[Status: Completed. Final Word Count: 30,000. Publisher: Liquid Silver Books. ISBN: 978-1-59578-374-5. Anthology: Boundless. Release Date: September 3, 2007]

Blurb

Jack Ridley is an old-fashioned reporter. He doesn’t believe in anything unless there’s a ton of evidence to back it up and even then, he may still have a question or two hundred for it. Until he meets Kitty Jones and falls like a ton of bricks. Suddenly, Jack can’t seem to care that the ducks in a nearby park are turning pink or giant statues of naked men are appearing out of nowhere in the middle of downtown Chicago traffic.

Pink-haired Kitty Jones is beautiful, flirtatious, and seemingly happy-go-lucky. Under the cheerful, self-assured façade, however, she is slowly falling apart. Not only does she suffer from blackouts and wakes up unable to recall where she is or how she got there, she seems to be seeing dragons… everywhere. The only person she can turn to now is Jack Ridley, a tough-as-nails reporter who seems to have a few secrets of his own.

Excerpt

“A sunken ship just appeared in the middle of a bar on 4th and B. Go!”

Jack Ridley hung up on his boss and crawled out from under the mountain of blankets and dirty clothes piled on top of him. Scratching his bare chest and yawning wide enough to crack his jaw, he slid down to the carpet. There was a crunching sound beneath him as he sat down and he pulled out the partially crushed beer can that was digging into his ass. He looked down at the cell phone on his hand and the display told him it was eight o’clock in the evening. He ran a hand down his face.

“Good going, Ridley. You slept right through Wednesday.” He braced a hand on the corner of his bedside table and pulled himself up, groaning as his bones creaked and popped with the exertion.

He stumbled into the bathroom, tripping on the empty pizza box and the hard plastic controller of his videogame console on the way. Ignoring the throbbing in his toe, he fumbled for the light switch on the bathroom wall and blinked at his reflection on the mirror above the sink as his eyes adjusted to the harsh glow of the fluorescent light. His red-rimmed, deep-seated eyes stared back blearily at him. There was a yellowing bruise under his left eye from a psycho who thought Jack had stared a little too long at his skank girlfriend. A beer bottle to the back of the head had disabused the fucker of the notion. Jack got his ass hauled to the drunk tank overnight for it, but damn it had been worth it.

His face, his grandmother told him, was that of an angel. An ex-girlfriend who was an Art History major in college told him he possessed features Michelangelo would have killed to sculpt. He laughed bitterly at the memory. It was the reason he’d learned how to fight at an early age. The bump on the bridge of his nose, the pencil-thin scar on his upper lip, and the ragged two-inch slash on his left temple all had stories of their own.

Combined with the two day-old beard, the faded dragon tattoo that wrapped around one bicep, and the hatchet job he performed on his hair twice a month with a rusty pair of scissors, he looked like a junkie who’d kill his own mother for a fix. He ran a hand over the inch-long black spikes on top of his head. It was getting a little long. He’d have to do something about it soon.

He turned on the faucet, cupped his hands underneath, and splashed his face a couple of times before applying soap to it. He rubbed vigorously for a minute, then rinsed thoroughly, slicking back his hair with the water in his hands as he straightened up.

While he swished a mouthful of Listerine, he flung open the medicine cabinet and reached for the bottle of Vicodin. The label told him it belonged to Mary Ann Smith. He frowned when he didn’t recognize the name. A moment later, a smirk twisted his upper lip. The long-legged blonde with the mouth like a DirtDevil and a bathroom that looked like a pharmacy. While she slept, he swiped some Prozac, some Percocet, and his drug of choice, Vicodin, before sneaking out of her apartment.

He spat out the Listerine and tossed back three Vicodin tabs, crunching them between his teeth and washing them down with a handful of sink water. A quick sniff told him he should probably take a shower soon, but he had no time for that now. He scrubbed under his arms with a wet face towel, then gave them each two swipes of deodorant to cover up the funk. He slipped on the first pair of jeans he found on the floor of his room and a blue t-shirt from the pile on his bed that looked passably clean. There was a tiny spot of blood on the chest from the little bar scuffle he’d gotten into the other night, but the shirt was dark enough that it was hardly noticeable. Besides, that was what a jacket was for.

On his way out, the phone in the pocket of his jeans began to vibrate. Probably his boss again, wondering where the hell he was. But as the pleasant hazy feeling from the Vicodin began to sweep over him, he decided to ignore it.

