Chapter 3 – The Angels Meet

Los Angeles CA, 10:45 a.m.

They pull up across the street from Turquet & Brown Investigations, and Melanie looks over at Amber in her flip flops, short denim skirt and peasant blouse, her hair a total mess, and says peevishly, "For Pete's sake, Amber, I bet your grandpa pulled a lot of strings to get us this meeting, and you're gonna blow it before we even get started."

Amber arches a brow. "How do you figure?"

And what strings? He called Huggy.

"Look at you! We don't even have the job yet, and you're already undercover as a call girl!"

"Better a call girl than a school marm," Amber shoots back, then impulsively reaches out to loosen Melanie's blonde hair from its usual ponytail.

"What are you doing? Now I look like you!"

"Not yet you don't," Amber mutters, deftly unbuttoning the top few buttons of Melanie's knee-length dress to show just a hint of white bra underneath.

"There, Miss Prim'n'Proper," she tells her furiously blushing friend. "Now you look like me, except I'll never be caught dead putting my tits in harness like that."

Melanie rolls her eyes. "It's not a harness, it's a bra, which you'd know if you ever wore one."

"Yeah, whatever," Amber says, rolling her own eyes. "If God meant me to live my life in a bridle, he'da made me a horse." She checks her her cherry lip gloss in the rearview mirror and grins. "So we gonna do this, or what?"

"Absolutely," Melanie replies with a grin of her own, and the two girls fist-bump each other before exiting the red '75 Gran Torino Amber's grandfather had presented to her last month on her twenty-first birthday.


Gracie paces back and forth in front of the Turquet & Brown offices, her white bikini top securely tied again and matched with barely-there black shorts and gray Pumas. She is still furious over her call from Danno, still horny from her too-short tryst with Will, and now, to top it all off, the building itself is locked up tighter than a drum.

She pauses to re-read the sign someone has taped to the inside of the glass door:

Future Angels – Meet me at The Pits – Huggy Bear Brown, Esq.

Given her current mood, Gracie hopes 'The Pits' is a bar, and if this Huggy Bear character tries anything hinky with her, well, it won't be the first time.

She can handle herself, as any number of low-lifes back on Oahu would gladly attest to.

Okay, maybe 'gladly' is the wrong word, but whatever.


Melanie sees her first, a scantily-clad girl their own age with black hair to her waist and a killer tan. She stops in her tracks and clutches her friend's arm.

"Amber, who's that girl? She looks like a hooker or something."

"Then her an' me will probably hit it off. Maybe she's here for the job, like us."

"Dressed like that? Be serious!"

As they continue to cross the street, the other girl turns to watch them come, her hand going into her purse. And from the look in her green eyes, Amber wonders if Melanie's mouth is about to get them killed.

Her hand slips into her own purse, and she waits.