Virtual Virgin

Chapter Twenty-eight




GEE, IRMA ANNOUNCED, when we weren’t looking, someone turned the lights out.

I took a deep breath.

After a fun ride down on the Hughes-built automated chair, Bez left Quick and me to navigate through the Karnak crowds and the oppressive exterior pillars outside. As the casino chill faded in the warm dry air, we gazed on the overlit dark of the Strip, now the world’s biggest and most expensive velvet painting.

I actually liked the effect of night scenes etched with luminous chalk on a black velvet background. It wasn’t the Hope Diamond on red-carpet jewelers’ velvet, but it was . . . Vegas.

Meanwhile, Irma waxed guilty for a change.

I sort of feel like I should have stayed to keep the old guy company.

“He’s power-mad Howard Hughes, world’s most unattractive vampire,” I pointed out.

All he needs is a good listener.

“Fine. Do whatever you do to take over an innocent mind. Howard just reminded me what I do best.”

Attract lonely old moguls?

“Research, baby! My next project is to figure out the identity of the woman who helped Hughes die and live again. If it wasn’t Vida, and I doubt that, thank God . . . who was it? That might explain a lot about pre– and post–Millennium Revelation Vegas, maybe even the Immortality Mob.”

But . . . it was late and tomorrow was another day.


AND THEN QUICKSILVER and I returned to the Enchanted Cottage to find Ric leaning, arms folded against his chest, against his ’Vette in the driveway.

Talk about a velvet painting. Add it up. Bronze car gleaming under the soft security lights. Bronze-skinned guy with the day’s tie in his jacket pocket and his cream-colored shirt opened three buttons down. The glints in his hair and his eyes both simmered like hot black coffee.

Quicksilver took one look, bolted over the wall, and headed for Sunset Park. He knew my weaknesses.

Going off leash was illegal and I should chase him down and get him home.

“Got all night?” Ric asked.

On the other hand, if Quicksilver couldn’t take care of himself, who or what could?


IT ONLY TOOK a quarter of the night for Ric to soften me into an utterly agreeable state and whisper the bad news in my ear.

“I’m going to hate to leave town tomorrow, chica.”

I paused in doing passionate things to his navel.

“Tomorrow? Leave?”

“An out-of-town consultation gig. It’s secret government work. I can’t tell you anything.”

“Anything? Now that’s a challenge.” I moved my mouth lower. “Where?”

“I’m not supposed to say . . . Delilah! It’s just Texas.”

“Texas? What’s in Texas?”

Lower.

“El Paso. Zombies. Smuggling.”

I had him down to one-word answers, then paused to give him time to catch his breath so I could learn more. El Paso sounded innocent enough. Until I realized what was opposite El Paso.

“Juarez!”

“Delilah! Ouch.”

I put us on serious Pause button. “You’re going back to the worst killing field on the planet and you weren’t going to tell me!”

“Just for a couple of days.”

“And nights. If you want any more of them with me, you’d better take me along.”

“I can’t. It’s not just me involved.”

“So that’s why Tallgrass showed up. You guys put on the foot-shuffling male-bonding act so I’d only be able to kick up a ruckus about being left behind when it was too late.

“I don’t even have a passport,” I said bitterly.

“Delilah, you’re an ace investigator and have more cojones than most werewolves, but the officials we work for wouldn’t understand what you could do for them. This is an all-human, unofficial covert paramilitary, not paranormal, force and operation.”

“All male,” I grumbled.

“There will be some female troops, but you are not an enlisted woman.”

The finality in his voice was something I’d never heard before. This was FBI Ric speaking, laying down the law in an area where men were mostly men, discipline was strict, and rules were not broken.

I sighed. There was no stopping him, I could tell. Might as well make the most of these last hours before he left.

I wriggled farther down his body, tossing my hair from side to side as it trailed down too.

“That’s a good girl,” Ric murmured after a deep intake of breath. “That’s a very, very good girl.”

He had no idea just how good I could be when I was bad.