Good As Dead (Dying To Meet You Book 1)

  GOOD AS DEAD

  C.P. Mandara

  Good As Dead © 2016 C.P. Mandara

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Good As Dead

  Everyone Wants Her Dead.

  Six people want her dead. One vampire is under orders to keep her alive, but he's hungry...and for much more than blood.

  Lainey Hargreaves has a secret that she must keep at all costs, a secret that could change the face of the earth—forever. But not all secrets can be kept and when hers begins to escape, she is certain that death will follow. There is only one person that can extricate her from the mess in which she finds herself—a vampire.

  Mercer is that vampire. His quick analytical brain will give them a head start against her assassins, but even he isn’t confident of success. He needs to discover what Lainey is hiding, unravel her secrets, and earn her trust. She will need to learn to obey his every order without question if they are to stand a chance of success. Where’s the best place to start? The bedroom, of course—all women find him irresistible. All women except Lainey, that is. She fights tooth and nail to deny the bright red spark blooming between them, only…

  She’s going to lose.

  Chapter 1

  Approximately Now

  The shrill siren of the alarm clock would not go away. No matter how many times he slammed his hand down upon the shut-off button, the sound refused to stop. It was slowly driving him insane. When he finally raised his head out of the comforting confines of his duvet to stare groggily at the offending timepiece, he discovered he hadn’t even set the damn thing. It was his telephone, which was ringing incessantly.

  Looking at the neon dials of his watch glowing brightly in the black void that his bedroom had become, Mercer swore. It was only six in the evening. No one that knew him would ever ring before eight, and if this turned out to be an insurance salesman, God help the man on the other end of the line.

  Clearing his throat, and swallowing down the taste of vodka that had managed to cling to his tongue even though he had given up drinking at least twelve hours ago, he picked up the receiver.

  “Go away.”

  “Evening, M. We have an assignment for you.” The voice on the other end of the line appeared completely undaunted by his less than cheery greeting.

  “Can’t do it. I’m under the influence and off field duty for the unforeseeable future. The fuckwits at HQ should have told you. I’m grieving.” His voice was a growl of menace and anyone with half a brain cell would have hung up the phone by now, leaving him to his own devices.

  “You have to do it. There’s no one else left.” The man on the other end of the phone sighed, obviously not relishing the battle he knew was about to commence.

  “I’m not doing it. I’m fucking suicidal, and it’s entirely possible that I’ll get whoever it is that you want me to rescue killed along with myself. Believe me when I say, they’ll stand a better chance at living without my ass in the equation.” He knew how clipped his voice sounded but he didn’t care as he pulled the receiver away from his eardrum in order to slam it back down on the bedside table.

  “I doubt it. They’re about to be buried ten feet underground, and then encased in concrete.”

  Even though the phone was at least a foot away from his ear by that point, he still heard Henton’s words, and as much as he wished he had turned the phone off before he caught that little gem, it was with a shaking hand that he brought the receiver back up to his ear. Taking a deep breath, he sighed and said, “Who?”

  “The Ruben brothers.”

  Several expletives were uttered before his dangerously low voice said, “Okay, you have my attention. When is this joyous event supposed to be happening?”

  “Approximately now,” came the swift reply.

  “Approximately?” he queried, and there was a definite edge of sarcasm in there.

  “Okay, it’s happening now.”

  Rubbing his bleary eyes, he sighed. “Do you ever have good news to report?”

  It was a standing joke, and he saw no reason to let his colleague off the hook this evening.

  “And where would be the fun in that?” That was the standard reply too.

  Slapping a hand to his forehead, he tried to get with the programme. “How much air do they have?” His analytical brain would need that information to compute a possible rescue attempt. There was no point getting out of bed if he was already doomed to failure.

  “A rough estimate? About fifty minutes—tops. But it’s been noted on several occasions that this particular human is a real fighter.”

  “Fighter or no, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to punch their way out to get more air. Christ. Couldn’t you have called half an hour ago?”

  “You were pissed enough that I called you now. And no, I was calling someone else a half hour ago. Someone who couldn’t do it, which is why I’ve been reduced to calling you. Now get your ass on over there and get them out before they suffocate. They now have forty-nine minutes of air left, by the way.”

  “Who wants them dead?”

  “Lots of people…which should make things very entertaining for you.”

  “How in hell did they manage to annoy so many?”

  “Time’s a wasting. We’ll discuss the particulars later.”

  “And what do I do with them after they’ve been rescued?”

  “If this conversation keeps going, that will be a moot point.” The line went dead.

  Mercer stared at the phone with what he was sure was an incredulous expression, his brows raised and his mouth agape. Slowly replacing the handset on his bedside table, he muttered, “Well, I’ll just get out my fucking crystal ball and there’s a negligible chance that it will tell me where on earth I’m supposed to be rescuing them from, right?”

