Sinners on Sunset

Book 2: California Demon series

by Debra Dunbar

Genres: Dark Fantasy; Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

The tax demons want their pound of flesh. Or fifty-two thousand dollars.

Unable to pay what she owes, Eden is forced to fight a never-ending stream of bounty hunters while she tries to clear her name and find the cop who set her up. But demons are not known for their patience, and the new mercenary hired to bring Eden in dead or alive has magical abilities of his own—magical abilities oddly similar to Eden’s.

Desperate, she turns to a friend for help, but Detective Juke demands a favor in return— help to find the demon or mage responsible for a killing spree that leaves victims dead and boneless and she’ll investigate Eden’s claims.

But time is running out for Eden. The mage-mercenary is closing in. Her owed “favors” to demons are stacking up. And her debt to the enigmatic Bishop is beginning to rival what the tax office believes she owes.

Eden will need to rely on her pistol, her wits, and her magic to save herself. And if that isn’t enough, she may need to bargain away her soul.

Release date: March 16, 2021

Publisher: Debra Dunbar

Print pages: 290

Sample

Chapter 1

Jagged metal sliced the back of my shirt as I slid under the gate and into the yard. A high-pitched scream was quickly followed by the sound of gunfire—from behind me as well as to my left. Thankfully, the woman in a bikini on her back deck looked to be aiming more at the rooftop next door than at me, and the fuckers chasing me had the aim of kindergarteners.

But even kindergarteners occasionally got lucky. Rolling away from the fence, I felt dirt spray up beside me, then the sharp stab of pain in my side.

I sprang to my feet, threw my backpack over one shoulder, and ran. It never crossed my mind to ditch the thing. I needed every bit of salvage I could find, so I wasn’t about to lose a morning’s work to some assholes who thought I was poaching on their territory.

Admittedly, my license had been suspended, so technically I was always poaching at this time. But Karen and Chad were dicks. They would most likely have shot me even if I’d been in good standing and within legal rights to salvage anywhere in the greater Los Angeles area. 

“Get off my lawn,” the woman screamed, shooting the downspout off her neighbor’s gutter.

“I’m trying,” I shouted back, pressing a hand to my side and running for the opposite fence. Wow, her yard was big. It hadn’t seemed this big when I’d first stood up, but weird spatial distortions apparently happened when you were shot and going into shock.

“Stay out of Sherman Oaks!” 

I glanced back and saw Karen waving her revolver wildly. The woman had no sense of muzzle or trigger safety. It was a wonder she hadn’t shot her husband. Not that Chad knew what he was doing with that semi-automatic .338 he’d outfitted to look like a fucking machine gun. It was bad enough they dressed like suburban yuppies, the least they could do is learn how to safely use a weapon.

That’s what happened when Vulture licenses went to anyone with the money to buy one. They were supposed to be restricted to a certain number per area, but money talked, and Karen and Chad clearly had more money than sense.

I finally reached the end of the yard and jumped, catching the top of the chain link and nearly passing out as I pulled myself over the top. Blood decorated both sides of the fence as I slid down the other side and held on a few seconds to catch my breath. Neither Chad nor Karen were in any shape to climb, or even run more than half a block, and the homeowner had stopped shooting now that I was out of her yard. It felt as if I were out of immediate danger, but I didn’t want to linger, so, gritting my teeth, I slowly jogged across a few more unfenced yards and got a few blocks away before pausing under the shelter of an overpass to evaluate my injuries.

I couldn’t really see much of the bullet wound on my side, but it hurt like hell. It was low and enough on the side of my waist that I didn’t think the bullet had hit anything vital. Yanking a bandana out of my backpack, I wadded it up and pressed it to the wound. Then I took off my belt and used it to hold the makeshift bandage in place. 

Fuckers. I wasn’t surprised that Karen and Chad came after me, but the odds that they’d actually hit me with one of their poorly aimed shots had been slim. With the amount of bullets they’d been shooting, they were bound to hit something occasionally. It sucked that their luck hit on the one day they were shooting at me. I’d need to clean this wound up, put some sterile gauze on it, and maybe throw down some of the antibiotics I’d bought for Sadie. I didn’t need a raging infection right now.

