Murder and Mayhem: Book Two
Whoever said blood was thicker than water never stood in a pool of it.
Retiring from stealing priceless treasures seemed like a surefire way for Rook Stevens to stay on the right side of the law. The only cop in his life should have been his probably-boyfriend, Los Angeles Detective Dante Montoya, but that’s not how life—his life—is turning out. Instead, Rook ends up not only standing in a puddle of his cousin Harold’s blood but also being accused of Harold’s murder… and sleeping with Harold’s wife.
For Dante, loving the former thief means his once-normal life is now a sea of chaos, especially since Rook seems incapable of staying out of trouble—or keeping trouble from following him home. When Rook is tagged as a murder suspect by a narrow-focused West LA detective, Dante steps in to pull his lover out of the quagmire Rook’s landed in.
When the complicated investigation twists around on them, the dead begin to stack up, forcing the lovers to work together. Time isn’t on their side, and if they don’t find the killer before another murder, Dante will be visiting Rook in his prison cell—or at his grave.
Buy links: Dreamspinner | Amazon US | Amazon UK
Cat gives this one 5 Meows with a 3 Purr heat index...
If you like Rhys Ford you know she has a knack of mixing a touch of mystery and suspense with awesome characters and can create tension so tight you think it would snap. If you have never read any Rhys Ford and like MM romance with a touch of suspense you should.
Tramps and Thieves is the second book in this series and though it is recurring characters and picks up shortly after the other lets off I do think it can hold its own. However, this is a fun series so why not read both books in order.
Rook is a cat burglar now dating one of the cops that had been hot on his tail, trying to nail him for a murder (or more) in the last book. He is dealing with choosing to trust someone, especially a cop when he has never been able to trust anyone in his life and also the fact he is heir to a vast fortune and real castle. Now he finds himself once again with dead bodies falling around him and himself as suspect in his own cousin's murder.
Dante Montoya is a police officer that instead of catching the notorious cat burglar Rook Stevens but found himself falling in love with him and once again having to prove his innocence, at least in murder.
Tramps and Thieves is a fast paced, action packed story of betrayal, revenge, hate, love you name it it is probably there. Ford writes very intense stories with amazing characters and the story is good enough without a lot of sex so add in some well-done love scenes you have the perfect story.
If you like cops, interracial romance, cat burglars, twists and turns, suspense and some hot man-sex you will love this.
Excerpt...
One
ROOK WORKED his fingers out, reveling in the stretch of fabric across the backs of his hands. His nerves tingled beneath his gloves, palms itching in anticipation. It’d been too long since his last job. Hell, years since he’d coaxed a lock open or tumbled a safe, and his teeth ached from the excitement.
After sex—and Rook could make a good argument that sex still ranked second—stealing was the closest thing to reaching nirvana as someone could get. Or at least it had been before Detective Dante Montoya entered his life.
There could be no thoughts of the sexy, handsome Mexican-Cuban detective. Dante Montoya was a distraction on the best of days but deadly when trying to negotiate through a job. The last two months of Rook’s life were more an emotional roller coaster than steady climb. His world teetering just out of control with Dante’s uncle coming to work with him, his shop, Potter’s Field, reopening after being shot up by the cops, and the sudden, but not unwelcome presence of one sloe-eyed, smoked-honey-voiced cop in his bed was enough to make any man crazy, but toss in the devastating gutting of his diamond-stash nest egg, and Rook was about ready to pull his hair out from the stress.
Besides, he had a job to do.
He missed the jobs. Missed the rifling through other people’s things and picking out what he wanted. It was the ultimate hunt, a slithering into the dark spaces behind people’s lives and digging his hands into the things they wanted to keep secret.
There’d always been something sexual about piercing someone’s security, then seducing a house or business to lay itself open for him, ripe and plump for the taking. Walls needed coaxing, a bit of flirtation and slyness before they whispered their acquiescence.
The house he was in needed no such seducing. Not really. He’d taken four weeks to prepare for the job, training hard to regain the flexibility he’d let go after his retirement. The overstretched limberness needed to slide into tight spaces wasn’t something he’d planned on worrying about when he plotted out his new life.
