Full Bodied (A Ruby Steele Mystery—Book 3) E-Book

Mia Gold

• Herausgeber: Lukeman Literary Management
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: A Ruby Steele Cozy Mystery
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 339

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

This is book #3 in the Ruby Steele Mystery. Ruby Steele, 30, beautiful, fit, seems just like any other ex-pat hiding out in the Bahamas and playing local bartender. But unruly patrons find out the hard way: Ruby is a mixed-martial-arts pro, and not one you'd want to cross. Ruby's known for making friend in bad places. And her newest friend, a bouncer at the brothel next door, is no exception. When he comes to her with a sob story, she can't turn away. When that story turns to a body he found this morning, Ruby sits up straighter. When it turns out that body belonged to a trafficked teenaged girl, Ruby's sense of justice is lit. Ruby's gotta solve this one, for her own need to set wrongs right. Problem is, the cops don't care, and this case will surely take her to some bad places, and up against some bad people. That may just include a billionaire with his own private yacht—and his own private army. It's not like Ruby doesn't have an army of her own coming after her. The last thing Ruby needs right now is a two-front war. But it looks like that's exactly what she's going to get. No one said Ruby's judgement was good. Then again, if it was, she wouldn't be hiding out in the Bahamas, tending bar, with a monkey on her shoulder and an enemy list a mile long. Welcome to the Bahamian world of Ruby Steele, replete with her local dive bar, her wily pet monkey, her major drinking problem, her (way) too many fights, her inability to get herself out of trouble, and her fists made of stone. Ruby's life is a complete wreck. But there's one thing she's good at: capturing your heart. This is book #3 in a page-turning series, one that will linger with you long after the last page is read. Future books in the series will be available soon!

Leseprobe

Mia Gold

Debut author Mia Gold is author of the HOLLY HANDS MYSTERY, comprising three books (and counting); and of the RUBY STEELE MYSTERY series, comprising three books (and counting).

Mia would love to hear from you, so please visit www.miagoldauthor.com to receive free ebooks, hear the latest news, and stay in touch.

BOOKS BY MIA GOLD

HOLLY HANDS MYSTERY

KNOCKOUT (Book #1)

SUCKER PUNCH (Book #2)

BELOW THE BELT (Book #3)

RUBY STEELE MYSTERY

ON THE ROCKS (Book #1)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER ONE

Working as a bartender at the Pirate’s Cove, Ruby Steele had learned what to expect on a typical evening.

Reece would puke, the Ufologist would give a lecture on alien probing, her boss, Neville, would run around acting like a pirate, the Professor would recite lines from a writer she had never heard of, and some tourist would fall off the giant pile of fake gold doubloons in the center of the room and hurt himself.

What she didn’t expect was a giant fight in the parking lot that eventually led to the fire department showing up.

Not that she had a problem with that last part. She had always had a thing for firemen. The fight was a pain, though.

Literally.

It started as these things usually did, with the mixture of alcohol and testosterone.

Ruby got the first inkling of trouble as she was slinging drinks with Kristiano behind the bar at eleven at night. The crowd was just getting into the swing of things. The Ufologist, a rake-thin Bahamian who worked part-time as a plumber when he wasn’t trying to contact alien worlds, was showing some photos of flying saucers to a half-interested waiter from a nearby restaurant who was so drunk he could barely keep his eyes open. The poor guy didn’t even notice when Zoomer, the bar’s capuchin monkey, grabbed his shot of rum and knocked it back. Next to them, Reece and Perry were getting systematically hammered, and Neville was leaping around the room, an eyepatch over a perfectly functional eye while swinging a plastic cutlass at customers. Everyone else was complaining about their jobs or talking sports or already too drunk to make any coherent sense.

“Drink up, you mangy dogs, there be fine sailing tonight!”

“As you can see, this is the classic saucer type from the Pleiades.”

“And then this dumb tourist asks if we’re part of Mexico!”

“You crazy? Cavalier is totally going to stomp the Dynamos tomorrow.”

“Yer my besh frien inda hole whirl. I bena milumbusk I hammen.”

Between the babble Ruby caught another sound, a different sound. She could have sworn it was breaking glass, but it sounded too quiet to be coming from inside.

Puzzled, she rounded the bar and headed for the men’s room, thinking someone might be breaking bottles in there. It wasn’t the sort of activity that happened in the ladies’ room. Women were generally better behaved. Drunken wrestling matches, hard drug usage, a quickie on the sinks, sure, but not breaking glass.

