Smith's Monthly #19 Read online

  I nodded. Made sense, but why the hell did it have to be so loud inside the ship. “Any idea how long?”

  “Maybe up to two days,” he said, smiling, as if enjoying a private joke on me.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think I can stand that noise for two days. Any way to cut the audio portion of the signal?”

  Now his face was suddenly serious. “I don’t want to risk our lives and even touch that thing.”

  Damn if he wasn’t right. I didn’t either, but that didn’t help me with that alarm sound.

  Hugh turned and took the captain by the shoulders. “Let’s get the crew back into a dry room and closed off. Never know what’s in this water.”

  That seemed like a logical plan. He seemed to be much better at emergency situations than I was.

  I took the captain’s feet and we headed back down the hall to the sleep coffin room.

  When we had all four bodies there, we covered them with blankets from one of the crew quarters.

  “When we get back,” Hugh said, “Dad will make sure all their families are well cared for.”

  “And the university will help as well,” I said. “They were very brave.”

  Hugh nodded. “They just didn’t expect the lake to be so shallow or the nose of the ship to crack open to outside air.”

  In silence we went to the galley and found something to eat. Even though our android bodies didn’t actually need the food, our minds believed they did, so we both felt hunger.

  Sometimes the android bodies were just a little too efficient.

  I just kept finding myself staring at Hugh, even though I tried not to. I hadn’t had a real date for almost six months before the accident. Holo-dates, sure. Everyone did those. But no real dates, and I had been missing that.

  The designers of these android shells could have easily unhooked the sex-drive part of the androids, but they hadn’t. Everything was hooked-up and working from my brain.

  And my brain kept my eyes staring at the naked hunk of a man I was with.

  And I noticed he was staring at me as well, when he didn’t think I was looking.

  In the galley the alarms were muted, but even there it just pounded at my head and got in the way of my thinking. Of course, I wasn’t real sure how well I was thinking considering everything that had happened.

  After eating, he broke the silence and asked, “How about we take a walk outside? Get some distance from the alarm.”

  “I would so love that,” I said. More than I wanted to admit to him, actually.

  We went back to the bridge and Hugh checked the communications panel.

  After a moment of my staring at his butt again, he turned to me, smiling that killer smile of his. “A ship called the Tennison will be here in less than twelve hours.”

  “Can you contact them?” I asked, feeling a huge sense of relief.

  “Nope,” he said. “We just have to wait and hold on.”

  I didn’t say what I wanted to hold on to as he turned for the opening in the hull.

  Carefully we worked our way outside and into the shallow water. Then holding hands like two kids at a swimming pool, we started for the nearest shoreline, a good two-hundred-paces away.

  The lake looked like it could be a mountain lake back on Earth, with some sort of pine-like trees surrounding the shoreline and sharp, rocky mountains in the distance. It was stunningly beautiful.

  But we were going to have to be very careful of any wildlife. Android bodies possessed almost super-human strength and the metal under the skin was tough to hurt, but a head injury would be a disaster, especially this far away from good medical help.

  The water never got deeper, only more and more shallow as we slowly worked our way along the sandy lake bottom and finally up onto the beach. It was a fine, white sand, and very soft.

  And on the beach the alarm from the ship was only a very distant sound, not annoying at all.

  Even with the yellow sun and the high clouds, I could feel the warmth of the air and the light bouncing off of the water.

  “Do androids get sunburns?” I asked, not really having a clue to the answer.

  He laughed. “I honestly don’t know. I don’t remember reading anything about that. Guess we’ll find out.”

  He dropped down on the beach and put his back against a tree stump so that he could stare out over the water and back at the ship.

  I sat beside him, wondering how hard it was going to be to get the fine, white sand out of the intimate parts of an android body.

  “So this air is poison to humans,” I said, taking a deep breath of what seemed like crisp, clean mountain air.

  “Very,” he said. “More than likely why this planet hasn’t been settled.”

  I laughed. “When has that ever stopped humans?”

  We sat for a moment in silence just staring at the ship.

  “More than likely,” Hugh said, “the crew thought the lake was deep and tried a water landing. I have a hunch they would have made it if the water had been even five feet deeper.”

  “Those ships float?” I asked, glancing at him.

  “Like a top,” he said.

  “And how do you know that?”

  And that question got the conversation rolling.

  For the next five or six hours we talked about our pasts and discovered we had almost crossed paths a few times over the years. I was shocked to discover how really solid he was, considering his family past. And he seemed shocked to discover I was a real human with real emotions, considering my reputation and discoveries.

  And he made me laugh a lot, something I would have never considered possible in this situation.

  Actually, I wasn’t the type to laugh much in any situation. But sitting on this lakefront with the beautiful alien sky and mountains, I seemed to laugh more than I had in years.

  And I had never opened up to anyone like I opened up to him. I told him things about myself I had never told anyone.

  As each hour went by I became more and more attracted to the man inside that android shell. To the brain, the personality.

