Undercover Lover by Jamie K. Schmidt Read Free Book Online

you checked your voice mail more than once a week, you would have gotten the message.”
    “Where am I supposed to put my Blackberry? I’m supposed to be homeless.”
    “The only homeless guy that gets Reiki massages.”
    “She never touched anything but my knee,” Drake protested, pulling his phone out of his jeans pocket.
    “Did it work?”
    “It didn’t hurt.” Drake was astounded that after the treatment, he had felt more relaxed, although that could be from taking a mini nap in a dark room while a beautiful woman soothed him. Beautiful? Drake guessed she was, but the thought had snuck up on him. She wasn’t his normal type. He liked his woman a little on the trashy side, like the song goes.
    The funny thing was, he still couldn’t picture her from the old neighborhood. They were about the same age. They knew some of the same people. He should have remembered her. She had probably been a cheerleader or a brainiac. Had she worn her hair long in high school, like she did now? It was a silky black that made him think of it splashed across his pillow. She had a mouth on her too, and she pushed back when confronted. So what if she wasn’t trashy. Who cared? Maybe after all this was over, they’d go grab a pizza.
    There were three text messages from his partner, Mark O’Reilly, telling him to call in with various tones and levels of urgency. And one voice mail. The voice mail was from Captain Francis.
    “Logan, we’ve got trouble. Two homeless guys have been torched in two days. Both deep in gang territories. Our sources say it’s a new initiation. I need you out on the street ASAFP.”
    “Great,” Drake groaned.
    “Go home and get some rest,” Frank said. “We’ve got it from here.”
    Drake grumbled and called his partner.
    “Drake, man, where have you been?” Mark said.
    “Undercover. You know that. We got the bastard.”
    “Uh, that’s good,” Mark said, sounding distracted.
    “So what the hell’s so damn important you had to text me three times instead of leaving a message like a normal person?”
    Mark blew out a long sigh, and Drake didn’t have to be a detective to know the news wasn’t good.
    “It’s your godfather, Nikolai,” Mark finally said. “He’s been murdered.”

    Drake had slicked his blond curls back into a tight ponytail that he’d tucked into his shirt. He stood at parade rest over the casket of his godfather and clenched his hands behind his back so he wouldn’t go for Oksana Bobrov’s throat. She was dressed in a leopard fur coat that made her look like a color blind Cruella DeVille. Her hair was painstakingly set high on her head, and all the rings and bracelets she wore flashed into the priest’s eyes when she dabbed crocodile tears off her heavily made-up face.
    Standing next to her was her son, Stefan, and Pam. Her face looked red and blotchy. She wasn’t a pretty crier like Oksana was. And it burned him that she clung to that moron Stefan’s hand like a life line. Surely, she had to suspect that his mother had ordered the hit on Nikolai. Drake had pulled on the mirrored sunglasses as soon as he saw her. He didn’t need her to recognize Ralphie, who had quit the hospital the day after Dr. Chris Mastandrea’s arrest.
    Andrej’s sobs brought him back to the reason they were there. Andrej was built like a bear, even resembled one with all the hair. But he was a marshmallow inside, always had been. His father had tried to toughen him up by making him take boxing lessons, but Andrej would skip out to feed an alley cat. He was a veterinarian now. Doing as well as he could.
    “Papa,” Andrej cried. “I’m so sorry. I should have been there.”
    Drake put a bracing arm on him. “It’s not your fault.”
    “I told him to move out of that house. It’s no good.”
    “The house wasn’t the issue. It was the junkies looking to score and Nikolai not backing down.”
    “He never backed down from anything in his life. He certainly wouldn’t have let punks