A twinge along his right thigh was a quick reminder of how far he’d let himself go. His muscle mass and core strength hadn’t changed, he’d seen to that, but his flexibility had gone to shit. Four weeks of careful stretches and insane yoga classes got him close to where he’d been before he’d thrown it all away, but Rook wondered if close was going to be good enough.
The two-story house was a modern glut of glass, polished off-gray wood planks, and sleek white walls, a stark assault of bleached squares and rectangles perched solidly on a broad cliff face, its enormous greens spotted with small clusters of gardens and odd statues. Its mostly glass western-facing walls promised a stunning view, probably as breathtaking as its price. Like many of the houses on the hills, it was bristling with attitude, an aloof structure protected from the general population by high walls and spiky plants menacingly clustered and too thick to walk through. Sitting on the edge of a cliff meant no back wall was needed, or so some idiot probably thought, but it was nice to see the city below without the blur of a transparent Plexiglas barrier used on most of the surrounding hillside homes.
To Rook, the house resembled random sugar cubes some god dropped from the sky when making its morning cup of coffee and was possibly the ugliest place he’d ever seen.
A single step into the house and he’d be crossing back into his old life. Rook didn’t know if the risk was worth it. Everything could crash and burn, leaving him picking up the pieces of… what, he didn’t know… but something. His stomach clenched with both anticipation and dread, and he longed to pick the locks on the far door, then empty out whatever the owner of the house stashed inside his hidey-holes. His nerves jangled, keening for him to make up his mind to go back to his old life or turn around and go on with the one he’d found.
If only the empty Ark of the Covenant prop in his West Hollywood warehouse didn’t mock him. He needed that kind of security in case everything went to shit. There wasn’t anyone he could count on to bail him out of life’s messes. He couldn’t be certain of anyone, not just yet. Maybe even never, and Rook needed to know he had a safety net he could count on.
Since there was only one thing Rook knew more about than pop culture and movies—stealing—he was going to have to return to his roots. A few hits and his nest egg would be replaced with no one the wiser, including Montoya. This one, however—this one was for free—his own personal fuck-you and welcome back to every whisper behind his back and turned-up nose.
“God, they weren’t lying. Just a standard piece of shit.” He studied the door, tamping down a wave of goose bumps across his chest and shoulders. “Feels like I’m digging up a dinosaur.”
The lock on the door off the back patio was a laughable excuse for protection, a simplistic top-of-the-line latch some security company picked up at a high-end home improvement store. Rook debated simply kicking it in just for the sheer pleasure of watching it pop open, but damaging someone’s property tended to piss them off, and nothing fueled a victim’s drive for justice like rage. The gloves on his hands were a familiar skin, a thin, featureless, and expensive latex and microfiber hybrid he got from an elderly Chinese woman in Singapore.
He had to take a moment to subdue the tingle in his belly when he unfurled his packet of tools. It’d been a bit since he’d touched them in any way other than the occasional halfhearted pass at the various pieces he’d bought to keep his hand in. It felt different working on the real thing. As much of a piece of shit as the lock was, it kept him out.
And if there was one thing Rook hated, it was being kept out of something he was curious about.
He’d wanted to play with it more, play it out to get the full, long stroke of cracking the house open, but he didn’t have the time, and no matter how slow he went, it wouldn’t be long enough to satisfy the itch under his skin he got when trying to break into a place he really shouldn’t be. A slender curve of metal and a pick would be enough to get him through the door. He paused, sniffing the ice-cold air beyond.
“Jesus, I’m getting hard just standing here.” Sex was a definite second to breaking and entering, or at least the foreplay of it was.
The ache in Rook’s lower back, a pleasant pull of muscles he’d kept limber, ghosted a memory through his brain, echoes of a hot mouth pressed into his skin, silken Cuban whispers promising all manner of delicious, wicked things Rook had to look forward to later that day. His body tightened in response, remembering the glide of slightly callused palms over his back and thighs before supple thumbs dug into his ass, kneading his cheeks in a gentle massage with a sharp bite and a quick slap at the end meant to push Rook out of bed.