Despite getting shot, the haul had been worth the risk. The dead guy must have been flush from some big drug deal because I’d scored at least seven hundred in cash. I’d also grabbed both his guns along with a fully loaded second magazine for one of them. I’d been about to grab the gaudy-ass gold chain sporting a ruby-eyed dragon pendant he’d been wearing, but the arrival of Chad and Karen had prematurely ended my scavenging. 

Cash. Guns. A handful of bullets and a spare mag. Normally that wouldn’t have been that great of a haul, but the cash had me nearly giddy with excitement. Cash meant I didn’t have to risk going to a pawnshop and hoping the broker would deal with me under the table and not turn me in for a bounty. The surveillance at Bags’s place was no longer 24x7, but I knew the taxing authority was auditing his books regularly, and I didn’t want to put him in danger by running stuff through his store right now. 

I needed my license reinstated, but to do that I’d need to get that crooked cop to revise her report that pegged me for salvaging a haul I didn’t take and put me in the crosshairs of the demons who ran the tax office. That wasn’t likely to happen without pointing a gun at her head, and I wasn’t sure I wanted the entire LAPD after me for threatening and assaulting one of their own.

Not that I could threaten or assault her. I didn’t even know the cop’s name or where she could be found. Finding that out was quickly moving up my priority list—just as soon as I threw some cash at Bishop. It had been over two weeks since I’d brought Nevarra home. I wasn’t sure what Bishop’s expectations were as far as a payment plan or even exactly what I owed him, but I wasn’t willing to test his patience by letting too much time go by without some effort at repayment.

Smoothing my shirt back down, I turned to leave and barely missed getting punched in the face. As I dodged a second punch, another assailant grabbed me and slammed me against the bridge abutment. Pain bloomed through me and I gasped.

“Don’t kill her,” the initial guy said.

“More worried about her killing me,” the other replied, pinning my arms against the concrete.

I kicked out, nailing the one guy’s shin, then squirmed in an attempt to get free. 

He swore. “Little help here? Grab her gun.”

The other guy hesitated. 

“Five thousand, Jeff,” the guy who held me said. “Five fucking grand. Ten if we get her to tell us where the loot is.”

That motivated Jeff, who tried to grab my pistol from the shoulder holster. I twisted, blocking him with my shoulder as I kicked my attacker once more. He stepped closer, trying to pin my legs with his own, which put him close enough for me to head butt him as hard as I could.

The guy yelped and jumped back, his grip loosening enough for me to get an arm free. I spun, punching Jeff in the nose. Then I kept turning, bringing my elbow up and slamming the other guy in the face with it.

They both stepped back. I pulled my pistol at the exact same time they pulled theirs.

“Drop—”

I fired, not waiting for the guy to finish his sentence. I’d been aiming for his shoulder but missed and hit the bicep of his gun-arm instead. 

He screamed, the pistol falling from his hand. I hopped to the side and swung my gun around, hearing a gunshot and feeling the spray of concrete chips less than a foot from my head. I unloaded in a wide pattern, hoping at least one of my shots hit something vital. Small groupings were impressive as hell on a target at a range, but I’d learned long ago that in an adrenaline-filled situation, shooting a broad pattern was what got the job done. 

Four in Jeff. Pivot and duck, then put three more in the other guy, who’d picked up the pistol with his non-dominant hand and was seconds away from plugging me. I ran over to Jeff, kicking his gun away before doing the same to the other guy. Then I spun in a slow circle, looking for other assailants and walking backward to park my rear against the bridge abutment and catch my breath.

Thank the Lord for a twelve-round magazine that had been illegal in California up until the demons came. With the traffic noise and the pain from my gunshot wound, I hadn’t even heard these guys until they were attacking me. I’d been lucky. If the one guy had knocked me out, or if Jeff had been able to get my pistol free, this might have ended very differently. 

