Under The Covers

EXHAUSTED, Detective Blake Hammond dropped into the worn leather chair, leaned back and propped his polished brown loafers on the edge of the gray metal desk. He glanced at the clock hanging on the far wall and managed a tired grin, anxious to wrap up the long unproductive night of surveillance. In less than twelve hours he’d be on a 747 to the Hawaiian Islands. The most strenuous item on his agenda consisted of downing a variety of fruity rum drinks, while appreciating the view of sunbathing beauties intent on deepening their tans under the warm tropical sunshine.

Life was good, and bound to be an improvement over the last month, which had been filled with long hours that hadn’t garnered a solid arrest. For the past two weeks, he’d been convinced the lead from a snitch was a dead end. A series of robberies in Los Angeles’s high-rent district had the lieutenant demanding a bust, but so far, Blake and his new partner, Lucas Stone, had turned up nothing. The robberies were clean, no forced entry and not a single print or scrap of evidence left by the perps.

“You don’t have to gloat, Hammond.” Luke tossed a thin file near Blake’s feet. “It’s depressing to the rest of us grunts left behind to deal with the criminal element.”

“I’ve earned the right to gloat,” Blake said with a chuckle, swinging his feet to the floor. “I haven’t had a vacation in over three years. For the next fourteen days the only surveillance I’m planning has to do with curvy, suntanned, string-bikini-clad bodies glistening with coconut-scented oil.”

Luke dropped into the chair behind the desk adjacent to Blake’s. “Great,” he grumbled, reaching for the phone after shoving a lock of sandy-brown hair off his forehead. “I’m stuck partnering that blowhard bore, Pearson, while you’re scoping beach-bound Bettys. There’s just something unfair about that.”

“You know what they say about life being fair,” Blake said without an ounce of remorse, glancing up as Lieutenant Forbes came out of his office.

“Hammond. A minute,” Forbes barked. His salt-and-pepper eyebrows were pulled into a heavy frown Blake was certain didn’t bode well.

Blake shot a look in his partner’s direction. Luke shrugged and punched numbers into the telephone keypad.

“Close the door,” Forbes ordered when Blake walked into the lieutenant’s office. He perched on the edge of his desk while Blake propped his backside on the arm of the leather sofa that sat against the far wall.

“I’m canceling your vacation.”

Blake came off the sofa. “No. You’re not.” Let Forbes write him up for insubordination. He needed a vacation before he made a serious, and costly, mistake. The previous week he’d gotten a little too rough with a suspect. He didn’t want to think about what could’ve happened if Luke hadn’t pulled him off the creep. Blake had been appalled by his own behavior. His usual calm and patience had slipped out of frustration, telling him loud and clear he was overdue for some much needed R and R, something he planned to rectify in the next twelve hours.

A tired cop made mistakes. An overworked cop was dangerous.

A frustrated cop was deadly.

“I haven’t had time off in three years,” Blake said, frowning. He stuffed his hands in the front pockets of his pressed khaki trousers and gave Forbes a hard look. “I’m tired, Lieutenant. I need a break.”

Forbes crossed his arms over his barrel chest. “I know you need a vacation, Hammond. I wouldn’t do this to you, but I don’t have a choice. I need someone to go undercover with DEA.”

“DEA? Oh, come on, Lieutenant. I’m not in the mood to be hassled by some government agent over petty jurisdictional issues. Give it to Stone. I’m tired.”

“Stone’s too involved in the uptown robbery. I need someone familiar to stay on that case. You’re the only one free for the next couple of weeks.”

“A couple of weeks somewhere warm and tropical, not holed up with an uptight, arrogant DEA agent.”

“It’ll be light duty.”

Blake gave a harsh laugh. “Light duty? With the DEA involved? Yeah, and the CIA’s adopted a kinder, gentler method of interrogation, too. Tell me another fairy tale, Lieutenant.”

“I’m still your superior officer, Hammond,” Forbes said in that cold-as-steel voice he’d perfected as a beat cop back in the glory days of the LAPD. “This is a special situation and you’re needed.”

Blake took a deep breath and attempted to summon his trademark calm and cool demeanor. He felt as if he was fighting a losing battle as the thought of handing in his shield played on the fringes of his mind. Just the fact that he even considered walking out was solid proof he needed to get away for a while. Good cops didn’t make mistakes, or take their frustrations out on suspects. The role of good cop was as natural as breathing to him.

Lately he’d forgotten how to breathe.

“Is that an order, Lieutenant?” he asked, his voice filled with a composure that felt far too foreign to be realistic.

Forbes returned Blake’s hard stare with one of his own. “Yeah, Hammond. It’s an order.”

Irritation climbed up Blake’s spine and settled in his neck. He let out a long breath and rubbed at the tension. “Fine,” he said after another deep breath that did little to ease his frustration. “My airline ticket’s nonrefundable. I want to be reimbursed.” If the department was going to screw him out of a vacation, then they could damn well pay for the privilege, he thought irritably.