She only got halfway there when she realized the sound wasn’t coming from the bathrooms, but outside.

Ruby turned around, made her way through the crowd, and peeked out the door.

The Pirate’s Cove formed part of a dreary little strip of buildings in a not-too-good part of Nassau. Everything was closed at this hour except for the Tropical Twerker, the strip club at the opposite end. A mostly empty parking lot ran in front of the storefronts, and in that parking lot stood a group of about ten young Bahamian guys and three women, tossing empty beer bottles at the building housing the Pirate’s Cove. The women egged them on as the guys tried to impress them by seeing how hard they could throw the bottles.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ruby demanded.

“Throwing beer bottles against the building, what do you think?” one of them called back.

“Silly question. Pardon me for asking,” Ruby said.

The guy nodded. “That’s OK.”

After a certain blood alcohol level, the human brain is unable to detect sarcasm.

The guy threw another bottle, smashing it not far from Ruby’s head.

“Hey! Watch it, moron.”

As a bartender, Ruby had learned not to escalate confrontations with the drunk and stupid. As an MMA fighter, Ruby had learned not to let anyone try to intimidate her. These two training regimens often came into conflict.

The guy cocked his head. “You just call me a moron?”

“Yes. You’re a moron. If you and your friends don’t stop throwing glass, I’m calling the police.”

“They won’t come in time, bitch.”

He started sauntering toward Ruby, several of his friends following him. The girls laughed and clapped.

Instinct immediately made her ball her fists and get into a fighter’s stance.

“You’re also a coward,” Ruby told him.

The guy stopped. “What?”

“A coward. You can’t take on a girl without backup.”

The guy turned to his friends. “Bounce. I’ll take care of this.”

Ruby smiled. She might not shy from a fight, but she wasn’t stupid.

She opened the door wider and stepped out so she’d have room to maneuver. What she didn’t predict was Reece staggering out next to her. She sensed several other people peering over her shoulder.

“Now who’s got backup?” the bottle thrower scoffed.

“You expect a girl to fight you?” Reece slurred. “I’ll fight for her.”

Ruby raised an eyebrow. Reece was a retired insurance salesman from New Jersey who probably hadn’t exercised since Clinton was president. She couldn’t decide if his announcement was born from chivalry or drunken overconfidence. Probably both.

Ruby glanced to the left and right. No cops in sight. John, the bouncer at the Tropical Twerker, was nowhere to be seen. Probably inside dealing with his own drama. An older couple passed by on the opposite side of the street. They’d be no help. Neither would the wide-eyed man watching the scene as he quickly entered the strip club.

As usual, Ruby was going to have to face this problem alone. She was the only sober person here who knew how to fight.

If it was only this guy, Ruby would have dropped him on the pavement and been back in the bar serving drinks by now, but he had a crowd behind him. She didn’t want to start something she might not be able to finish.

The leering girls made it worse. The guys wanted to show off for them.

Reece stepped between Ruby and the bottle thrower just as the guy closed the last of the distance.

“How about you guys just clear out. No harm done, eh?”

This was from Neville. The bottle thrower and several of his friends laughed. It was hard to take a pot-bellied Englishman in a pirate costume seriously. Pity he didn’t have his real cutlass instead of the plastic one.

Mr. Bottle Thrower turned back to Reece, who swayed from side to side thanks to too much booze.

“Look, punk,” he said, jabbing a finger into Reece’s stomach. “I don’t like your attitude.”

“You’re the one throwing bottles,” Reece said. “Why don’t you just move on like the lady said?”

“You move on,” Mr. Bottle Thrower said, jabbing Reece in the stomach again. The retired insurance salesman flinched.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Ruby said. The guy ignored her.

“You’re just some dumb tourist,” Mr. Bottle Thrower said, jabbing a finger into Reece’s gut again. Reece began to look a bit green around the gills. “Go back to your stinking country.”

“I’ve lived here for three years,” Reece said. Or more accurately, choked. Ruby edged away.

“You really should stop poking him in the stomach,” Ruby warned.

Mr. Bottle Thrower shot her a contemptuous look.

“What? Like this?”

He poked Reece again. Hard.

And that’s when Reece, being Reece, puked.

A Technicolor yawn all over the front of Mr. Bottle Thrower’s shirt.

