Blue Moonlight by Vincent Zandri Read Free Book Online Page B

the bed. Exposed. Both heads.
    “My, my, Moonlight,” she says, staring me up and down. The look on her face is dead serious. Like she’s about to arrest me instead of seduce me. So much for professionalism.
    I crawl onto the bed, pull her down beside me, begin unbuttoning her shirt. She closes her eyes, issues a slight moan, her chest heaving in and out.
    “This is what I kept seeing in my head during our interview,” she whispers in my ear.
    I cup her bra-covered breast with my right hand, pinch her erect nipple through the fabric.
    “Sure this is a very good idea?” I whisper. “We’ve become coworkers.”
    But it’s too late for that now as I have her shirt entirely unbuttoned, and I’m kissing the parts of her pert breasts that aren’t covered by her bra.
    “I don’t care what the FBI thinks,” she moans. “You’re on
my
time now.”
    I think about reminding her that just a few hours ago she ordered me cuffed and shackled to a metal table inside an FBI interrogation room, and that if I don’t produce Clyne’s flash drive for her, she will have me arrested. But then, who wants to talk shop at a time like this?
    I kiss her on the mouth.
    “Lights on or off?” she poses, coming up for air.
    “Does it matter?” I answer.
    We leave the lights on.

Later on we’re eating shrimp and drinking wine in bed. Or Agent Crockett is drinking wine and I’m having another beer. I attempt to light a cigarette but immediately reconsider when she shoots me this tight-as-a-tick expression with her official agent face.
    “Don’t even think about it, Moonlight.”
    What happened to Dick?
    Clearly our little tryst was just that. Little. But it’s quality not quantity that counts in these matters. And Vanessa Crockett showed some skills, let me tell you.
    Pulling her shirt back on, along with her panties, Agent Crockett reappears for me by getting back down to all business. Set by the bed is the leather shoulder bag she brought into the room with her earlier. She hoists up the bag, opens it, and pulls out one of those sleek, slick, super-thin new Mac laptops that I can’t even begin to afford. Next she pulls out a passport, a wallet filled with credit cards and cash. Both euros and dollars. Clearly the FBI seems to have covered their bases.
    I open the passport, glance at the photo. It’s me from my days as a cop. How the FBI acquired it I have no idea. But then, I’m not surprised they acquired it either.
    “We have a source who tells us that your ex-significant other shows up now and again at a bar located not far from the Santa Maria Novella piazza.” Now clicking on a map of Florence and enhancing so we get a real-time satellite view of the very square she’s talking about. “Right there,” she adds, using her index finger as a pointer. “Establishment called Harry’s Bar. Right on the river.”
    “I know it. Hemingway used to drink at the one up in Venice.”
    “Florence is small and very walkable, if you recall.”
    I do recall. You can walk from one end to the other in fifteen minutes.
    “You want me to have a few drinks at Harry’s, I take it. Find a way to reintroduce myself to Lola.”
    She nods.
    “That would be the strategy. Let’s hope she’s willing to trust you enough with the location of the flash drive.”
    “What if she figures out immediately that I’m working for the cops, and splits?”
    “Then job over. We’ll fly you right back. But…”
    It’s one of those dangling
Buts…
    “But we don’t believe that will happen. We believe that, given the chance to make her escape, she’ll want to accompany you out of the country. We have a ticket waiting for her. Just make sure she has her passport. Interpol has been alerted, and she will be allowed through airport security without a hitch.”
    “Gotcha. But what if the flash drive isn’t so readily available?”
    “Listen, if it’s hidden inside a safety deposit box in a local bank, we want to know. If it’s hidden inside a