  Before I had wanted to jump him for sex. Now I wanted to spend time with him. A lot more time. Especially once we were both back in real human bodies.

  I had no doubt I had fallen in love with Hugh. Never, in all my life, had I fallen for someone this fast and this hard.

  Maybe it was the trauma of surviving a spacecraft wreck.

  Or maybe it was Hugh.

  I was betting it was Hugh, not the android-body-Hugh, but the mind and sense of humor and personality inside the body.

  After six hours, the sun had only barely moved in the sky, clearly indicating this planet had a very slow rotation period.

  “I have a hunch we need to be heading back,” Hugh said, standing and brushing off sand and once again putting that magnificent body part of his directly in front of my face. “Besides, I’m getting hungry again.”

  Did he have any idea at all what that was doing to me?

  He offered a hand and helped me to my feet.

  I brushed off the sand, then laughed. “I think I need water to really get the sand out of some parts.”

  I headed back out into the water and when it got deep enough, I started brushing water up into my crotch, working the sand loose and enjoying the feel of the cool water.

  “Need some help?” he asked, moving up beside me and splashing water in the direction of my crotch.

  I sure didn’t have any plans on objecting, and the two of us made sure not one grain of sand was left where it didn’t belong.

  Then I turned to him. “I can see you need help as well.”

  I splashed water at the part that was now clearly larger than it had been when he pulled me out of the sleep coffin.

  “I might,” he said, smiling and pulling me into his arms.

  His kiss sent electrical sparks through my system like I had never felt before.

  I pushed against him and he pushed back, his wonderful patched, android
skin feeling like satin against me.

  After what seemed like forever, yet was far, far too short, he broke the kiss and looked me in the eyes. “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m tingling all over.”

  “So am I,” he said, smiling, the look of lust very, very clear on his face.

  “Are you sure these things don’t rust?” I asked after another long kiss.

  “That much I’m sure of,” he said, starting to kiss me again.

  Then suddenly my mind clicked back in over the lust and the desire.

  I pushed him away and grabbed his hand and started toward the ship as fast as I could go. My legs were actually tingling and it had nothing to do with the kiss or what body part of his that had been brushing against them.

  “These don’t rust in natural conditions,” I said, the fear clouding my mind more than it had at any moment before. This was alien water and alien air and this water could be very, very corrosive to android skin and parts. We had no way of knowing.

  “Oh, shit,” he said, clearly understanding what I was thinking. Then, as easily as picking up a bag of snacks, he had me out of the water and into his arms and was almost running in the shallow water toward the ship.

  “I can run on my own,” I said, the panic filling my voice even though I tried to act strong.

  “No chance,” he said. “I don’t want those parts of yours rusting. I have plans.”

  I actually laughed. How could he make me do that?

  In what seemed like only a moment, he was helping me through the damaged front of the ship and we were rushing back through the ship toward the crew quarters and the fresh-water showers that were still well above the lake water.

  After a short time it became clear that we had gotten out in time.

  We were fine. No real damage to our android bodies.

  But we decided to make sure, and that second inspection took lots of soap and very, very close personal inspection of each other.

  Very close.

  Careful, careful inspection, right up to the moment the rescue ship arrived.

  In the first installment, Seattle Police Detectives Bonnie and Craig, while taking a late night walk on a Scottsdale Arizona golf course happen to overhear a conversation between two men plotting to kill a United States Senator.

  At the same time, a young golf professional’s wife is kidnapped. Scheduled to play with the Senator, he must do what they ask or his wife will die.

  A fast-paced thriller that I first published years ago under another title and under a pen name. The publishing company died just as this book came out, so I figured it would be fun to bring the book back and give it a second life here.

  AN EASY SHOT

  Part 2 of 8

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Friday, April 7th

  10:07 p.m.

  THE WALK BACK to the hotel and up to their room seemed to take forever for Bonnie. Her heart was racing and her mind twisting at what they had overheard out on the course. She desperately wanted to talk to Craig about it, but knew that they didn’t dare until they were safely in private. Just as they had discovered, voices carried on that golf course, especially at night.

  After Craig closed the door behind them in their room, she dropped down onto the bed, enjoying the softness of the mattress and the silky feel of the bedspread. “Tell me what you heard.”

  Craig paced between her and the dark television, a frown on his face. “Two men talking about causing a Senator to have an accident.”

  Bonnie nodded, her stomach now even more in a knot than it was on the walk back. “That’s what I heard as well. Could we have misunderstood?”

  “I’ve been wondering the exact same thing,” Craig said, still pacing. “And the answer is yes, of course we could. They could have been talking about a game they were playing. Or the word accident could mean something completely different to them.”

  “Like what?” Bonnie asked, wanting to believe him, but not really following his logic.

  Craig stopped and faced her. “They said they were going to do a Senator, right?”

  Bonnie nodded. Those were the words she remembered very clearly.

  “Who knows,” Craig said, “maybe they were talking about getting a hooker for a senator and accident was how they were describing it.”