No one else came for me, but I wasn’t taking any chances, so I switched out my magazine for a full one, kept my pistol in hand, and tried to decide if I should linger and see if these guys had anything worth stealing, or get the hell out of here.

Five grand. My hands shook as what the two had said sank in. The typical bounty on someone was anywhere from five hundred to a thousand, depending on what they’d done and what sort of risk a mercenary might have to take to bring them in. 

Somehow I’d gone from an easy job to one requiring a large bounty. No doubt that had something to do with the fact that I’d been leaving a trail of bodies in my wake for the last month. A bounty that big meant I was going to have a whole lot more people gunning for me. Five grand would bring out the big guns, the experienced and highly skilled mercenaries who didn’t bother with the little jobs. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I was evidently worth ten grand if someone could bring me in along with the loot. 

My life just got a fucking whole lot more dangerous. I’d need to be looking over my shoulder every second. Bea and the girls would be in even more danger, from mercenaries trying to pump them for information to those who would use my family as leverage to get me to come in on my own.

This needed to stop. It wasn’t just about getting my license reinstated anymore. I needed to get my name cleared. I needed to get this bounty off my head. There was only one person I could think of who might be able to help me, and luckily I had a meeting with her this afternoon.

Quickly rooting through the dead men’s pockets, I grabbed what little cash and bullets they had, leaving their guns behind. Then I settled my backpack on my shoulders, made my way to my bike, and headed east to the mountains. I had a bit of time before my meeting and I didn’t like the idea of walking around with this much cash on me. The quicker I got it into Bishop’s hands, the better.

Bishop’s bar, Suerte, was up in the hills, on a winding road that held only a few widely spaced houses and the occasional gas station. I wasn’t too surprised to see a few vehicles in the parking lot as I pulled in. It was a little before noon, but I got the feeling they had a few regulars who popped in for lunch, as well as a few who made it a habit to hang out in the bar all day, or night, long. Parking my bike beside Bishop’s old truck, I checked to make sure my bandage hadn’t slipped and I wasn’t bleeding all down my side before heading in. Blood-soaked wasn’t a good look for me. It wasn’t a good look for anyone. Normally I wouldn’t care, but I had a bit of a thing for Bishop and found myself oddly concerned about my appearance whenever I expected to see him.

I’d learned early on that Suerte wasn’t always a welcoming place, so I hesitated once I was over the threshold to survey the patrons. A guy wearing a cowboy hat and looking to be a leathery eighty sat at the corner of the bar watching the news and drinking a beer. Four middle-aged women chatted at a table covered with coffee cups and half-eaten sandwiches. HB was behind the bar. I took a few steps toward her then hesitated as I saw there was another patron off to the side. He seemed to be mid-forties with his long, wiry dark beard shot through with streaks of iron gray.

Fuck. Our eyes met and for a few long seconds he held my gaze. With an exaggerated yawn, Dale turned his back on me and focused his attention on one of the TV screens. 

Dale had been at Suerte the first night I’d come here looking to ask for Bishop’s help to find my kidnapped sister. He and his buddy had attacked me. It didn’t look like he was aiming to repeat the events of that night, but a person couldn’t be too careful.

Keeping a careful side-eye on Dale, I finished my walk to the bar. HB was her usual platinum blonde perfection except for a faint scar running from her jaw down her neck and across her chest. It hadn’t been there when I’d last seen her at the bar, but given the way the scar was indented and puckered, it looked like it had been a very serious wound—one that shouldn’t have healed to this extent in a couple of weeks. It was one more thing that gave me reason to put HB in the not-a-human category.

The woman looked up at me, smiled, then took a few careful steps over to fill a glass with ice and tea. She moved like she was still recovering from a bad accident.

“Are you okay?” I asked as she set the tea down in front of me.

“I will be in a few more weeks.” She shrugged. “At least I’m up and walking. Broke six ribs and fractured my pelvis as well as two vertebrae. That shit takes a while to heal.”

