Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun by Andrews, Austin Page B

later as I gave Elmo an appreciative wink and made a mental
note to buy that dog more cookies. She clambered into bed beside me and slid
her hurt arm across my chest. I gently massaged it and her shoulder as she
winced in pain. "So you are in pain, but you deny it."
    "If
you talk about it, you give it more negative energy. I just see it completely
healed," she said.
    I
continued to rub her arm and shoulder and down her back, so soft and cool to
the touch. She must take cool showers, I thought, or she would be
warmer. I lifted the sheet slightly to see the light blond hairs that were
barely perceptible on her body. I tried not to think about what else I'd like
to massage. She took a small, short breath, sighing like a baby. Callie Rivers
was fast asleep across my chest.
    I
lay awake all night, the electrical circuitry of our bodies closing in a tight
loop that pulsed through me, an erotic charge keeping every nerve ending in my
body erect. I cupped my hand over her small buttock. It was breathtakingly
soft. I closed my eyes, envisioning my mouth caressing those very cheeks. When
I opened my eyes, Elmo was staring at me. He licked his lips as if to say,
"Do it and your lips will never touch mine." I chuckled softly.
    At
dawn, I groaned in agony as I tried to roll over. Lying still all night had
caused all my battered and bruised joints to gel and stiffen. I winced before
opening my eyes. Callie's beautiful face was smiling down at me. I smiled
broadly in return.
    "Good
morning," she said sweetly and kissed me on the forehead as one would an
irritable child and then handed me a hot cup of coffee.
    "We
were protected yesterday and we will be again," Callie said with eternal
optimism.
    "I
don't call rolling off a highway down a thirty-foot ravine 'being protected'
even if I did live to bitch about it. I call that «o«-protected. Protected
would be if their guns had misfired and blown up in their hands, killing them
instantly. Now that's being protected."
    "That's
revenge."
    "I
like revenge," I said mildly.
    "You
know that's not true," she scolded.
    "It's
true for me. My truth may be different than your truth, but thank you so much
for the coffee. And that's the truth."
    Callie
placed her hand on my forehead, breathed deeply, and then pulled some invisible
something out of my head and threw it into the air, as if removing a restless
spirit from me. In the blink of an eye, I felt better, even optimistic.
    "What
did you just do?" I asked.
    "Just
cleansing your third eye."
    "Had
I known I had a spare, I would have rested one of my other ones."
    "Ah-ah,
don't make fun," she warned, determined not to let me denigrate her belief
system and clearly bent on enlightening me.
    We
merged onto I-40 looking over our shoulders, afraid someone would shoot us, run
us off the road, or even talk to us, for that matter, but no one bothered.
Elmo's shoulder was better. He hung his head in between the split front seats
and rested his large jowls on the storage console separating Callie's seat from
mine, so he could press his nose up against her arm. She continually massaged
the big white milk-bone design on the top of his caramel-colored head. Victims
of a near disaster, they had apparently bonded with one another.
    "I
brought your birth chart. Pisces, Virgo rising. So that's why you're so
grounded, but yet creative."
    "I
know all about Pisces, Virgo rising." And off her shocked look, I said,
"There's a song about Pisces, Virgo rising, being a good sign, and if the
song's accurate, then I am, in addition, strong and kind."
    "Do
you know that you have Mercury in Aries?"
    "Hum
a few bars and I'll tell you," I replied.
    "It
means you're verbally quick, sometimes maybe too quick, perhaps even
cutting," she said without judgment.
    "Never
heard that," I lied.
    We
drove into the San Fernando Valley about eight p.m., down the 5 and onto the
134 exiting in Studio City. Down a pretty side street, I punched the automatic
gate opener above the visor and the iron