***

Jack parked his motorcycle a few blocks from the Red Dragon Bar because he couldn’t find a spot any closer. He’d been to it a few times, but it had never been packed on a weeknight. The college kids, punks, slumming yuppies, and hoodrats looking for hook-ups were nowhere to be seen tonight. Instead, the place was swarming with cops, their pig mobiles parked in the middle of the street like they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about blocking traffic. There were also an ambulance, a fire truck, and a couple of news vans. Gary Stevens, a correspondent he used to work with, spotted him and gave him a nod of acknowledgment.

Bemused, Jack found himself nodding back. What the hell was NBC doing here? Shit, maybe he shouldn’t have hung up so quickly on Harry. He tried to remember what it was that his boss had barked in his ear and the words that echoed back to him were “sunken” and “ship”. At the time he’d been a little fuzzy with sleep—not to mention hung over—so he didn’t really think to ask Harry to clarify. Harry was always sending him on bullshit jobs. That was what he and his team specifically covered: bullshit. Each week, they produced a segment featuring crackpots and charlatans living in the Chicago area for a local news station and gleefully busted each and every one of them on live TV. Last week, it was a psychic dog. The week before that, it was a woman who could read your future from the cellulite on your butt.

It was gutter-work for a guy who sported a Peabody award on his mantel, but shit, it paid the rent. And the booze.

“Yo, Jack!”

His head automatically pivoted toward the direction of the voice calling him and he found his cameraman and production assistant across the street, standing to the side of the bar and distinctly out of the way. Kenny Hardaway lowered his camera from his shoulder and waved him over. Jack sighed. Reaching into the inside pocket of his bomber jacket, he pulled his pack of cigarettes, stuck one between his lips, and crossed the street, squeezing his lean body between the gridlocked cars.

“What the hell’s going on, man?”

“‘Bout time you got here, bossman.” Kenny produced a lighter out of his pocket and touched the flame to the end of Jack’s cigarette. “Fucking pandemonium breaking loose all over the place.” He jerked his head toward the bar. “Crowded as hell in there. A goddamn mouse wouldn’t be able to squeeze in. Good thing the talent’s stuck in traffic or she’d be whining about not being able to get in.”

Kenny was barely out of college, but was the most brilliant A/V guy Jack had ever worked with. At five-five, he barely came up to Jack’s shoulders, but carried himself with the confidence of a much bigger guy. He was dressed in the urban style favored by white kids who grew up watching MTV: baggy jeans, oversized yellow windbreaker, hundred dollar sneakers, and neon-blue goggles resting atop his heavily-gelled, spiky red hair. As ridiculous as he looked, Jack knew he could throw down if necessary. He once had to spring the kid out of jail for beating the shit out of a guy twice his size.

Jack drew heavily on his cigarette and nodded toward the uniforms interviewing the bystanders and the people being attended to by the EMTs. “Harry babbled something about sunken ship appearing out of nowhere like a David Copperfield trick. Did anybody get squished?” Even as he heard himself say the words, Jack couldn’t quite believe he said them. The whole thing was so surreal.

“No, but that would have made good copy.” Standing next to Kenny, Jack’s PA blew on her hands and a puff of air plumed out of her mouth. “All the injuries were idiots running out of the bar in a stampede and stepping on each other.”

Tiff Olsen was a black-haired heavyset girl with a giant chip on her shoulder and a view of the world that was even more cynical than Jack’s. Tonight she was wearing a burgundy sweater, a knee-length black skirt, black fishnet stockings, and black combat boots. Over the outfit was a black trench-coat that swallowed even her chubby frame. Kohl eyeliner and artificially long and thick eyelashes that reminded Jack of spiders framed her deep green eyes. Her lush mouth, which was set in a perpetual frown, was a deep purple. Completing the look was a tiny silver barbell that bisected one pencil-thin eyebrow and a silver hoop that hung from her left nostril. Kenny once told her she would be prettier if she didn’t have all that junk on her face and received a slap for his trouble.

Jack gave the twosome a measuring look and took another drag of his cigarette. “Guys, level with me here. How the hell did it happen? Could this be a publicity stunt and they built the thing inside? How big is it?”

“Overheard a uniform saying it’s a twenty-foot fishing boat or something.” His cameraman pulled out a notebook from the pocket of his windbreaker and flipped it open. “It has a name, too. SS Kiyo. Shit, if it’s got a name, it’s gotta be registered somewhere, right?”

Jack shrugged. At this point, he really didn’t know what to think. It had to be a hoax of some kind. It was just a matter of figuring out how it was done. He had never come across a “miracle” that he couldn’t expose for the scam that it was. “We’ll have to look it up, see if it’s an actual boat that sank somewhere. If it’s for real, it will have a history. We’ll talk to the owner of the bar, see what we can shake loose.” He flashed his teeth at his crew. “We’ll solve this one, kids, don’t worry.”

