Resurrecting Midnight Read Online Free Page A

been inside her deep enough to feel her heartbeat throbbing against the tip of my erection. But somehow she had managed to get deeper inside of me. She knew she had.
    I said, “I worked for his dad.”
    “I know you did. I knew why you were in North Hollywood. I knew what you did.”
    “Do you know about the South America job I did for him?”
    “I know you went to South America.”
    “I went to the End of the World.”
    She asked, “Are we done here?”
    I nodded. “We’re done.”
    Arizona took a breath and stood. She motioned for me to remain seated, then came to my side of the table. She kissed me on my cheek, pressed her soft lips into my troubled flesh.
    She said, “I still watch Battlestar Galactica . Still listen to Miles and Coltrane.”
    It only took a few words to throw a man off balance.
    She picked up the high-tech briefcase, adjusted her purse on her other shoulder, and walked away. She didn’t walk like she had just lost fifteen million and ordered a man blown up on I-95. She moved like a goddess, in control and entitled. Arizona paused in the night, looked around. She looked out toward Biscayne, stared like she had seen something. I looked that way, saw nothing. For a moment she looked jittery. Almost afraid.
    She put the briefcase inside the Maserati first.
    The woman who had been robbed of a king’s fortune looked around again.
    Her body language changed, became a lioness that had sensed a predator.
    I stood up, hand inside my messenger bag, ready to rush outside.
    But her look of concern, that expression that I interpreted as fear, it left Arizona’s face.
    Arizona eased back inside her Maserati. Headlights came on. Brake lights. Reverse lights. She slipped out of her space, eased out like a baby leaving its mother’s womb.
    Then she was gone, the umbilical cord that held us together severed. Her soft kiss had aroused me. A primal part of me would’ve fucked her. Would’ve fucked her from here to Buenos Aires. Would’ve tried to fuck that baby out of her and loved a new one in her womb.
    My eyes went to the satellite phone Arizona had left behind. A phone that I couldn’t see because of the other elephant that had been at the table, that was on my mind. On her left hand, there had been a platinum diamond ring. She had worn a platinum wedding ring.
    The room had been robbed.
    But I had been robbed too.
    I dug inside my pocket and took out a BC Powder, an analgesic composed of aspirin, caffeine, and salicylamide. A pure white powder, customers probably thought I was doing cocaine, and that probably made their mouths water.
    The blonde in the pink blouse was gone. Same for many others.
    The teenaged guy was still here. The one who had helped Arizona carry her cups of tea. He was on his feet, staring at me. Then he hurried my way. His look was different. He seemed anxious. He was tall and fragile; his slew-footed walk a combination of bad posture and awkwardness. He stopped in front of me, stood so close I smelled the coffee on his breath.
    He said, “Gideon.”
    He said my name and it felt like my neck was on a chopping board, a sword coming down at my throat. He said my name and stood in front of me with a shallow smile on his thin face.
    Without warning, he extended something toward me, an object small like a stun gun.
    My hand went inside my messenger bag, went to my gun.
    A bucket of blood was about be added to the land of the Seminoles.

Chapter 3
    hard target
    Black cellular phone.
    That was what he had extended toward me, that was what had almost gotten a hole blown in his latte-filled gut. Another fucking phone. Motorola, basic flip model.
    The phone was closed.
    My finger eased off the trigger, but my hand didn’t come out of my bag.
    I asked, “Who are you?”
    He asked, “Is your name Gideon?”
    He had said my handle twice. This was not a mistake.
    The wrong people had uttered my handle in London. In Hunts ville. In Antigua. Had walked up to me like they had balls bigger than