If you were human, that shit took a good sight more than three or four weeks to heal. HB, obviously, wasn’t human.

Demons walked among us. Dragons occasionally flew overhead. Weird creatures were now the norm in Los Angeles, and that included shifters—although from what the news reports said, there had always been shifters, living right beside us for eons, pretending to be human. I was convinced Bob was a shifter—a weredog or werewolf or something. Bishop either wasn’t human, or he was a human like me with magical abilities. Clearly HB was something as well if she was up and walking around two weeks after being crushed like an aluminum can and sliced from jaw to sternum.

I thought back on that night in the customs warehouse, when a mountain lion had saved my life, when Bishop had spoken to that mountain lion as if she were an old, valued friend. Desiree had nearly killed the mountain lion, but Bishop had picked the animal up and taken it to safety—her to safety. Bishop had known the mountain lion, known it was a she. He and HB were close. All this supernatural shit might be new to me, but I wasn’t an idiot. Even I could tell that two plus two equaled HB being a cougar shifter.

“I never had a chance to say thank you. For everything. For that night,” I finished awkwardly, not positive about my identification of HB as the mountain lion, or her willingness to admit to being “other.”

She shrugged. “Bishop’s not the only one who’s got a soft spot when it comes to kids. I’m just glad you got your sister back. Is she doing okay?”

“She’s fine.”

Hopefully she would be fine, eventually. Nevarra was the queen of bottling it all up and refusing to show any pain—physical or emotional. I couldn’t exactly cast stones on that front, so I let her deal with it however she wanted. It bothered me that she hadn’t burned that lacy, frilly white dress the moment she’d changed out of it, though. It was still balled up in a corner of the girls’ room, in plain view, where she had to see it every time she was in there. Why would she want that constant reminder? Was she harboring some guilt, some silly belief that what she’d gone through was her fault? Or did she need that dress to keep her anger stoked up, because if the anger faded, that’s when the fear and sorrow crept in?

Knowing Nevarra, it was probably some combination of the two.

“Eden?” HB’s nose twitched. “You’re bleeding.”

Damn it. I hiked up my tattered, bloody tank top and saw that she was right. Blood had soaked through the second bandana and was dripping down my hip, leaving a dark wet stain along the side of my olive-colored cargo pants. I grabbed a fistful of bar napkins and undid the belt. Letting the blood-soaked bandanas drop to the floor, I pressed the napkins to the wound. None of the patrons in the bar seemed bothered about my bleeding all over the establishment, but I wasn’t sure how Bishop, or HB, would feel about it. 

“Sorry about the mess.” I held the napkins in place and bent down to pick up the bandanas, swiping the floor with them. Instead of wiping up the blood, I ended up just smearing more across the shiny oak planks. 

I stood, and my eyes met Bishop’s. He’d moved with unnatural silence, somehow managing to appear before me from wherever he’d previously been in mere seconds. I didn’t know if the guy was just superfast or teleported, but I added either option to my growing list of things that made Bishop scary.

“How in the hell did you get shot?” he demanded. “Or did you manage to do that yourself?”

I bristled at the thought that I was such a noob that I’d managed to put a bullet through my own side. “Some competing Vultures thought I was poaching. One of them got lucky and hit me.”

I didn’t bother telling him that the two mercenaries who’d attacked me directly afterward hadn’t helped the situation any.

Bishop’s hand shot forward to grab my wrist. He pulled my hand with the wad of bloody napkins away and knelt down to inspect the wound. 

“It’s not that bad,” I protested. It wouldn’t be that bad if I stopped fighting, running, and driving long enough for the thing to clot.

He grunted. The noise carried a lot of disbelief with it. Whether that disbelief was over my being idiot enough to get shot, being idiot enough to try to staunch the wound with a handful of napkins, or being idiot enough to claim the wound wasn’t that bad, I didn’t know.

“Want me to bandage it up?” HB offered, as if she were volunteering to run the trash out to the dumpster and not perform serious first aid on a gunshot wound.

