faintest suggestion of erect nipples. As he watched, she took a last sip of wine, rose, picked up a black jacket (turning enough to let him glimpse a very nicely rounded little tush), and shrugged gracefully into it. He didn’t know much about women’s clothes, but her suit was obviously expensive and fit her slim frame well enough to make him squirm a little under the table.

She reminded him of his first love, Rosie Callahan. Or at least the first girl to let him play I’ll Show You Mine. Every time he thought about Rosie Callahan, it was like being back in that moment, and he usually ended up with the same problem he’d ended up with that day. Rosie Callahan would look but not touch. He did not want that problem at the moment, so he put Rosie Callahan out of his mind, but was not quite able to take his eyes off the vision two booths in front of him.

He dropped his eyes to her legs, shapely and smooth beneath the hem of the knee-length skirt, and noticed that her black pumps had very low heels, which made him realize how tall she was. She walked toward him slowly, her eyes on the door, then noticed his gaze and held it a moment before dropping her eyes demurely. Nearing his booth, she rummaged in her handbag and removed a white handkerchief. Just as she grew even with his booth, she dropped it. It fluttered to the floor at her feet. She made no move to pick it up. Instead, she met his gaze again and held it, smiling slightly.

His heartbeat doubled. He stood, reached down, picked up the hanky, and caught a whiff of some subtle, exotic scent emanating from it. He held it out to her, noticing that she was, indeed, very tall. He had to look up to meet her eyes, and for some reason, even that caused a perplexing stab of sudden lust that left him slightly lightheaded. He’d always wanted tall women but, perhaps due to his own somewhat diminutive statue, had always ended up with petites like Hayward. As though she knew the exact effect she was having on him, her smile grew a fraction and she spoke, in a soft, somewhat husky voice that made the skin of his lower abdomen tingle. “Thank you very much.”

“My pleasure.” He bowed slightly and blushed. He’d been hanging out with Pendergast too much. Bowing wasn’t his style.

She seemed to appreciate it, however. Her blue eyes dropped to his left hand and he realized she was checking his ring finger. Surely such a bombshell wasn’t interested in hooking up with him. But he’d been surprised with Hayward. Maybe...but it didn’t matter what she was interested in. He was in a monogamous relationship and he was not a cheater. The little devil who lived somewhere in the vicinity of his crotch reminded him that Hayward was out of town and he didn’t have to marry this woman, that he only lived once, and that he should go for the gusto with all the alacrity of a beer-commercial redneck in a four-wheeler. The little angel who lived in his solar plexus begged to differ.

The woman put out her hand and he took it automatically, catching another whiff of that strange, heady scent. It made the fluid in his knee joints vibrate. “My name is Alice. Alice Pearl.”

“Vi—ahem—Vincent D’Agosta.”

“Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Vincent.” She continued to hold his hand, her slim, cool, French-manicured fingers with their tastefully rounded nails exerting just the slightest pressure in places he could swear nobody had ever exerted pressure before. He wondered if hands had erogenous zones.

As though she’d read his mind, one of her fingers moved, caressing his palm gently, and he caught his breath, remembering what the boys he’d grown up with had said about that particular gesture. He didn’t know about the meaning, but the result was a growing woody that he had to bend forward slightly to conceal. It was as though she’d reached down and stroked him where the stroking was best and, though Rosie Callahan was now as far from his mind as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, he had the same problem that usually resulted from thinking about encounters with her. Had it even worse. He wondered woozily if Alice Pearl was a high-class hooker, how much he had available in checking, and where he could find the nearest ATM.

He realized she was waiting, and spoke past the squirrel that had taken up residence in his throat. “Pleased to meet you, Alice...er, Ms. Pearl.”

“Oh, please, call me Alice.” The tip of her pink tongue crept out of her smile and touched the exact center of her luscious upper lip. D’Agosta found himself wetting his own lips and his tongue darted back into his mouth like a startled pinworm.

Her smile grew a little more and he bent a little further. Pretty soon he was going to look like Quasimodo. Quasimodo with a raging hard-on. He did the only thing he could think of to hide it. He gestured to the opposite seat, squeaked, “Please, sit down” like a chipmunk with laryngitis, and fell back into his own seat.

She slid gracefully into the booth, placed her elbows on the table, and gazed at him, resting her chin on steepled fingers. Her eyes roamed over his uniformed chest. “Tell me, Vincent...do you enjoy your work?”

D’Agosta sat up straighter and tried to cultivate the look of a dangerously capable professional. He didn’t realize that he looked that way all the time, so when he actually strived to look that way, he overdid it and looked a little like a lunatic. “Yes, I do.”

She leaned forward slightly, looking into his eyes. There was an air of quiet self-confidence and subtle intelligence and competence about her, an aura that gave him a weird, fleeting déjà vu feeling. But he knew he’d never met this woman. He would have remembered this woman.

Her pink tongue crept out again, and he was reminded of a hungry cat sighting a fat, unobservant mouse. He found himself wishing his mouth was on hers when that tongue crept out. His eyes dropped to her breasts and he imagined his hands on the silky blue blouse, caressing and squeezing. The material would be cool. The flesh beneath it would grow hot from his manly touch. She would moan his name and ask him to—

“...do me good.”

He woke up. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

She smiled as though she knew exactly why he hadn’t heard what she’d said, and repeated it in that warm, husky voice that made his erectile tissue quiver. “I said, I believe another white wine would do me good.”