Things went downhill after that.

Before Mr. Bottle Thrower got a chance to recover from his shock and deck Reece, Ruby gave him a straight kick to the chest. That turned out to be a bad idea, because her shoe ended up coated with a generous amount of Reece’s stomach juices and various half-digested shots of rum Ruby herself had served him over the course of the evening. While Ruby was all in favor of recycling, she did not think recycling half-digested Bahamian rum into shoe polish was really the way the environmental movement should be heading.

Even worse, she didn’t have a chance to wipe her shoe clean on Mr. Bottle Thrower’s face because several of his friends surged forward, apparently angered at their conquering hero’s humiliation and swift downfall.

Ruby decided to wipe her foot elsewhere.

Elsewhere turned out to be the face of the first guy to make it within reach. Then she had to lash out with her un-puked-on foot in order to ward off a blow from another bottle thrower who went for Reece. The insurance salesman, despite his heroic pretensions, was still doubled over and spitting out a few of the evening’s earliest shots and unable to defend himself.

“Teach that bitch a lesson!” one of the girls squalled.

So much for girls sticking together.

The next man who tried to impress the ladies got a knuckle sandwich, then Ruby had to stave off blows from two guys smart enough to come at her at the same time.

She edged to the left and back, getting away from the door and close to the wall so no one could work their way around her and come at her from behind. She kept her arms up in a defensive position, blocking a flurry of blows. In the fight that ended her MMA career, she had taken a severe crack to the head that nearly killed her. Her team of doctors warned her another serious hit would do just that.

Ruby thought of explaining that to the two guys currently trying to rearrange her face, but decided they probably didn’t care all that much.

Keeping her arms up to defend her head, she used only her legs for attack.

A quick hook made the man to her right stumble and she gained a second or two to concentrate on the attacker to her left. Blocking his jab, she lashed out at his knee, dropping him to the ground. A roundhouse kick to the head ensured he’d stay down.

Ruby turned to take out the one she’d punched, only to find him getting bludgeoned by a fellow Bahamian, a young surfer and scuba diver named Perry who was best friends with Reece. While less than half Reece’s age, they’d bonded over rum. Reece was sort of a beloved drunken uncle.

And Perry didn’t like anyone hurting Uncle Boozer. He was really thrashing that guy.

Since that situation looked well in hand, Ruby advanced a bit to land a front kick to someone’s solar plexus, then backed off as three came at her all at once. One got tackled by Kristiano, her fellow bartender. They fell in a confused tangle. Poor Kristiano had the muscles of a fighter but none of the skills and certainly none of the attitude. Ruby would have to take care of the remaining two herself, and probably help Kristiano with the third.

They came in swinging wildly, and Ruby had to focus all her efforts in not taking any blows to the head. She hunched low, keeping her arms up, taking punch after punch on her increasingly tender forearms.

A spike of pain shot through her as a fist glanced off her ribs, the same ribs she’d fractured in a fight a few weeks before when she took down a pimp and his pack of goons. It seemed like she was getting in as many fights after her retirement from MMA as she had when she was still an active contender on the circuit.

That unexpected hit made her forget herself and she gave her opponent a one-two punch that would give him a permanent reminder of this night every time he looked in a mirror.

Unfortunately, that left her open to his friend, whose fist came right at her face.

Ruby dodged, almost too late. Although his fist barely grazed her ear, pain exploded in her head, a thousand times intensified. A sharp ringing pierced her skull. She brought her arms up to block, dimly feeling her attacker’s fist bounce off her forearm.

Then she felt a strong hand grasp her arms and tug them down.

Ruby saw double, but saw clearly enough as the man wound up to hit her full in the face.

Then from the edge of her vision another Bahamian man flew into sight, landing a hard cross right on the guy’s jaw. It extended to the side, unnaturally far, and the man fell.

Ruby got her arms up in a defensive posture again, looking around for someone to hit. Her double vision resolved back to normal, the ringing starting to fade, the searing pain receding into a dull throb.

The drunk guys were all down or retreating. The girls who had egged them on tossed their hair and sashayed away without them.

“Ruby, are you all right?” the Bahamian man who had saved her asked.

Do I know this guy? Did that hit make me forget people? They warned me of potential brain damage.

Ruby looked around, mentally naming everyone she recognized. Reece. Perry. Neville. Kristiano (complete with bloody lip). John the bouncer from next door.

