Free Not One Clue by Lois Greiman Page B

might give her away,” I said, but when we reached the baggage claim there wasn’t a respectable face veil in sight. Just your average mix of bad taste.
    There was a baker’s dozen of white folk as pale as myself, all dressed as if they were going slumming; a trio of black women heatedly discussing something obviously near and dear to their hearts, and an olive-skinned boy with low-slung jeans bobbing to the beat of the iPod plugged into his ears. His baseball cap was frayed and said INY.
    “You sure this is the right place?” Rivera asked.
    “She said United—” I stopped talking as two men in turbans turned left into the area. They were tall and lean, with hungry eyes and handsome hooked noses.
    “Wow,” I said. I can’t help it, there’s something about those haughty Middle Eastern men that makes the animal in me want to take a bite out of their dark-meat flanks.
    The taller of the two shifted his sexy dusk gaze toward me and my breath caught in my throat. He stood very straight, shoulders drawn back, somber mouth even.
    “Looking to be wife number six?” Rivera asked, and I snapped myself back in line, silently reprimanding the lazy-ass feminist in me.
    “Do you think they’re looking for her?” I asked, and turned my gaze casually away, but Rivera was still glaring at me.
    “Are you looking for them?” he asked.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, and skimmed the growing crowd.
    “You look like a hyena in a herd of wildebeest.”
    I gave up my perusal. “Maybe you could be jealous and insecure later,” I said, and he snorted.
    The boy with the New York cap adjusted his backpack, then touched a finger to his iPod, and in that moment I noticed something odd. I scowled and turned toward Rivera, not wanting to seem conspicuous.
    “Don’t they usually light up?”
    “Would it be too much to ask you to make sense?”
    “iPods,” I said, frustrated. Laney would have understood my question, and had an interesting TV-related anecdote seconds ago. “Don’t they light up when you touch them?”
    “Do I look like Sean Diddy?”
    “Just the attitude,” I said, and turned momentarily back to the boy. His eyes were large, dark, lipid, and gorgeous. His black hair was cut short. In a second he looked away and tugged his tattered baseball cap lower over his forehead. His backpack looked heavy and his wrist was bruised.
    Our eyes met, and in that moment he lowered his arm, letting the sleeve of his jersey fall back in place, but it was already too late.
    I had found Aalia. Unfortunately, there was no reason to believe the turbaned men hadn’t done the same.

10
Red lace garters have their appeal, but naked’s pretty much a showstopper.
— Lieutenant Jack Rivera,
while perusing Chrissy’s
Victoria’s Secret
    I sucked in a gasp and yanked my attention back to Rivera. “It’s her.”
    “What are you talking about?” He was still scanning the crowd, but I touched his arm and laughed, at which time he glanced down as if I’d lost my last viable marble.
    “Don’t look,” I said, but he lifted his head, and in that moment I did the only possible thing I could do. I kissed him, openmouthed and no-holds-barred.
    One thing I’ll say for L.A. cops, they can rise to the occasion. I felt it happen against my thigh, in fact. Felt his tongue slip into my mouth. Felt my libido amp up like an old rocker’s subwoofers.
    My hand was still on his arm when I pulled away. His eyes were smoky. His voice the same.
    “Where?” he asked.
    I almost said “backseat,” but I caught myself just in time and remembered the moment at hand. “Kid in the baseball cap,” I said.
    He pushed the hair from my neck, caressing my skin with his fingertips. I shivered. It was probably just part of the act. “And the iPod?” he asked.
    “I don’t think it’s turned on. Are the turbans still watching us?”
    He pulled his attention from me, but his fingers remained on my neck. “Yes.”
    “Maybe you