Midnight Oil
TROY BARRINGTON FELT like a pervert, sitting here in his car in a dark parking lot at 10:00 p.m. Either a pervert or a cop on a stakeout, except he didn't have any doughnuts or one of those cool police radios.
"What are you doing, Uncle Troy?" asked his eleven-year-old nephew, Derek, via cell phone.
He visualized the kid, tousled blond hair sticking out every which way and a chocolate stain on the Marlins T-shirt he liked to sleep in. His skateboard was probably at the end of his bed. "Just sitting out on the porch, smoking a cigar," Troy lied. He couldn't tell an eleven-year-old what he was really up to: spying on a bunch of people he didn't know but suspected were up to no good. He also couldn't tell Derek that one luscious redhead in particular made the stakeout a lot less boring than it could have been.
"Why are you still awake?" Troy asked, tearing his eyes away from her very interesting curves. "Huh? You should be in bed."
"Mom says cigars are bad for you," Derek told him, ignoring the question. "They are. Terrible. But someone gave me this as a gift, and I didn't want to throw it away." It was true that he had a cigar in his glove ... read full excerpt from Midnight Oil ebook
