Hotter Than Helltown: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Preternatural Affairs Book 3) Read Online Free Page B

urgent that she—”
    And the line went dead.

    San Francisco was a good seven hours north of the OPA offices in Los Angeles, and there was no way my beater of a Camry was going to make the trip. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d changed the oil. My windshield was more cracks than glass. The tires were so bald that Mr. Clean would have been envious to see them.
    Working for the government isn’t a rich or glamorous lifestyle, but hey, at least I had great health benefits. Who needs a sexy car when you’ve got sexy teeth?
    I abandoned my car in the parking lot and requested use of one of the company SUVs from the motor pool instead. Apparently, they also had people on staff this weekend. My request was approved immediately.
    Grabbing the case file, I headed down to the garage.
    Seven hours of driving on three hours of sleep. It was going to suck, but at least Isobel would be waiting somewhere at the end. One of the last times I’d seen her, she’d left me with a pretty memorable kiss and the promise of a lot more than that to come.
    Considering I hadn’t heard from her for months, I was dealing with some pretty mixed signals here. Searing kisses followed by chilly silence.
    I never would have wished for an excuse to talk to Isobel—especially since the only good excuse was someone dying—but since I had one, I was going to take advantage of it.
    The thought carried me down three flights of stairs, across the bridge to the parking garage, and down a few more floors.
    Where a cherry-red Bugatti was waiting for me.
    The driver’s side window rolled down and Director Fritz Friederling peered at me over the frames of his sunglasses. “I intercepted your request for a car. Need a ride?”
    Checking my watch, I found that it was still, in fact, Saturday the fourteenth, just after lunchtime. I could tell the date because of the fancy-ass timepiece that Fritz had given me for my birthday two weeks earlier. It had the moon phase and everything.
    There definitely hadn’t been a time warp back to Friday or ahead to Monday.
    “Does everyone here work on Saturdays?” I asked.
    “Just the lucky ones. Get in.” The doors clicked as they unlocked.
    “I’m headed on a research trip,” I said. “You probably don’t want to come along.” Normally, I would have been happy to see him. Fritz and I had been swapping movie recommendations. I’d introduced him to anime; he’d gotten me started on silent movies, and now I was hooked on Buster Keaton.
    But anytime I was hoping to see Isobel was a time that I was also hoping not to run into Fritz.
    He didn’t look impressed by my attempt to divert him. “Now, Agent Hawke.”
    I slipped into the passenger seat and was hugged by cool leather. The dashboard looked like it belonged on an alien spacecraft, although the effect was kind of blown by the cacophony of nineties music coming from the speakers.
    He might have been my boss, but I still couldn’t help but give him a Look. The kind of Look that said, “You’re a billionaire with a passion for silent movies and aggressive stock investments, yet you listen to jock jams in the car?”
    He gave me a responding Look that was like, “Don’t forget that I gave you this job and saved your life. I can listen to whatever I want.”
    And my Look was conciliatory, because he was right.
    Kind of a dick move to go all judgmental on someone who’d done as much for me as Fritz had.
    We have really meaningful Looks.
    Fritz pushed his sunglasses back up and put the car into gear. The silent conversation was over. “You were going to look for the necrocog, weren’t you?”
    “So you’ve been talking to Suzy.”
    “She wanted permission to restrict forensics access to the victim until Belle got a look at him.”
    “Belle” was what Fritz called Isobel. Obviously. Because endearing nicknames between an OPA director and his secret contractor were normal. Maybe they were when that director and contractor used to date, and the