OK, so I do remember names, but I don’t know this guy.

“How do you know my name?” Ruby asked, glad to hear her words come out of her mouth without any slurring.

Good. No damage. My head hurts like hell, though.

She leaned back against the brick wall to rest as her friends pushed the rest of the troublemakers out of the parking lot.

“How do you know my name?” she asked the Bahamian man.

Wait. I just asked that. Get it together, Ruby.

Nice looking. About thirty. Muscular like John the bouncer, who stood next to him.

“My name’s Samuel. I’m John’s friend.” His voice lowered and he looked around furtively. “He said you could help me.”

“Why? Someone get murdered?” Ruby said and laughed. That would be just her luck.

Samuel’s jaw dropped. “How did you know that?”

Ruby’s laugh turned into a groan.

Ugh. Why didn’t that guy punch me properly and put me out of my misery?

CHAPTER TWO

Ruby turned away from Samuel and John. The regulars at the Pirate’s Cove cheered as the last of the bottle throwers retreated down the street, carrying their wounded.

“Huzzah! We’ve seen off those bilge rats,” Neville said. “A free round of grog for everyone!”

That got an even bigger cheer.

Neville turned to Ruby.

“Is my favorite tavern wench feeling seasick?”

The look of frank concern on his face made Ruby forgive him for referring to her as a wench. She’d been called a lot worse.

“That last guy dinged my ear.”

Neville paled. She’d told him about her injury. Not how she got it—even her best friends down here didn’t know her past or her true name—but he knew how serious that could be.

“You want me to call an ambulance?” he asked, losing the fake pirate speak.

“No. I’ll be all right. Just let me rest a minute.”

Neville paused, studying her for a moment, then turned to the crowd and waved his plastic cutlass. “Back on deck with the lot of ye! The horizon is clear and we have fine sailing ahead!”

Everyone went inside. Kristiano shot her a concerned look. She nodded to him and managed a weak smile.

Once the door shut, she turned to John and Samuel. She would rather have fled into the bar with the rest of the misfits, but her conscience kept her outside.

Sometimes she wished she didn’t have one of those.

“So what’s all this about a murder?” she asked against her better judgment.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” John said. “I’ll go get a broom for all this glass. And I’ll bring a bucket of soap and water for your shoe, Ruby.”

“My shoe?” She looked down. “Oh yeah. Ick.”

If this guy with the murder problem would just disappear into thin air, I’d be happy to have both my shoes puked on.

But Samuel did not disappear into thin air. No, he stayed right there in front of her.

At least she wasn’t seeing double anymore. Two of him would have been unbearable, no matter how cute he was.

“So what happened?” she asked again.

“I work as a bouncer—”

“At a whorehouse.”

Samuel’s jaw dropped again. “How did you know that?”

“Because that’s just my luck. Go on.”

“Um, OK. I work at the Madrigal. It’s the finest place on the island now that the Moonlight Lounge and Hotel have been taken down.” Samuel gave her a look like he knew who was responsible for that. “We had this Albanian girl working there. Sihana. She was really pretty, attracted all the top gentlemen.”

“You mean scumbags.”

Samuel smiled. “We refer to them as gentlemen. They like that.”

“I’m sure they do.”

He was beginning to look less cute.

“Big time. Anyway, she was with a new client last night, some rich white man I’ve never seen before. We’re a small place, and I recognize all the gentlemen. The bartender and other bouncer didn’t know him either. I’m sure it was his first time there. He said something strange when he first came in. He said, ‘I heard you have a European working here.’ That surprised me because we only had Sihana. But I told him we had two Europeans, because we have this light-skinned Mexican girl who pretends to be Spanish or Italian if that’s what you’re into. Great with accents. So I bring out the two of them and the guy didn’t even so much as look at the Mexican chick. He points right at Sihana and says, ‘I want you.’”

“So he recognized her? Did she recognize him?”

Samuel shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty good at reading people, working where I do. I suppose you’re the same. No, I don’t think they knew each other. I got the impression someone else had told him about Sihana and he came to check her out for himself.”

“Go on.”

“So they go into one of the rooms and a little later he leaves. Sometime after that I go to check on her and she’s dead. The coroner says she had an overdose.”

“But you don’t think it was an overdose.”

Samuel shook his head. “No way. Not Sihana. She didn’t use drugs. She was saving up to go home.”

“So you think this guy killed her?”