“I’ll do it.” Bishop jerked a thumb toward a door behind the bar. “Office. Now.”

I wasn’t going to decline an offer for medical attention, especially when the alternative was probably losing another pint of blood before the wound clotted up, so I grabbed my backpack and followed Bishop into the office.

He shut the door, and I quickly looked around. The room was small, or rather, it looked small with everything that was crammed into it. An L-shaped oak desk took up most of the space, and a couch took up the rest. The desk was stacked with papers and three-ring binders, an office chair barely visible behind them. The couch was a dark leather, worn to a shiny gold in spots. Someone had put a tasseled teal silk pillow at one end. Wood paneling covered every wall, and the ceiling was done in a white popcorn finish. Outside of the decorative pillow, I felt as if I’d stepped back into a gritty 1970s cop movie. Yep. I was pretty sure I’d seen this exact same office on a Starsky and Hutch rerun a few years ago.

I set my backpack down on the couch and pulled up my shirt, turning to Bishop so he could get another good view of the carnage. 

He stared at my side. I stared at him. I got the strange feeling he was waiting for something to happen.

“Well, go ahead.” He waved a hand at my waist.

“Go ahead and what?” I gaped at him.

“Fix it. No one can see in here.” He waved at my waist again. I kept staring, so he made an exasperated noise and turned around so his back faced me. “There. Is that better?”

Was I supposed to get naked? Dance the Cha Cha? What the fuck did he want me to do? “I thought you were going to bandage me up?” I tentatively asked. “Or maybe heal me.”

Someone had healed me when I’d had my knee shot out a few weeks ago. The Fixers who’d grabbed me had been dead, so the only living beings in the room were me, Bishop, and Fluffy the Durft. I’d been out cold, and even if I’d been conscious, I had no ability to speed-heal injuries. I doubted the rabid groundhog from hell was able to magically heal, even if he’d wanted to. That left Bishop.

He muttered something that sounded like “fucking masochists” and spun around.

I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t him taking a stapler off his desk and coming at me with intent.

“Whoa, whoa!” I backed up. “Bandages. Or stitches. Needle and thread, buddy, not a stapler.”

“Do I look like I have a sewing kit handy?” He clicked the stapler at me, and I held up both hands, prepared to defend myself.

I took another step back. “HB offered to help. I’d rather she bandage the wound then you puncture the crap out of me with a desk stapler.”

“HB doesn’t have a sewing kit or bandages either.” He put the stapler back. “It’s not like we ever need to doctor up wounds around here.”

Probably not. I imagined shifters healed quickly, especially if HB was any indication. She’d been a mangled mess on that warehouse floor, and here she was walking around two weeks later. Limping and scarred, yes, but still, she’d healed far faster than any human I’d ever seen.

“How about this?” 

I looked up to see Bishop holding a roll of duct tape and shuddered, thinking how painful that was going to be to remove after the wound started to heal.

“How about just some more napkins? I’ll clean it up with water and use my belt again to hold them in place.” 

“Suit yourself.” Bishop tossed the duct tape on the couch and went out of the office. While he was gone, I had a chance to look around and basically snoop. The three-ring binders were filled with papers that held a solid wall of text in a language I’d never seen before—single-spaced, double-sided. Not a chart or graph to be seen. The other papers were bills, a survey for some property up in the mountains, a flyer with special sale items from a liquor distributor. I saw a name on one bunch of papers that caught my eye and pulled it out from the stack.

Something about a formal request to dissolve a pack and re-establish under new leadership. Off in the margins in blue ink was “Need to take some action on this one!” The comment was signed “HB.”

I stuffed it back in the pile as Bishop came through the door. He kindly didn’t mention my snooping. I took the bowl of water and clean rag from his hand and cleared a space for it on his desk. Then I took my shirt off.

It sounded sexier than it was. I was filthy, covered in both dried and fresh blood, and I didn’t even have on a pretty bra. Sports bras covered more than most bathing suit tops and didn’t really do the whole lift-and-separate thing. Basically, I was a mashed uni-boob with a smudge of dirt across the front of my chest.