  As if his fairy godmother had heard, there was a string of harpsichord notes indicating his cell had received a text message. Already out of bed and jogging towards the shower, he scanned the black and white letters of an address, placed them in the correct geographical co-ordinates and committed them to memory. By the time he hit the shower, he knew he had roughly ten minutes in which to bathe, dress and fuel up with as much black coffee as he could possibly drink while at a steamy ninety degrees in temperature.

  Managing all of the above in just under his allotted time, he shoved his Sig Sauer P220 in the waistband of his jeans, which the bulky black sweater he now wore would easily hide, not that it really mattered. The Ruben brothers weren’t going to hang around to lament the death of one of their unfortunate targets because watching concrete set wasn’t one of the most thrilling pastimes known to man.

  As an afterthought, he grabbed a four-foot shovel from the shed, and hoped to hell that the cement had not begun to set before he got there.

  Screaming

  Forty minutes later, Mercer found himself standing in a freshly ploughed field, which put a decide
dly damp outlook on the evening’s festivities. Slamming his shovel down into the soft wet earth with a snarl of disgust, he considered the situation. He’d expected the grave to be immediately visible since the time restraint he’d been given was an exceptionally tight one. Still, that didn’t mean that whomever the Rubens had buried underground was necessarily going to die but right now, he wasn’t giving them a very favourable percentage rate at getting out alive.

  His amber eyes narrowed sharply as he came up with a course of action. First, he cleared his head and listened intently to the sounds around him. The whistle of the cold December air hit him first as it moved through the grass, whipping the stems back and forth violently. Dead leaves scuttled around the hedgerows and empty foil wrappers of chocolate bars long ago forgotten crackled around the edges of the ditch behind him. Those particular noises didn’t help him in the least but they did confirm that there were no other humans in the area, so the Ruben brothers were long gone. Thank God. If anyone had been above ground, he would have been able to hear their breathing and sense the dull roar of their heart pumping their veins full of viscous, life-sustaining blood.

  Sighing, and knowing there were no other options he began to march in long lines down the length of the field, poking his shovel in at regular four-foot intervals.

  “I hope for your sake you haven’t been buried ten-feet down because if that’s the case, you’re a goner,” he muttered to himself. Kicking his boot into the ground in frustration sending a large clot of mud into the air, he swore.

  “If you can hear me, you need to shout as loudly as you can because it’s a bit tricky to spot buried coffins at this time of night,” he yelled.

  Unsurprisingly, there was no response. His aural senses might be acute enough to hear a pin drop, but the victim’s wouldn’t be. He’d hoped for tears or screaming, but whoever was down there was keeping deathly quiet. Hopefully, they weren’t too dead and had just passed out or he was not going to have a particularly fun evening.

  Using his preternatural speed to the best of his abilities, he covered half the field in just over five minutes. Things were not looking good. He hadn’t heard a single sound. No coughs, splutters or whispers, and more importantly, no banging, thumping or clawing your way out of a coffin type sounds. Exerting himself to the limits of his powers, which were considerable, another two minutes passed before his shovel connected with something solid. Please be a coffin, he begged silently. When he lifted the shovel and the end of the spade showed a coating of wet cement upon its edge, he immediately began burrowing into the earth with impressive vigour.

  Thick clumps of soil flew about in all directions as he began to reveal the outer edges of a standard-sized casket. Another HQ fuck-up then since coffins had six sides, being widest at the shoulders before they tapered down to the feet. Caskets, on the other hand, were rectangular boxes and pretty much the burial box of choice in this day, and age.

  Quickly revealing the sides of the casket, he watched as gloopy cement oozed all over the place. It didn’t stand a chance of setting when the ground was this wet and for that small mercy, he was thankful. Bending down to grip the edges of the lid, he pulled only to meet with fierce resistance. What the hell? Running his hands along the edges of the box, he was amazed to find it featured a heavy-duty stainless steel padlock. Whoever was inside must be frighteningly dangerous if the two heavy-set bouncer brothers couldn’t keep them in order. Pulling the Sig out of his pocket, definitely glad that he’d brought it along, he fired an entire round into the padlock. Hollywood would have the world believe padlocks almost fell off of their own accord once a bullet hit them but unfortunately, this was not the case in the real world. The only sure way to get them off was with a grinder or pair of bolt cutters, neither of which was readily accessible at this time of night—so he had to improvise.

  When his ears finally stopped ringing and the shrapnel had dispersed, he examined the lock to find that all of the rivets had popped up. That was kind of handy, as he didn’t have a spare magazine in his pocket in order to reload. Shaking it forcefully from side to side, he still had to use his otherworldly talents in order to bust the lock free. When the thing finally fell apart in his hands, he took a moment to wonder if perhaps it might have been prudent to retain a single bullet in the barrel. He shook his head. If the thing inside the casket were supernatural, the Ruben brothers wouldn’t have been able to deal with it at all and besides, unless he was much mistaken, it was barely conscious.