“Yeah. I know a liar when I see one. This guy looked nervous, hopped up, but he didn’t look scared or concerned like someone would if a girl had died on him. Looked more excited, like he’d just scored a football goal.”

Ruby sighed and hung her throbbing head. She suddenly felt exhausted. This never seemed to end.

“Why did you come to me?” Her voice came out whiny.

Samuel’s eyes lit up. “Because you totally kick ass! You’re like a private detective or something, but not corrupt like most of the cops around here.”

“I’m not a private detective. I’m a bartender with a splitting headache.”

“No one’s going to help this girl. The cops have already declared her death an accident.”

“But she only died last night. Doesn’t the coroner take more time than that?”

Samuel shook his head sadly. “Not for people like her. She was here illegally. We were trying to get her home.”

“Yeah, sure you were.” She was getting really, really sick of having casual conversations with Nassau’s underclass.

“They really were,” John the bouncer said, coming back with a broom, dustpan, and the all-important bucket of water. “That girl was trafficked by one of the cartels to Freeport. She escaped and came to Nassau.”

“Why not go directly back to Albania?” Ruby asked, gratefully taking the bucket of water. The darling had even provided a sponge.

“She didn’t have the money, and the cartel had taken her passport,” Samuel explained. “There was some mess with the embassy and she had to take a job at Madrigal in order to support herself and save up for the ticket home. Since she didn’t have any papers, the only job she could get was with us.”

Ruby glared at him. “Doing the same job she was forced into in Freeport. Yeah, you’re real knights in shining armor.”

Just then, a car down the street burst into flames.

“What the—?” Samuel shouted.

Ruby saw some of the bottle throwers do a little dance around the flaming vehicle before running off.

“Torching a car,” Ruby grumbled. “How unoriginal.”

Samuel stared at her, slack-jawed. “This happens a lot?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say a lot,” John told him. “This is the third time in the past year. Maybe the fourth.”

“There was a fourth?” Ruby asked.

“Yeah, last month. I think you were off that night.”

Samuel looked back at the car, its flames lighting up the entire neighborhood. “I wonder if they finally impressed those girls.”

“I need a drink,” Ruby moaned.

“I thought you quit,” John said.

“Oh right. Great,” Ruby muttered, rubbing puke off her shoe. “More bad news.”

Ruby didn’t look at the bouncer from Madrigal as she fussed over her shoe and John called the fire department. She hoped that if she ignored him, he might go away.

He did not. He simply stood there, staring down at her.

“Are you checking out my cleavage?” she asked.

“Yeah. Um, no! I was wondering what your plan is to solve the murder. How can I help?”

Ruby stood. “You can help by leaving me alone.”

“Oh, you prefer to work solo?”

“No, I prefer to work in a bar, and it’s my shift.”

Ruby brushed the last of the vomit off her shoe, dropped the sponge into the bucket, and walked inside as John swept up the glass by the light of the flames.

“What was that boom?” Kristiano asked as she got behind the bar.

“A car going up in flames.”

“What!” Kristiano, Neville, and the nearest customers all said at once.

“Don’t worry, it’s not close enough to set fire to any buildings, and there was no one inside. John’s already called the fire department.”

Desaray rushed out with her phone. “I gotta get this for my YouTube channel!”

“You do that,” Ruby said. After she had stopped letting the Bahamian hotel maid film her kicking out drunks from the bar, her viewership had declined. Ruby felt bad about that, but too many people were homing in on her to risk being recognized on YouTube. Hopefully a nice, wholesome car fire would boost her hits.

Ruby noticed Zoomer draped over the bar unconscious.

“What happened to him?” Ruby asked.

“He stole all our drinks while we were out watching the fight,” one of the customers said.

“Is he all right?” Ruby hurried over. He looked well out of it, but was snoring peacefully. No damage done. He’d wake up with the mother of all hangovers, though.

Ruby scratched him behind the ears. “You need to detox, buddy. Make a lifestyle change. You’ll kill yourself with that stuff one day.”

“Another rum over here, please,” the Ufologist said. The waiter he had been talking to had slumped on the bar, his head cradled in his arms and looking remarkably like Zoomer. The Ufologist nodded at him and added, “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he gets home.”

“You’re not going to probe him, are you?”

“I’m not a sufficiently advanced species to do it right,” the Ufologist answered in all seriousness.

Ruby grabbed the mid-shelf brand he favored, popped out the top, and paused.