  Bonnie laughed, but she knew Craig was right. A single part of an overheard conversation could mean so many things, they didn’t dare jump to too many conclusions. Especially the conclusions they were both jumping to.

  “So what do we do now?” she asked.

  “I suppose we should take things one step at a time,” Craig said. He glanced at the clock on the stand beside the bed. “It’s only a little after ten. Let’s find out if there’s a Senator registered here.”

  “And just how do you plan to do that?” she asked. “I doubt anyone is just going to tell you.”

  “You would be surprised,” he said, smiling. He picked up the phone and punched a button.

  Bonnie lay back on the bed. She could still feel the tingle from the fun they had had on the fairway. It had been intense, that much was for sure. And even more startling that they could fall asleep nude like that in the middle of a fairway afterwards. The thought made her smile.

  If she had her way, there were going to a few more encounters just like that one before this weekend was over.

  As soon as they got all this stuff settled.

  “Front desk?” Craig asked. Then after a moment he said casually, as if he said the words every day, “Would you connect me to the Senator’s head-of-staff, please?”

  “Good thinking,” she whispered, smiling at her husband. “but it won’t work.” Craig was such a good detective, she knew. And he had ways of getting information that most people would never think of. But a stranger didn’t just go calling a hotel front desk and ask if a United States Senator was staying there. It didn’t work that way. Important people had layers between themselves and the regular public. Protective and necessary layers because of all the nut cases in the world.

  Of course, Craig hadn’t asked to talk to a Senator, but instead he had asked for the Senator’s head-of-staff. That detail might make all the difference.

  “I’m being connected,” he said, his eyes suddenly full of worry. He was clearly as surprised as she was, both at his idea working, and the fact that there was a Senator staying here.

  “Oh, shit,” she said, suddenly remembering why Craig was making the call. “There is a Senator here. Now what are we going to do?”

  He held his hand up. “Yes, hello, uh... Senator Knight,” Craig said, giving her the wide-eyed shock look.

  Craig was actually talking to Senator Knight! Bonnie thought her stomach was going to jump out of her body. Senator Knight from California was one of the more powerful Senator’s in all of Washington. What was he doing here? And what was he doing answering his own damned phone?

  Craig went on, clearly deciding to tell the truth as he went. “My name is Detective Craig Frakes from Seattle. I’m sorry to bother you, but my wife and I overheard a conversation this evening that I think we should relay to you and your security staff, if you have a few moments.”

  Bonnie watched as Craig listened to the Senator. Then he said, “I don’t honestly know how important it is, Senator. I suspect you would be the best one to judge that.”

  Craig nodded, then said, “Yes, sir. From Seattle. I can give you some names to call to check on who we are.”

  There was another long pause then Craig finished with, “Thank you, Senator, we’ll be right up.”

  He hung up, then turned and smiled at her. “Better comb the grass out of your hair. We’re about to meet Senator Knight.”

  “Wonderful,” she said, shaking her head as she jumped to her feet and headed for the bathroom. “He’s going to think we’re a couple of nutballs, you know that, don’t you?”

  Craig laughed. “More than likely. But at least our consciences will be clear. He can decide to do what he
wants with the information we heard.”

  He followed her into the bathroom as she grabbed a comb from their travel kit and started to brush the dried grass from her hair. She looked ruffled, and she doubted she was going to change that much in the few moments they had.

  Craig reached under her arm and cupped her right breast, giving it a light squeeze. “Just checking to make sure they got put back into the right place.”

  She smiled at him. “Looks who’s talking.” She pointed at the lump in the front of his pants. “You might want to take your underwear out of your pocket. We don’t want the Senator getting wrong ideas.”

  Craig laughed and pulled his underwear out and tossed them at the suitcase.

  “We better take our badges with us,” she said, putting the comb down and grabbing her purse, even though it didn’t go with her shorts and blouse. “If I were the Senator’s people, I’d damned well want to see them.”

  “Good thinking,” Craig said, moving to dig his out of his suitcase. Bonnie knew that when traveling he never liked to carry it. He figured it would get him in more trouble than it was worth. But this time was different.

  “And one more thing we might want to think about before we go up there,” she said.

  “And that is?” Craig asked as he stuffed his badge in his back pocket.

  “What happens if one of the Senator’s people is one of the people we overheard?”

  “Shit,” Craig said softly. He had clearly not thought about that possibility. “Would you recognize either voice?”

  “Easily,” she said. She doubted she would ever forget those two voices.

  He nodded. “I think I would too. We’re just going to have to chance it. And play it by ear if one of them is there.”

  She didn’t much like playing a situation like this “by ear,” but it seemed they had no choice.

  Five minutes later they were on the top floor knocking on Senator Knight’s door. Bonnie could feel the knot grow in her stomach as they waited. This was just plain crazy. How did they go from making love on a fairway to talking to a powerful United States Senator in the space of an hour? This was turning out to be one really strange vacation, and they hadn’t even gotten through the first evening yet.