  Easing the lid of the unpleasantly gooey casket open, he detected faint shallow breaths. The occupant was most definitely human. Mercer’s senses had come on full force now that the sounds around him had died down. The human’s pulse was racing and his heart was stuttering and about to shut down from lack of oxygen. The overload of carbon dioxide he’d been breathing had been slowly poisoning his blood.

  Flinging the lid wide open and feeling his own heart racing, he placed his arms under the body inside and dragged it free. He needed to get the human out of the confined space and breathing fresh air or all of this would be for nothing. Having estimated the Ruben’s victim had only seconds rather than minutes left, he’d managed to rescue him just in time.

  The first thing he noticed was that the human was unusually light as he flung it up into his arms. He’d expected it to be a man, but it looked like he’d have to re-evaluate his assumption. If HQ had told him he was rescuing a woman, he’d have told them no outright, so it was no wonder Henten was cagey about the victim’s sex. Women usually tended to be a pain around his pretty face, and whilst that was sometimes enjoyable and convenient for a couple of hours a night, it tended to get annoying on a long-term basis. He just had to hope he’d be able to get rid of her quickly.

  Listening to her heartbeat as the influx of fresh oxygenated air rushed into her lungs, he was pleased to note that her pulse rate was gradually slowing down. Her body, which had been twitching with muscle spasms, would take a little while longer to recover but with any luck, she’d be right as rain within a few minutes. With that thought uppermost in his mind, he decided to get her home quickly because he didn’t want her screaming the place down, which he figured was somewhat inevitable since she’d been buried alive in a dark wooden box. He’d come back later and do a tidy-up session after he had her secured somewhere safe with little means of escape.

  Personally, Mercer didn’t care if she ran but he knew someone would insist that he find her again, and that would be a royal pain. If they went down that route, it would involve a whole lot more screaming so moving as fast as he was able, he decided to get acquainted with his new live-in lover. He grinned at the thought since there was no question that they would end up fucking. If she was female, somehow or other, she would end up his bed. It wasn’t ego talking either, thousands of women could attest to the fact. Maybe he’d try his best to stay the hell away from this one. After all, she was obviously trouble with a capital T.

  They were home in just over an hour. Lugging a dead weight around had taken its toll on his speed rating and he found himself panting with the exertion. It was as if he’d just gone from a McLaren P1 to a Ford Focus, and his little workout on the field hadn’t helped matters either. Dumping his unwanted houseguest unceremoniously on the sofa, he went to hit the shower—again. Compulsive, obsessive cleanliness was very much a vampire thing.

  She had come-to briefly on the ride home, but he’d immediately put her to sleep because explaining why the world was whizzing past her in a blur of motion too fast to see wasn’t going to be a fun conversation. They’d save that shit for later. He considered keeping her permanently unconscious, to avoid all the inevitable rubbish that would ensue, but decided that even he wasn’t that mean. Besides, they’d have to work together to sort out her little problem which meant that at some point, he’d have to talk to her. If she wasn’t particularly entertaining, she could spend most of her time asleep, which would suit him perfectly.

  Inside the shower, the water cascaded down upo
n him with scalding heat, which barely registered because hunger had begun to settle down upon his body, and it was going to be uppermost in his mind until he saw himself sated. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d fed and now that he had a human under his protection, it was time he took care of the problem. A hungry vampire was a dangerous beast.

  Sliding a generous helping of shampoo through his dark hair, he threw his head back and soaped himself. He could hear her heartbeat, even under the pounding spray of the shower. Right now, she could be likened to fast food so he needed to get the hell out before he did something he’d regret. He would need to take her blood before he left though, just a mouthful so he could keep tabs on her. That was going to require some willpower because right now he wanted to suck her dry. On the plus side, he was as old as they came and she could be thankful that he had mastered the art of restraint. Even though he was a trained killer and skilled in the arts of death, in more ways than one, she’d be safe in his home. Much more than that, he could not guarantee until he had some facts with which to work. Whether HQ delivered them or whether he peeled them out of her head remained to be seen. The latter option would probably be more entertaining.

  Turning the water temperature down to freezing cold in order to wake himself up, he ran his fingers through his hair as the water rinsed the suds clean. When it ran clear, he turned the faucet off and reached for a towel, rubbing himself down quickly. He desperately wanted to hit the vodka again, but that was no longer an option. He’d have to stay compos mentis, or clear of mind, until he managed to get rid of her after which he would then be able to make up for lost time with any luck. Alcohol, and alcohol alone, was the only thing that managed to take the edge off his grief. The ache was now going to be a permanent fixture to his life and it was almost unbearable. Currently, he didn’t have his shit together, and as the powers that be already knew all of that, they’d just have to take what was left of him and hope for the best.