Tiff made a sound of exasperation. “Jack, Kenny and I canvassed the crowd while we were waiting for you. You know what they told us? The fucking thing really did just pop out of nowhere. There’s even seaweed and shit hanging from it. This punk we talked to thinks it was puked up by the Bermuda Triangle.” An odd look crossed her face as though she couldn’t quite believe what she was saying, either. “That lady over there said it was, like, beamed down. Like Scotty and Star Trek, you know?”

Jack swallowed the rude comment that prodded at his lips. Tiff had a good head on her shoulders—a heavily decorated one, maybe—and he’d never doubted that the girl was smart. Right now she just looked freaked out. He lifted his head and looked at the woman she pointed out.

The first thing he noticed was the pink hair. It was cherry-flavored cotton-candy pink. It was screaming, yelling, kicking pink. There was a lot of it and it was piled in a bun on top of the owner’s head. The tiny, elfin woman would have been overwhelmed by the spectacle that was her hair if she weren’t built like a brickhouse. Perky, generous breasts strained against the white short-sleeved, almost see-through blouse she wore. The cop interviewing her was valiantly trying to keep his eyes on her face, but was obviously losing the battle, and the woman’s tits were practically begging to be ogled. The black skirt she wore stopped several inches above her knees and her long, slender legs were covered in black fishnet stockings. On her feet were pink knee-high boots that were the same shade as her hair and sported four inch stiletto heels. The red apron tied around her waist had a drawing of a white dragon on it and the nametag pinned to her left tit told him she was a waitress.

“Nice, huh?” Kenny murmured next to him. “Hottest piece of ass I’ve ever seen outside of a lingerie ad. I’ve always had a thing for Asian chicks. Too bad she’s nuts.”

Tiff smacked Kenny’s chest with the back of her hand. “God, you’re such a pig. Like you’d even have a chance with her.” She crossed her arms across her chest and glared at the woman. “She started babbling about aliens, so I figured she didn’t know shit. That cop’s probably just talking to her ’cause he thinks he can get lucky.”

Jack listened with half an ear to his bickering crew, but found that his feet were already walking towards the pink-haired woman. He just had to talk to her, never mind that she was a kook. And it wasn’t just her tits and ass—all right, maybe it was, a little—but something else pushed him. His reporter’s instincts, the one that once netted him a Peabody and a slew of smaller awards, told him this woman was… well, special. Worth talking to, at least. He stubbed his cigarette against a lamp post and flicked it toward a trashcan. The cop was just saying goodbye to her as Jack walked up.

The woman looked up at him with interest and Jack felt as though he had been punched in the gut. She had the look of an old-school Hollywood bombshell mixed with a Japanese anime character. She was a sex kitten, an innocent schoolgirl, and two fingers of straight-up, single-match scotch rolled into one. Jack felt like dragging her into a dark alley for a quick fuck, then asking her out to a nice steak dinner afterwards. He couldn’t recall ever feeling quite like it in his entire life.

Her heavily-lashed, almond-shaped eyes were shockingly violet and something told Jack they weren’t contact lenses. Damn, a man could fall into those eyes and never want to leave. He cleared his throat and stuck out his hand. “Jack Ridley, KTCI News. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

She ignored his hand and pursed her lips, raking her eyes from his scruffy boots to the top of his head. No doubt she was wondering if she should talk to him or mace him in the face and run away screaming. Her violet gaze settled for a moment on the scar on his forehead before moving on to meet his eyes. “Why aren’t you all suited up and wearing a tie like those other guys?” She tilted her head towards the other reporters talking to the crowd.

There was sexual appreciation in her eyes and Jack’s jeans became uncomfortably tight. He had to resist the urge to reach down and adjust himself. “I do the pre-interviews. I make sure that what you have to say deserves to be on the eleven o’clock news before I have you talk to our correspondent.”

She sucked her lower lip between her small, white teeth as she looked at him as though trying to decide if he was legit or not. “Hmm…”

Jack swallowed hard as the tip of her tongue peeked out to touch the corner of her full mouth. She was wearing a light pink lipstick and a generous amount of lip gloss. “Can you tell me what happened…” His eyes dropped to her nametag. “…Kitty?”

“Like I told your crew, Jack—” She nodded at something behind him and took a step toward him to place her small, pale hand on the sleeve of his brown bomber jacket. “I was only a few feet away when it happened. One minute I had a pounding headache and wishing I could go home already and the next, I was flying across the bar. When I came to, the boat was there. There was, like… a flash of light before it happened.”

