Authors often refer to their
books as their babies—especially when asked to say which one is their favorite.
“How could I pick? It would be liking choosing between two of my children!” And, in most cases, that's exactly how it feels to me, too. But there are always exceptions.
There are some books where it seems like the stars aligned
just right. The words flow; the story pieces fit together without obvious holes,
and without any needless MacGuffins; the characters talk to you like they’re
supposed to.
In short, everything works. Even
the cover art comes together like it should.
Finders Keepers (which
re-released earlier this week) was one of those books. The story was one that I
actually dreamed. When I woke up, and went over the story in my head, I was surprised to realize that, unlike most dream stories, this one actually held together. Well, it was science fiction, so even the odder dream
elements (things like Sally’s hair, or Caleb’s too-youthful appearance) made
sense given the premise.
Here’s a brief excerpt from
Chapter One that sets up the story:
Detective Aldo Nash could almost hear his brain
humming as it worked to categorize the myriad scents tingeing the cool night
air: cedar and sea spray, dry asphalt, cooling car engine, and most potent of
all, the warm, aroused flesh of the man Aldo had pinned beneath him.
Aldo slid practiced hands over the slim,
partially clad form, and the man moaned softly in response, his whole body
writhing instinctively closer as he arched into Aldo’s touch. Aldo pulled in
another heady lungful and smiled in contentment. On nights like these, he
purely loved his job.
He couldn’t say working undercover for the
Oakland PD had exactly been a lifelong dream, but Aldo’s brief stint in the
army had left him uniquely qualified for it all the same, and largely unqualified
for anything else. When the USA was formally dissolved following the economic
collapse of the 2020s and what was left of the military was fully privatized,
the idea of patriotism lost its meaning. Losing Kyle on top of that had left
Aldo with no clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life.
After giving college a try, Aldo had signed up
for the police academy on a whim. Unexpectedly, he found his niche. Now he
derived a lot of satisfaction from knowing he was helping to prevent future
crimes from happening, rather than hoping to solve those that had already
occurred. He got to be proactive, stay one step ahead of the bad guys rather
than the other way around. But the bottom line was proficiency. He was damned
good at what he did.
Not to take away from any natural ability to
dissemble he might have inherited from his late actress mother, but most of his
success was due, in no small part, to all the experimental drugs he’d been
given by the military. His consciousness had been purposely and methodically
expanded, and his brain reconfigured to the point where he could easily exert
control over his brain waves and sympathetic nervous system.
In a world where just about every criminal,
from the capo dei capi of large,
multinational drug cartels to the lowliest of hood-grown thugs, had their own
psi-ops tech on speed dial, that kind of advantage was a definite point in
Aldo’s favor. No matter how skillful said techs might be at worming their way
into other people’s minds and tunneling through their thoughts, with him they
could only read what he wanted them to read.
Of course, there were also things about his job
he didn’t like. The hours were murder since, apparently, crime rarely slept and
when it did, its schedule was crap. The regular debriefings with their
in-no-way-optional mind-scrubs were a major headache. Literally. Worst of all,
the company he was forced to keep generally sucked, and not in that good kind
of way.
That wasn’t the case at the moment, however.
No, when it came to his present company, Aldo had absolutely no cause for
complaint. Tonight’s operation had him working in tandem with a new partner, an
agent on temporary loan from some alphabet agency; Aldo wasn’t sure which one.
He hadn’t asked. He didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter.
They were all pretty much the same, and the agent would be gone soon either
way. Unless Aldo had missed his guess—a possibility he considered most
unlikely—his new partner had been chosen for this assignment based solely on
his looks. And Aldo was certainly not unhappy with those either.
He had no idea how much of the other man’s
appearance was due to surgical alteration or chemical enhancement, but that was
something else he sure as hell didn’t care about. Hot was hot, and Special
Agent Caleb Mitchell was just about the hottest thing Aldo had seen in a good
long while.
Standing at a hair under six feet, Caleb was
just a couple of inches shorter than Aldo. He had fair hair, full lips, broad shoulders
atop a dancer’s slim build, and everything about him, from his features to his
proportions, was a little too perfect to be real. If the man had a flaw
anywhere, Aldo had yet to find it, and not for any lack of searching. Even
though they were both pushing forty, only Aldo looked his age. Special Agent
Mitchell had obviously been the recent recipient of some highly classified and
no doubt heavily restricted cell de-aging therapy, giving him the appearance of
a man a good two decades younger than his current chronological age, the lucky
bastard.
On second thought, maybe it was Aldo who’d
lucked out; he got to look at the bastard, after all.
FINDERS KEEPERS
SFR, Futuristic, Erotic, Menage
by PG Forte
$3.99
Sometimes finding what you want is the easy part.
Caleb is a bionic soldier with little-to-no memory of his past. Aldo's an
undercover cop who's searching for the man who got away. Then there's Sally, an
ER physician who used to be married to Aldo's late partner, Davis. Sally's just
looking for a reason to keep on getting up every day.
This holiday season, chance will bring them together and give them an
opportunity to help one another find what they each want most. But every gift
comes with a price. And keeping what they've found once they've found it? Yeah,
that's gonna be the hard part.