“Okay, maybe sex before Montoya. Glad I can still fucking walk,” he muttered as he paused at the measly lock, shaking off the feel of his lover’s body on his. “Let’s get this done and see what our boy Harold’s got stashed away.”
It’d been forever since he’d worked on something as simple as the mechanism and security system his mark had installed on the mansion’s back entrance, but Rook took his time, enjoying the teasing open of the device, letting the initial rush of breaking in wash over him.
It was nearly exactly like sex. A few strokes of metal on metal, a hint of metallic kiss he could taste on his tongue when a tumbler gave way, then a rush of warmth over his skin. Rook sank into the silken velvet of the melancholy happiness filling him, closing his eyes when it grew too much for him to absorb.
“Fuck, I missed this,” Rook whispered, stroking the edge of the lock. “Why the hell did I give this up?”
“Are you there, Rook?” Alex’s voice crackled in his ear. The two-way turned his cousin’s melodic baritone into a gruff, cigar-roughened bass drilling into Rook’s brain. The jawbone headset was a sleek piece of tech he’d have loved back in the day, fitting neatly into Rook’s ear canal and barely noticeable until Alex boomed through it like a squat Viking chasing after a rabbit on a fat white pony. “Were you talking to yourself?”
“Well, sure I’ve got to talk to myself, ’cause I’ve got an idiot on the other side of this mic,” Rook teased back. Sighing as the moment passed, he stood up, ready to disengage the house’s main security system. “What’s up?”
“A cop car just passed right by me. Suppose they come back?” His cousin sounded worried, but Alex always sounded worried if he drifted too close to the line of criminal activity. He was the kind of guy who’d turn in a dollar he found at the beach and pay a parking ticket left on his windshield but written for the car behind his. “Really, Rook. Are you listening to me? What do I tell them?”
“Alex, you’re a blond twenty-ish guy in glasses who looks like he’s one hieroglyph away from discovering where the Stargate is buried and sitting in a sports car worth more than the average cop’s house.” Easing the door open, Rook stepped into the house and took a deep inhale of its air-conditioned air. “Believe me, cuz, when I tell you, the only reason they’d stop to talk to you is to check to see if you’re lost.”
“Are you sure?” Rook heard the strain in Alex’s voice. “Suppose—”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Besides, if they were really curious, they’d run your plates.” He chuckled into the headset. “And then wonder how the hell a cop’s husband can afford that car. Now just sit tight. You’re the getaway driver, not a cricket in a top hat sitting on my shoulder.”
“But—”
“Alex, I love ya, man, but I’ve got to get to work,” he reminded his cousin. Cracking his knuckles, he grinned wide enough to make his cheeks ache. The walls were singing, promising him a payoff rich enough to fill the dent in his bruised ego. “Get off the line, wait for me to ping you, and make sure you’re dolled up and wearing your prettiest dress out there, because in about fifteen minutes, I’m going to need you to dance us out of here.”
Rhys Ford is an award-winning author with several long-running LGBT+ mystery, thriller, paranormal, and urban fantasy series and was a 2016 LAMBDA finalist with her novel, Murder and Mayhem. She is published by Dreamspinner Press and DSP Publications.
She’s also quite skeptical about bios without a dash of something personal and really, who doesn’t mention their cats, dog and cars in a bio? She shares the house with Yoshi, a grumpy tuxedo cat and Tam, a diabetic black pygmy panther, as well as a ginger cairn terrorist named Gus. Rhys is also enslaved to the upkeep a 1979 Pontiac Firebird and enjoys murdering make-believe people.
Website: http://rhysford.com/
Twitter: @rhys_ford
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Thanks for the review! This book was fantastic! I loved book 1 and the years waiting for this were well worth it.
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I love the excerpt! I can't wait to read this book. I love to read about criminals, especially ones that are techie. (jozywails@gmail.com)
ReplyDeletegreat review and congrats
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Thanks for the review. I've enjoyed this series.
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