All the Wrong Moves by Merline Lovelace Read Free Book Online

shirt covered up as I approached. He slammed his notebook shut, too, which kinda torqued me off.
    Weren’t we all supposed to be operating in a more enlightened age, with government bureaucracies cooperating in the common goal of kicking the baddies’ butts? Scrawny Guy obviously hadn’t received the memo.
    Tess Garcia smiled a welcome while Agent Mitchell made the intros. “This is Lieutenant Samantha Spade. She found the vics.”
    I nodded to Sheriff Alexander and the civilian from the Fort Bliss Range Patrol.
    “Andrew Hurst,” Scrawny Guy supplied tersely. “CID.”
    For the uninformed, CID is the army’s Criminal Investigation Division. Counterpart to the air force’s Office of Special Investigations and the navy’s Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
    I know the official names, but until now most of my knowledge of military investigations came from watching that John Travolta movie about the kinky general’s daughter. The rest I’ve absorbed while drooling over Hot Buns Mark Harmon in the NCIS TV series.
    This guy Hurst was no Mark Harmon. Rail thin and intense, with eight or nine strands of straw-colored hair stretched across his otherwise bald pate, he wouldn’t qualify for hunk status in anyone’s book. I immediately changed his moniker from Scrawny Guy to Comb-Over while Mitch introduced the next member of the conclave.
    “Paul Donati. El Paso region FBI.”
    Also very trim, but sporting dark, Italian eyes and a full head of wavy black hair. I felt a stir of interest, immediately squelched when I noted his wedding band.
    I shook his hand and hid a grimace when he did the finger-crunch thing. Why some guys feel compelled to exert their masculinity by grinding your bones is one of the mysteries of the universe, right up there with summer sandals hitting department stores in January and winter boots showing up in July.
    Not that I’ve bought many boots lately. You wouldn’t, either, if you had to clump around fourteen hours a day in government issue clod hoppers. These suckers come off, my flip-flops go on. Winter, summer, whenever.
    But I digress. Back to our conclave. I retrieved my hand from Donati just as Pancho appeared with my shot of tequila and another round of beer for the others at the table. Except for tough, macho Agent Mitchell, that is. Pancho placed a dew-streaked can of Diet Dr Pepper in front of him.
    I cast back to my days as a ruffled-pantied cocktail waitress at the Paris Casino in Vegas. I was trying to remember if I’d ever served someone with ropy muscles like Agent Mitchell’s a diet anything when he sent a pointed glance at the manila envelope I’d placed on the scarred tabletop.
    “What have you got for us?”
    Ha! Like I was going to show my stuff after Comb-Over slammed his notebook in my face?
    I let them all wait while I took a lick of salt, slammed back my shot and bit into the lime wedge. The tart, tangy combination jolted through my entire system and went a long way toward compensating for a night spent with coyotes and decaying bodies.
    “You first,” I countered when the jolt subsided. “Tell me what you’ve found out since you left the test site.”
    Mitchell lifted a brow at my arbitrary command but complied. “We ID’ed the second set of remains.”
    “How?” I didn’t really want to know but curiosity got the better of me. “There couldn’t have been enough of him left to run his prints. Unless the guy was carrying an ID . . .”
    “He was carrying several, all fake. But he’d very obligingly marked himself in law enforcement data systems worldwide by tattooing his right ass cheek. The coroner was able to piece together enough skin for us to run him through NCIC and IDENT-IAFIS.”
    “Ident-a-face?” I smirked. “Apropos, wouldn’t you say?”
    “IDENT-I-A-F-I-S,” Mitchell spelled out with exaggerated patience. “The tattoo popped for one Juan Sandoval. He had outstanding warrants for one count each of armed robbery, aggravated assault