Ignoring the dirt, I got to work on carefully cleaning the wound while Bishop opened a little first-aid box and rooted around in it. 

“Thought you didn’t have one of those.” I winced as I pressed the wet cloth to the still-oozing wound.

“I didn’t think we had one either. HB said she picked it up on a Costco run a few months back.” He grumbled something under his breath. “I hate sending her to Costco for anything. She always comes back with eight hundred dollars’ worth of jumbo-sized crap.”

“You don’t know you need eight hundred dollars’ worth of jumbo-sized crap until you see it there on the shelf,” I countered. 

Costco was still open and in business. The only real difference between the mega store now versus two years ago was that the guards at the door eyeing your membership card were armed. I was pretty sure you wouldn’t get shot trying to steal a ten-pound pork loin and a six-gallon jug of barbeque sauce anywhere outside of L.A. 

I missed Costco. Bea had let our membership lapse two years ago when the demons came. We’d tightened back on a lot of things since then. It seemed silly to pay for a membership to a place when you couldn’t afford to buy stuff in mega-sized containers.

“I get that we need the crate of paper towels and two crates of toilet paper, but an entire case of pumpkin spice coffee pods? And a four pack of sonic toothbrushes? And this thing?” He waved at the first-aid kit.

I was glad she’d bought the first-aid kit, especially when my only other alternatives were duct tape or a desk stapler.

“You’ve got pumpkin spice coffee pods?” I said with a grin. “Sold. I’ll be here every morning from September first until spring.”

He pulled out a box of Band-Aids from the first-aid kit. “Good. Because if we don’t get rid of that shit, I’m going to sit HB in a chair and make her drink it all herself in one go.”

I took the box, selected a few items, and started to open them.

“Here.” Bishop knelt down beside me, taking the edge of the rag and blotting around the wound. With one hand he held the ragged edges together. I handed him the Band-Aid, and he secured it on the lower edge, snugging it tight on the top so the wound remained closed. Then he continued with a second and a third bandage. 

I suppressed a shiver at his touch. Looking down at the top of his head, I wondered how soft that wavy sun-streaked blond hair was. Having him kneeling down beside me made my mind detour to all sorts of fantasies. I could strip off my pants, sweep all those papers and binders off his desk, sit up on the edge and lean back while he drove himself into me. Or better yet, he could kneel down and get busy with that sexy mouth.

“There.” Bishop had finished with the Band-Aids and put a thick square of gauze over them. He looked up at me, and I saw the golden sparks in his ocean-blue eyes. For a second we were frozen in time, our gazes locked.

Then I sucked in a breath, turned my head, and picked up a roll of gauze. As I wrapped it around my waist, I wondered at this attraction I had for him. He was strong. Confident. Dangerous. When I’d said he wasn’t my type, I’d meant his looks. His personality most definitely was my type—in spades. Which meant I probably wasn’t his type at all.

He and HB were close. I could feel a bond between them that came with a long, affectionate relationship. Were they partners? Lovers? Just really good friends? I couldn’t believe that two such gorgeous people wouldn’t have fallen into bed at one point or another. It was really going to suck if I continued to be desperately in lust for Bishop only to find out he was committed to a woman I admired, respected, and might even consider a friend.

What had he said when I’d offered sex in trade for his help in finding Nevarra? Had it been if I were ever in his bed, it wouldn’t be because I owed him? Or was it when? Either one hinted at a future possibility.

Yeah. I was totally grasping at the slightest bit of hope here. 

I held the gauze while Bishop cut the end and taped it in place. The wound still hurt, but it was down to a dull ache now, muffled by layers of gauze and bandages. He’d done a good job. This should keep it from bleeding again unless I had to sprint a few blocks, jump over a fence, or fight off a pair of bounty hunters.

Not bad for a gunshot wound. I’d been lucky it was so minor, even if I’d been unlucky enough to catch one of Karen’s poorly aimed bullets.