Forbes nodded sharply. “I’ll see what I can do about it. This is coming from the brass upstairs, so it shouldn’t be a problem. As soon as you’ve wrapped this assignment up, you can take off.”

With nothing else to say, Blake dropped onto the edge of the sofa. He didn’t like it, and the churning in his gut confirmed his suspicions. He despised being backed into a corner, but an order was an order which left him with no other option than to comply. “What am I getting into?”

Forbes circled the desk, opened a file and stood with his hands braced on the large desk. “This isn’t just an L.A. problem,” he said looking at Blake. “The word on the street is a new designer drug is hitting the West Coast. There are already reports that it’s starting to show up in the Midwest and, we can assume, moving farther east.”

“Colombians?” Blake asked. He was familiar with drug trafficking, as were all the detectives in Vice. Busting the bad guys, the small-timers and even the movers and shakers in the underworld was part of his everyday life. The only reason he and Luke had been stuck on the uptown robbery detail was that their snitch had refused to provide information to anyone other than Luke.

“Not this time,” Forbes answered, shifting his attention to the open file. “According to Ronnie Carmichael, the agent you’ll be working with, this new brand of synthetic coke is being smuggled into the States through Avalon.”

Blake leaned forward, braced his elbows on his legs, and clasped his hands between his knees. “Catalina Island?” Interesting, he thought. Southern California’s island retreat was more of a place for lovers and honeymooners than drug traffickers. “How are they getting it out?”

A knock at the door had Forbes moving around his desk. “DEA suspects it’s being brought out by chopper or run out of Avalon Harbor on the launches,” he said, reaching the door and resting his hand on the knob. “There are about twenty or more runs back and forth between Avalon and Long Beach Harbor per day.”

“Which provides plenty of opportunity for movement,” Blake surmised.

“Considering the Coast Guard has never paid a whole lot of attention to the water taxis, you’re right.”

“That could explain how the stuff’s getting out of Avalon.”

“That’s what you’re going to find out,” Forbes said as he opened the door. “And stop.”

Standing in the threshold was a woman. Not just any woman, but a breathtakingly beautiful one. Blake gazed into eyes a startling shade of brilliant turquoise and felt his heart slam into his ribs.

“I apologize for being late,” she said quickly.

She shifted her attention to Forbes, and away from that instant spark of awareness Blake would bet his badge she’d felt, too. Not only did she have the softest, sweetest voice he’d ever heard with just a trace of a Southern accent he found sexy as sin, but the slight smile canting her lips caused an adorable dimple to wink at him. “Your L.A. interchange was a little more than I expected.”

Forbes commanded her attention and ushered her into the room while Blake took advantage of her movements, allowing his gaze to travel the length of her. He had no idea who she was, but she had the kind of legs that made a man sit up and take notice, slender and shapely, like the rest of her. When it came to the appreciation of women, Blake considered himself an expert. And in his expert opinion, the curvaceous brunette was a vast improvement over the last department secretary. If this was the type of support staff personnel was placing in the detectives’ bureau, he might just stop complaining about having to ride a desk for hours at a time to deal with the endless stream of paperwork.

Her sensible, low-heeled pumps clicked sharply on the linoleum as she crossed the small office space to the pair of mismatched chairs opposite Forbes’s desk. Always the gentleman, Blake stood, hoping to gain an introduction to the petite dream come true.

A straight peach skirt reached just above her shapely knees and a soft, floral-print blouse brought out the intriguing color of her eyes. He usually liked his women tall, but he’d make an exception for the looker with a thick file tucked under her arm.

She glanced over her shoulder at him, and Blake flashed her his most winning smile. Delicately arched eyebrows rose briefly, and those turquoise eyes looked him up and down without showing the slightest hint of interest, curious or otherwise, before turning her attention back to the lieutenant.

Just as well, Blake thought, even if he didn’t buy her disinterest for a nanosecond. She more than piqued his interest, but she was off-limits since the department had a strict fraternization policy that applied to all law enforcement and support staff personnel.

“Blake,” Forbes said, drawing his attention from her lethal legs. “This is Special Agent Veronica Carmichael, from the Drug Enforcement Agency. Ronnie will be your partner for the next couple of weeks.”

Blake looked from the slight grin tugging his superior’s lips to the lust-inspiring brunette and back again. Ronny was Ronnie?

“This is a practical joke, right?” he asked desperately.

No way was all that honey and sweetness an uptight, arrogant DEA agent. The few times he’d crossed paths with Drug Enforcement agents, they were hard-drinking, rough-talking, take-no-prisoners brick walls of solid muscle with a penchant for risking their thick, beefy necks. She didn’t look as if she could withstand a brisk Santa Ana wind, let alone wrestle a whacked-out dust dealer to the ground.

“I assure you, Detective,” she said, a flash of determination lining her delicate Southern accent. “I’m no joke.”