“Yeah. Right. Sure.” He cursed himself silently for sixteen kinds of fool and wondered if his mother’d had any kids who’d lived.

He went to the bar and returned with a white wine and another Bud. She murmured her thanks and raised the glass to her lips, sipping delicately. He watched, unable not to, until she set down her glass and raised her eyes. Then he took a long guzzle of Bud, looking everywhere but at her.

He couldn’t think of a thing to say. He’d never been this dumb around a woman, even in high school, when he’d lusted after Peggy of the Pristine Panties. He looked into her intense blue eyes and wondered if he was being hypnotized.

“Is something wrong, Vincent?” She had lost her smile, and her eyes displayed nothing but concern.

He realized that she wasn’t hypnotizing him. She wasn’t even aware of his ridiculous condition. The problem was all his. He was simply making an ass of himself over a woman he’d just met, and he had no idea why. He had to get out of there, while it was safe to stand up. If she licked her lips again...

“Yes. I mean, I’m sorry, but I need to go to the restroom.” He grimaced. Oh, smooth operator.

“And I need to get home.” She slid gracefully out of the booth and stood up.

He found himself in a quandary. “You don’t have to...I mean, I’ll be right back.”

Though he’d planned to use the bathroom ruse to slip away, now he found that he couldn’t bear to do it. He didn’t want to part from this woman without developing some bond, some connection, some way to reach her and see her again. Every working brain cell he possessed, though there seemed to be very few at the moment, screamed NO, DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! The angel in his solar plexus was breakdancing in the throes of disgusted disbelief. But he seemed to be mesmerized. He had never been mesmerized, that he knew of, but he thought that if he had been, it would’ve felt exactly like this.

His predicament must’ve shown on his face, because she smiled kindly, put a gentle hand on his arm, and said, “Tell you what, Vincent. I’ll go to the restroom and freshen up, and while we’re apart, you can think about...how you would like to spend the afternoon. Okay?”

Holy shit. Did she mean what he thought she meant?

She took his arm and led him, dazed, toward the hallway in the back that led to the facilities. The hallway was very narrow, quite dimly lit, and empty at the moment. She paused outside the Women’s and looked down at him, her blue eyes a little brighter than expected in such meager light. Their bodies were only inches apart. D’Agosta felt his arms moving, seemingly of their own volition. Felt his hands slide around her waist. He rested his head on her shoulder, then turned his face into her hair, inhaling the sweet, fresh fragrance of her. He rooted for the soft skin of her neck and found it, kissed it. His hands slid up her back, pulling her closer. “I want to spend the afternoon with you,” he whispered. “I want to make love to you.”

Then something amazing happened. Amazing, and horrifying. The vision spoke in a much deeper, though still soft, honeyed voice, and now her accent was a southern drawl that made D’Agosta’s scrotum draw up to the size of a walnut. “I’m flattered, Vincent, but I fear you would discover that I’m not a natural redhead.”

Pendergast? What the FUCK?

Pendergast pulled back, looked down, and noticed his friend’s stricken face. “I’m truly sorry, Vincent. As usual, I am testing a new disguise before going undercover. Apparently it is quite ef—”

D’Agosta gasped as he saw his life flashing before his eyes. He felt his brain shutting down into a numb block of frozen gray jelly. He could barely process what had just occurred, but he knew he couldn’t possibly live through it. There was simply no way to go on living after such mortification. He slumped and staggered a little.

“Vincent!” Pendergast took hold of his shoulders. “Are you all right?”

D’Agosta looked up into the wide blue eyes, let his gaze drop to the rosy lips, the pert breasts. He groaned.

“Vincent!” Pendergast shook him gently. “Snap out of it!”

D’Agosta gathered himself together and found that he was angry. Perhaps very angry. He tried to speak, to give voice to his anger. To tell Pendergast exactly what he thought of his little game. He had to do it or bust. He opened his mouth with no idea what was going to come out of it. What came out was: “You—you slut!”

“What?” Pendergast’s rosy lips remained open in a perfect O of indignation. He looked as primly insulted as any old-maid schoolteacher being obscenely heckled by a herd of randy construction workers.

D’Agosta found Pendergast’s indignation to be simply infuriating. He was the one who should be indignant. He was the one who’d been made a fool of. And he was the one who was going to kick some serious albino ass.

Quick as a wink, his fist flashed toward Pendergast’s perfect breasts. Fast as a speeding bullet, Pendergast’s hand, with its tasteful French manicure, flashed out and stopped the fist cold. The impact sent D’Agosta stumbling into Pendergast. Like any gorgeous woman assaulted by an oaf, Pendergast pushed back.

A male voice spoke suddenly from the hallway entrance. “Need some help, ma’am?”

The combatants froze and peered through the gloom at the uniformed police officer. Pendergast spoke in his Alice Pearl voice. “Thank you, officer, but no. Just a lover’s spat. It’s over now.”

D’Agosta opened his mouth and Alice took his arm. “Come, darling, let’s sit down and make up.”

D’Agosta found himself propelled toward the booth where they’d been sitting.

The young officer caught a whiff of the bewitching woman’s perfume as they walked by. He also caught a wink from a cornflower blue eye, a wink that made the fluid in his knee joints vibrate. He continued on into the restroom in a daze, wondering what such a lovely creature was doing with D’Agosta.

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