Grave Robber for Hire by Cassandra L. Shaw Read Free Book Online Page A

tongue into that mouth. Probably not the best move at this moment—might appear desperate.
    My hand wavered as I reached for and lifted my teapot. Tyreal eyed the shaking pot, took it from me and poured my tea. “Bit hard one handed.”
    “Thanks.” I flushed, added sugar to my tea, took a sip, and scooped more cake.
    “So the job?”
    I really did need help, and I’m not a great man assessor since I’ve never been able to truly trust one after half a life-time of not so brotherly love. I’d never had a man in my life that I didn’t just use for sex—nothing and nobody except Vig. I was nearly thirty and it was time I got past my man aversion.
    In choosing work partners, I couldn’t be sexist. I glanced at Vig. He’s a good lie detector. He’s fallen off a chair laughing at a guy’s bullshit. Not the tiniest smirk showed, but then he was ogling a man eating a huge steak burger. There’s no competing with food that holds meat especially when his ward is vegetarian.
    I tapped my fingers on the table for a few seconds. “Right, because I’m obviously certifiable,” and my guardian angel isn’t laughing, “as I said this morning I need someone to help with cyber research. You had a bit of time to check out my err … profession?”
    “I did and have.” Tyreal took a sip of coffee.
    “And?”
    “My aunt sees the dead, and can pass on messages from the dead. So I can’t see how what you do can’t be true. Besides I could do with a change from following the unhappily married or hunting social security fraud.”
    “Surveillance work does suck.” Not that I’d done much. Hard to sit in a car and peer into windows of the long ago expired.
    #
    On the way home, I cranked the radio to brain dead level, and Vig and I screamed along to Janis Joplin’s, Baby . She’d died long before my parents had me and my shit of Satan brother, but you can’t grow up with a stoner great aunt without reliving every song of the sixties and seventies a few thousand times. Mid song, I sucked back a tuneless Baby .
    Well shit. I’d been snookered by a frigging smile.
    Half way through my interrogation that frigging nuclear smile of his blindsided me. I bet he knew he could suck out a girl’s brains and make her a drooling horny mess. Frigging wet-your-pants smiles and hormones.
    Being such a slut stuffs me up every time.
    Sure, I’d scored a partner. But did said partner possess Angel-stalking tendencies?
    And if he did, why?

Chapter 5
     
    The next afternoon, driving home from collecting a box of journals and letters from Claudia Reese-Jones, I ducked into my local electrical store. I half-heartedly smiled at Gary the salesman. His obvious joy at sighting me in place, I let him talk me into buying a coffee maker four times more expensive than what I’d budgeted for. Hopefully it made orgasmic coffee.
    Actually, at the price, the coffee better give multiple orgasms. Especially since it had been two months since I’d had the real deal—an orgasm that is.
    Luke, my friend with benefits had pulled the let’s make this exclusive line on me. There were still skid marks from Streak’s tires on the road in front of his house from me driving away.
    I’ve never met a man dead or alive I could trust much beyond being good in bed. I’d lost all trust in human males after Sasha had turned cold, malicious, and insane. Plus I’d seen too much through my time-jumping to think that much of the male gender in any era.
    For me, men were not for relationships, just a bit of fun. I have my animals to love and be loved by, and I guess when the time came I’d have kids and raise them alone.
    I admit I’m pathetic. Five years of being tortured by my own brother meant I had never had a decent relationship with a man or even a boy over the age of ten. One minute they love you, the next they’re hurting you, and pain is not always physical.
    At the car, Vig saw the coffee machine’s box and his eyes sparked. Gary put the box into