The smell—sweet, rich, and tinged with a hint of fruit—entranced her. For a moment it felt like it would take over her entire being. The pain in her head and the fear of the brush she had with death were forgotten. All she could think about was that smell, that taste, that sweet warm relaxation of the first drink of the evening.

She hadn’t enjoyed that in more than two weeks.

“You’re stronger than they are,” the Ufologist said. His voice sounded like it was coming from a thousand miles away.

She turned, bottle in hand.

“What?”

“You’re stronger than they are. Shake it off.”

“Stronger than who?” Ruby asked, utterly confused.

“The Deros. The Detrimental Robots inside the hollow Earth. I’ve told you about them before. They zap people with mind control rays to make them do all sorts of stuff. They’re trying to make you take a drink when you don’t want to.”

Ruby gave him an uncertain smile. For a complete nutcase, he could be pretty perceptive. She hadn’t actually told anyone she had sworn to quit, but it had become obvious to everyone that their favorite drinking bartender had changed some habits.

Apparently it was obvious that she was struggling with the decision too. That felt seriously embarrassing.

“I think the mind control ray is weakening. Thanks for talking me down,” Ruby said, pouring him a shot and, with a conscious effort, corking the bottle and putting it back on the shelf.

“No problem,” the Ufologist said. “You got to be careful. They’re sneaky, those Deros.”

“Yeah, I noticed. But you said they live in the hollow Earth. I thought the Earth was flat.”

The Ufologist laughed. “Only idiots believe that!”

Ruby grinned.

This place is unbelievable.

She moved over to Reece and Perry, who had their hands raised to get her attention.

“You sure you’re up for another?” Ruby asked Reece.

“Of course!” he said brightly.

“You promise not to barf on my shoe again?” she said, holding the bottle of rum back like she was refusing candy to a small child.

“I didn’t barf on your shoe, you kicked the guy I barfed on,” Reece said.

“It’s an important distinction, Ruby,” Perry added.

“Yeah, under insurance rules I would not be liable and you would not get a payout,” Reece said.

“All right,” Ruby grumbled. “Thanks for coming to my aid.”

“I’m happy to toss my cookies on anyone you want,” Reece said.

The wail of a siren outside caught Ruby’s attention. Putting the bottle away, she turned to Kristiano, who was busy mixing a cocktail.

“I need to take a break.”

Kristiano laughed and gave her a wink, knowing why. She moved to the front door.

A fire engine was just pulling up across the street near the flaming car. Desaray stood on the sidewalk filming the scene. Ruby walked up next to her to get a better view.

The firemen leapt out of the truck, all burly and intent and wearing those heavy fireproof overcoats and helmets. Ruby sighed. Desaray sighed.

“Something about those uniforms,” Ruby said quietly.

“Mmmm,” was all Desaray replied.

“It’s weird. They totally cover their muscles but you know they’re ripped. Somehow not seeing that makes it sexier.”

“And brave,” Desaray sighed. “Ready to save strangers from mortal danger.”

Ruby turned to Desaray. “We should jump into that car and have them save us.”

The chambermaid’s face brightened. “Oooh, that would be worth a few burns.”

“Look!” Ruby pointed. “They’re bringing out the hose.”

“That’s my favorite part,” Desaray agreed, zooming in.

The firemen hooked the hose onto the nearest hydrant and snaked it out toward the flaming car. The lead man flipped a switch, and a great gout of water shot onto the car.

“Oooh, not so soon, big boy,” Desaray cooed.

Ruby giggled. She wasn’t much of a giggler, but firemen brought out something giggly in her.

“What do you think it is about them?” Ruby wondered.

She didn’t realize she had spoken aloud until Desaray replied.

“Hunky heroes, what else?”

“Hmmm.”

A movement out of the corner of her eye caught Ruby’s attention. John and Samuel stood near the entrance to the Tropical Twerker, watching the burning car. Samuel glanced at her and she felt a tinge of guilt.

Desaray was still talking. “I mean, even if they weren’t hunks I’d still love them. They put themselves in danger to help others. That’s the best kind of person you can be.”

John put a hand on Samuel’s shoulder and said something. Samuel shook his head, looking disappointed, and slouched away.

Ruby watched them go, feeling like she had not only let them down, but herself as well.

