The Vigilante's Lover #2 by Annie Winters & Tony West

Author:Annie Winters & Tony West [Winters, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fifty Shades of Grey, romantic thriller, high tech, romantic suspense, bondage, James Bond, spies, cliffhanger, 007, near future, serial, JJ Knight, thriller
Publisher: Casey Shay Press
Published: 2015-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

It’s sixteen miles before I come across a ramshackle gas station on the highway. I’ve got nothing on me but my clothes and Sam’s Blackphone, which I feel reasonably certain can’t be traced by the Vigilantes since none of the parts or circuits came from their inventory. That’s what makes it a Blackphone.

Still, I power it up only long enough to nab the number of the only person I can think of to get me information on that MMA fight in Vegas, someone outside the Vigilante network but who could access that sort of data.

The Cure McClure.

The Cure is a retired boxer in California. About six years ago, he called on me to help locate an abducted girl, a friend of his son, Colt. Colt was big in the MMA circuit at that time, at the height of his career. Some punk hired a thug to shoot him in an alley, then tried to settle another score with another fighter who went by Power Play.

I remember the girl, black haired and fiery. Maddie was her name. She’d been through some stuff that night. But The Cure called on me for a couple other things after that, and now it is my turn to call on him.

Rather than use the Blackphone and have the use of a high-tech device be spotted so close to the compromised safe house, I head into the door of the gas station to see what I can use inside.

An old man sits behind the counter, reading a newspaper from 2009.

“Hello, sir,” I say to him.

He catches me staring at the front page and shakes the newspaper so it rustles. It’s a nostalgic sound.

“I share your fondness for paper,” I say.

“Still can’t handle those newfangled reading devices,” he says. He thumbs at a pile of papers in his corner. “I figure I’ve got enough old news to keep me occupied till I keel over.”

“Indeed you do.” Quite the fire hazard as well, I want to say, but simply grab three bottles of water from a cooler.

He smacks the back of his hand against a headline. “Really funny to read a decade later about how we’re all going to die of swine flu,” he says. “I love this stuff.”

I wait for his laughter to subside, trying not to sweat the time passing. I drop several dollars on the counter for the water.

“Where’s your car?” he asks.

I down one entire bottle of water before answering. “A few miles back. I need to make a phone call, if I may,” I say. “Cell phone’s dead.”

“All righty.” He passes over his own cell. “I’d have kept my pay-phone box, but those dern workers came one night and hauled it off! Then they told me I couldn’t have no landline neither. Weren’t worth fixing the cables anymore.” He picks up his newspaper. “Damn progress.”

His phone is at least ten years old, an ancient Motorola flip. I pop it open and dial The Cure.

The voice is unhappy and harsh. “Who gave you this number?” The Cure barks.

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