He stood, his hand lingering for a moment on my waist. “Hope you’ve got another shirt. That one’s trashed.”

My laundry basket at home was filled with trashed clothes. When I got a few seconds in my day, I washed the blood out of them, hung them up to dry, then turned them over to Bea for repair. Some were usually beyond repair, but most were wearable again if I didn’t mind having big Frankenstein-looking patches on my clothes.

“I’ve been carrying a spare in my backpack.” I turned away from Bishop, feeling a sudden chill. He radiated heat, like someone who was in the throes of a high fever, or like someone who’d just come out of working at a kiln. He wasn’t sweaty, just warm. It was the end of summer, which in L.A. meant it was still upward of one hundred degrees on the regular. You wouldn’t think standing next to a Bishop furnace would be comfortable, but it was. 

The spare shirt I’d packed was a little snug, and the layers of gauze wrapped around my waist plus the bandages didn’t do my silhouette any favors. It’s not like I was going on a date, though. I doubted Detective Juke would care if I looked a little thick around the middle.

“I’ve got something for you,” I told Bishop as I pulled a wad of blood-stained cash out of my backpack. I counted my stash for the last few days. Nine hundred in total—seven just from the salvage this morning. I hated to hand the majority of it over to Bishop, but Bea had told me that we were good with food at home. She was back to work now that Sadie was healing, while Nevarra took care of her sister with some unusually eager help from Javier down the street.

If I paid the debts off, then we could start to save again. I hated being in debt to anyone, and I especially loathed owing Bishop money. Not because he was any sort of hard-ass when it came to me paying him. It was the fact that my pulse raced like a thoroughbred at the track every time he touched me that made me not want to be in debt to him.

I wanted to fuck him, and he’d made it clear that wouldn’t happen while this obligation stood between us. It might not happen even after I’d paid up, but I was still going to give it my best shot.

And if he and HB were involved…well, I’d need to take an icy shower, dig that vibrator out of the dresser drawer, and never see this man again.

Actually, I should probably find that vibrator sooner rather than later.

I peeled a hundred in twenties off the stack, shoved it in my pants pocket, then handed the rest over. Bishop took the money, recounted it, then pulled a receipt book out of the mess on his desk. I took the receipt with some reluctance, not comfortable with this business-like formality. I wanted trust, and a receipt for what I’d paid—a declining balance on the ledger books—wasn’t trust in my mind.

“Thanks for the doctoring,” I told him as I stuffed the receipt and my ruined shirt into the backpack. “I almost brought you a necklace, but got chased off before I could take it off the dead guy.”

“A necklace?” Bishop shot me an incredulous look. “You were going to give me a necklace?”

“Not to wear or anything. It was insanely ugly.” I shrugged. “Could have been worth something at one of those places that buys crap jewelry and melts it down. Although with my luck it was probably electroplated and not even real gold.”

Bishop grunted. “Do me a favor and don’t bring me ugly necklaces.”

“Got it. I’ll only bring you the pretty ones, not gaudy chains with big-ass dragon pendants.” With a name like Bishop, he was probably into rugged-looking crosses. Or maybe those leather and bead surfer necklaces.

If I’d been able to grab the necklace, I might have taken it to the Gray Dogs first. They were good about paying a finder’s fee for salvage that was gang-related. Although I doubted ruby-eyed dragon pendants were a symbol a gang named the Gray Dogs would choose. Still, maybe one of them was a friend of the deceased and would want his hideous necklace to remember him by. A finder’s fee would have been more than I’d have gotten anywhere else. 

But all that was moot anyway, since the ugly necklace was probably gracing the stocky neck of either Karen or Chad right now. I’d gotten what was important—the cash. And I’d managed to get away from both the salvage and the following attack with only a minor gunshot wound and some bruises.

Once more I thought about the two guys who’d tried to grab me under the bridge. Yes, I’d gotten away, but next time I might not.

And with five thousand dollars in bounty on my head, there would definitely be a next time.