CHAPTER THREE

One of the advantages of quitting booze, Ruby had discovered, was that you slept better. A really heavy binge would make her pass out for the evening, but anything less had her waking up in the wee hours and forcing herself back into a restless half-slumber until dawn.

Clearing all the alcohol out of her system led to nights of full, restful sleep. The kind she hadn’t had since she had fled the United States. She’d spring out of bed, only needing a single cup of coffee instead of her usual two, and be eager and ready for her morning workout. It also gave her more energy and clarity throughout the day.

None of that happened the night she met Samuel.

She had gone home alone to her ramshackle house in the bad part of town, showered, and gotten into bed.

And stared at the ceiling for the next several hours.

She felt exhausted, and yet sleep wouldn’t come except for a few brief snatches in which she’d see a faceless girl cowering on a bed as strong hands choked her. Then Ruby would snap awake, bathed in a cold sweat.

Trafficked. That Albanian girl had been trafficked. Modern-day slavery.

She’d read a magazine article about that recently. Thousands of women and children got trafficked every year in the First World, and in the developing world the situation was even worse. Huge numbers of people in Asia and Africa lived in bonded labor or were bought and sold outright. In Mauritania, which had only banned slavery in 1981, something like one in twenty people were slaves, perhaps more.

Ruby couldn’t point to Mauritania on a map, but she sure as hell never wanted to go there.

It was almost inconceivable that such things could happen in the modern world, and yet they did.

While Ruby was no innocent—she had been through far too much in the past couple of years to harbor any illusions about life—the sheer scale of it shocked her. But it all seemed so distant, something to be read in a magazine article. Sigh, shake your head sadly, and go on with your day. She never thought she’d meet someone who had actually known an escaped slave.

She hadn’t escaped for long. She found freedom only to end up murdered.

Finally giving up on sleep, Ruby flicked on the bedside light and grabbed her laptop. Then she rummaged through a pile of old paperbacks to one she had hollowed out with a pen knife. Inside was hidden a thumb drive.

She held it up, feeling a prickle of fear and anticipation as she always did when she pulled it from its hiding place.

This had been left for her in a secret safety deposit box right here in Nassau by Senator Wishbourne, her old boss. The old boss Ruby had been entrusted to protect. The woman who got assassinated on Ruby’s watch.

Assassinated, as far as Ruby could tell, by the Saudis.

Just why that had happened, and why the Saudis had sent an assassin to track Ruby down here in the Bahamas, remained a mystery.

She hoped the thumb drive held the answers to all her questions.

Too bad the damn thing was protected by a password.

Ruby plugged the hard drive into her laptop—bought by a friend with cash so it couldn’t be traced—and wondered what passwords she should try. She had a notebook full of them, written down at odd times during the day when something occurred to her. The name of some old politician the senator had admired. Types of flowers she used to grow in her garden. The name of every intern she had ever had. Anything. Everything. No matter how obscure or tangential to the senator’s life and career, Ruby had put it down in the notebook. Pages and pages of possibilities. Hundreds, perhaps thousands now.

All neatly crossed out. Every single one of them rejected.

What the hell? Did the senator want her to see what was on the thumb drive or not?

She kept typing in possibilities.

A strange comfort came to her as she did so, because doing this always made her think of Tim Harris, Senator Wishbourne’s other bodyguard. He was a good friend, briefly a lover, and always an ally. He kept an eye on things for her in the United States.

She had been thinking about him a lot lately.

“I can’t believe I didn’t try that before!” she muttered. “Stupid.”

Her heart beat a little faster as she typed.

Tim.

“Password incorrect.”

Harris.

“Password incorrect.”

TimHarris.

“Password incorrect.”

TimHarrisBodyguard.

“Password incorrect.”

“Damn it!”

A terrible thought nagged her as the list of rejected passwords relentlessly lengthened. What if it had been some alphanumeric sequence, some random assortment of letters and numbers with an obscure meaning or none at all? That would be the most secure password, the kind people use for important files. Perhaps, in her dying moments as Senator Wishbourne tried to gasp out something to Ruby through a collapsed windpipe, she had been trying to tell her the code.

If so, then it was lost forever. She’d never get this thumb drive open.

Still, she had to try. Since sleep wouldn’t come, she’d just keep typing in possibilities.

Slavery.

“Password incorrect.”

Slave.

“Password incorrect.”

Trafficked.

“Password incorrect.”

“Wait, I already tried that one, didn’t I?”

