Chimera Read Online Free Page B

older.
    Ignoring my stubborn legs, I stood as sand cascaded off me. Soon it would be time to meet Saul for lunch. It could be he had information pointing to Lukas. And if not? Head down, I trudged on, long strands of hair hanging in my eyes. If not, maybe I would go back to the bar and kick the dermo out of Sevastian . . . just for the hell of it.
    By the time lunch rolled around, it felt as if the sand I’d showered off had ended up beneath my eyelids. I hadn’t slept and I was sure it showed in the lines bracketing my mouth and the annoyed twist of my lips. I was old at the age of twenty-four. Saul didn’t comment on my rough look; he just raised his ginger eyebrows and returned to checking out his menu. Feeding the man could be a chore. He was a vegan—meat or any animal products whatsoever were verboten. Breaking a finger or two for information, that was no problem. Scrambled eggs with cheese? That was a blasphemy against God and nature. Yeah, you had to respect a man with morals.
    Not that I was in any position to judge. “Jesus,” I snapped as he lingered over the choices. “Go with the fungus of the day and let’s get this show on the road, Saul.”
    “Temper. Temper.” He snapped the menu shut and motioned for our server. “Does baby need a nap?”
    Our server arrived just in time to receive the full force of my scowl. Understandably, she turned to take Saul’s order first. Skoczinsky had no problem with that. Running a hand across his highlighted auburn hair, he flashed a blinding smile framed by a prematurely white-streaked goatee. I waited impatiently as he and the equally interested blond waitress flirted endlessly. Finally, I rapped my order, cutting off the mutual drooling. Offended, improbably aquarmarine eyes narrowed at me as she scribbled on a pad, and, pushing out her equally improbable breasts, stalked off on heels high enough to give that stalk a helluva bob and sway for Saul to watch. Watch, he did, too . . . on my time and my dime.
    “You need to get married,” I grumbled. “It’d keep these meetings shorter if you got your rocks off at home.”
    “The things I’m thinking about her aren’t legal, even if I were married. There are still a few states lagging behind the times,” he said, putting the leer away as he turned his attention back to me. “No leash for me. A stallion’s gotta run, baby.”
    That line, so old and hackneyed, had me snorting into my ice water. “Yeah, you’re a real beast, Skoczinsky. A walking cologne commercial, tackled by women wherever your ass goes.”
    “The day I see you wearing something you didn’t buy at Wal-Mart . . . then you can mock me. You couldn’t pay a woman to screw you, much less get her to give it up for free,” he shot back the barb with the good-naturedness I’d gotten used to from him. Switching to a much soberer mode, he massaged the back of his neck and straightened in his chair. “We’d better get down to business, Stefan.” That was my cue. I slid an envelope plump with cash across the table and watched it disappear like a rabbit in a hat. But while the payment-up-front process was familiar, Saul calling me by my real name was not. As his work was only slightly more legal than mine, he gave his clients nicknames. That meant if he was in public with them or someone of a federal nature was listening in, the client’s identity was protected.
    He usually called me Smirnoff. Russian vodka. Big leap, but I didn’t care. With Saul’s lethal verbal jabs, I was only grateful he hadn’t gone with Rasputin. The most infamous death in history: poisoned, shot, beaten, stabbed, his dick cut off, and then what was left of him heaved into an icy Russian river. Good luck couldn’t go with a nickname like that, and I needed all the luck I could get.
    “Give,” I said impassively.
    Saul and I weren’t friends. I wasn’t sure either of us was equipped emotionally in that department, but we did have a mutual respect for each other. It