Senator Wishbourne had been on a subcommittee fighting prostitution. Ruby flipped through the pages of the password book, looking for “trafficked.” She couldn’t find it. Hardly surprising, considering how long this damn book was getting. She needed to get another notebook soon.

Ruby had a horrible vision of herself decades from now, bent and gray, still typing possible passwords into the computer with withered fingers.

Keep going, she told herself. Persistence pays off in the end.

That was as true with MMA fighting as it was with solving murders, or any other field of human endeavor. It was the most valuable lesson martial arts had taught her. Natural talent, money, connections—all those things may matter, but in the end those who succeeded the most were those who worked the hardest for the longest time.

Ruby stayed up late into the night, trying password after password, writing them down in the notebook and immediately crossing them out.

Stumped for ideas, she started going through the events of the evening. Fire truck. Car bomb. Gasoline. Fire hose. Hero. Heroine. Samuel.

“Password incorrect.” “Password incorrect.” “Password incorrect.”

“Augh!”

Ruby almost punched her computer screen. Instead she slammed her fist down on the table, making the laptop bounce. Ruby hissed with fear, touching the thumb drive carefully, checking for damage.

Cool it, she told herself.

Taking a deep breath, she tried again.

Sihana.

“Password incorrect.”

IgotmyownproblemsIcantsolveeverybodyelses

“Password incorrect.”

Ruby slumped, staring at the screen. She finally faced why she couldn’t sleep.

A woman, an escaped slave, had been murdered. A man who actually cared enough to do something about it had asked for her help.

And she had turned him down.

The worst of it all was she knew she could help. While she was right in telling Samuel she wasn’t some private eye or action hero who could take on the bad guys and win every time, she really had solved two murders. She could probably solve a third.

Except she didn’t know what the hell she was doing.

And she had the Saudis wanting her dead.

And she had the State Department on her tail, thinking she had killed the senator.

And she had the charity for poor kids she was setting up.

And the King wanted her to do a bare-knuckle fight in the next couple of weeks or else.

And … and … and …

And Ruby knew when she was making excuses. She had trained too long and too hard not to notice when she was trying to duck out of something difficult.

She grabbed her cell phone, a cheap little burner flip phone no one could trace and not even the most desperate thief would steal, and called John.

It rang. And rang.

“Come on, pick up already,” she grumbled, pacing back and forth in her living room.

On the tenth ring, John finally picked up.

“Mmph.”

“John, tell your friend I’ll help.”

“Mmph?”

“Samuel. Your friend with the dead coworker. I said I’d help.”

“Mmph.”

“You already said that. What’s the matter? Oh, three o’clock in the morning. Yeah, sorry about that. Why did you have your ringer on?”

A groan. The sound of rustling sheets.

“Ugh. I didn’t have my ringer on. The phone was flashing and woke me up.”

“Oh. Put it face down. Can you give me Samuel’s number?”

“Who’s that?” a sleepy woman’s voice demanded.

“Nobody.”

“Bullshit it’s nobody. It’s three in the goddamn morning.”

“Someone from work.”

“One of those hos is calling you at this hour? What’s going on?”

“Am I calling at a bad time?” Ruby asked.

“She’s not a ho. She’s a bartender.”

“Wait. That ho who’s always getting into fights? What’s going on between you two?”

“She’s not a ho!”

“Neither am I, and I don’t like strange women calling you at three in the morning.”

“She’s calling for Samuel.”

“Tell her she’s got the wrong number and hang up.”

“Wait a minute. Ruby, I’m texting you Samuel’s number.”

“Ruby’s her name, is it? A shiny little gem! She pretty like a gem, John? Is that why you answer her calls at three in the morning and ignore mine?”

“Baby, I don’t ignore your calls.”

“Don’t baby me. Give me that phone.”

The sound of a struggle. Ruby hung up.

Her phone buzzed. She looked at it like it was about to blow up. Then it buzzed again.

Gingerly, she picked up her phone. She had two new text messages.

The first was a phone number.

The second said, “U DAM HO I EVER SEE YOU I CUT YOU.”

“I better wait to call Samuel in the morning,” Ruby muttered.

She went back to bed, her mind already working on the possibilities of who might have killed Sihana and why.

Even so, she fell asleep within minutes.

Although her mind was in high gear, she had a purpose again and that gave her peace.

The instant the alarm woke her, she dialed Samuel’s number.

Time to get back into the game.