“Yeah, I heard. Like Star Trek.” He didn’t have to look behind him to know his crew was at his back. Tiff made a joke he couldn’t hear and Kenny snickered in response. He ignored the both of them. “If this boat just popped up right there in the middle of the bar, what happened to the people sitting there? They weren’t injured?”

“No.” She reached up to snag a lock of hair that had slipped out of her bun and tucked it behind her ear. “They were… um… just kind of pushed to the side. Some people were flung out of the way like me, but all I got was a scratch.” She pointed to the white bandage taped to her elbow. “Some people think it’s…” She hesitated and stopped.

“What?” Jack prodded patiently.

She bit her lip again and touched her neck with long, graceful fingers. Her nails were painted black. “It’s silly, but some people think it’s aliens returning a ship they took out of the Bermuda Triangle.” She took another step closer and leaned her head toward him as though to sniff him. “Could you spare a smoke? I quit an eternity ago, but after the night I’ve had, I think I deserve one.”

Jack reached for his pack and pulled out a stick. He meant to hand it to her, but she tilted her head toward him and parted her lips. He groaned inwardly. Was she playing with him? She had to know what she was doing to him. A bead of sweat trickled from his temple down the side of his face, but somehow he managed to bring the cigarette to her mouth. Her lips formed a smile around the filter, her violet eyes sparkling. He took out his lighter to light it for her, but before he could get it to work, the tip of the cigarette flared to life. Her eyes widened in shock. With a shaking hand, she took the cigarette out of her mouth and stared at it in wonder. “That’s some trick. How did you do it?”

“That wasn’t me. This thing’s probably defective,” Jack muttered, snatching it out of her hand and tossing it on the ground to squash under his boot.

“What the hell kind of defect is spontaneous combustion?” Kenny demanded. He hoisted the camera back up on his shoulder. “Damn, I can’t believe I didn’t get it on tape. Give her another one, see if the same thing happens.”

The waitress shook her head. “Nuh-uh, no way. It’s probably a sign I shouldn’t be smoking.” She backed away when Jack held out the pack to her. “No thanks.”

Jack stuck the pack back into his pocket, making a mental note to open a new pack when he got home. No way was he smoking the rest of it. A college buddy of his was a chemist and could check out the cigarettes for him. “Okay, Kitty, sorry about that. Now back to your story. Did anything… weird happen before the boat appeared?” The waitress gave him a droll look and Jack paused. “I meant, was there a signal? Like… um… a warning of any kind?”

A gust of cold air blew strands of hair away from her face and she shivered, rubbing the goosebumps from her arms with her hands. “Honestly, I don’t know. I had a really bad migraine and wasn’t really paying attention. One of my tables was occupied by a bunch of nerdy boys just sitting around not ordering anything. Like, hello? They could have gotten more than a pitcher of light beer and a basket of curly fries.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, they were babbling about Aquaman and the Bermuda Triangle when all of a sudden—”

For a brief moment, Jack was entranced by the way her nipples had pebbled underneath her bra and top and couldn’t form a coherent thought in his head to save his life. He couldn’t look away from them. They were so full, so round. Her voice blended into background noise as he continued to stare at her tits. He caught himself just as he was about to reach out and grab one. Get a grip, Jack. Focus. He slipped off his jacket and wrapped it around her slender form, mostly so he didn’t have to look at her nipples anymore. “Are you saying you had customers discussing the Bermuda Triangle before the boat showed up?”

Tiff tugged at the sleeve of Jack’s t-shirt to get his attention. “Uh… hate to play the Devil’s advocate here, but if it were really zapped from the Bermuda Triangle, why the hell would it show up in a bar in Chicago of all places? We’re quite a ways from the Atlantic Ocean, you know.”

Kenny snorted. “I don’t even know why you’re trying to make sense of this, Tiff. There’s obviously some serious Twilight Zone shit happening here.”

Kitty looked at the two of them with bemusement, but didn’t say a word. Instead, she pulled Jack’s jacket tighter around her and offered a small smile to Jack when she noticed him staring at her. Jack couldn’t help but smile back. She looked so tiny and adorable inside his jacket, pink hair and all.

“Listen, Kitty, do you think you can get us inside? I want to get a closer look at this boat. My cameraman here doesn’t even have footage of it yet.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. As soon as the forensics guys came in, they kicked everyone out and won’t let anyone in.” She flipped his jacket off of her shoulders and handed it back to him. “Party’s over, as far as everyone’s concerned. Me, I’m gonna go home.”

Jack took his jacket back and slipped it on. “Oh. Do you want to wait until traffic dies down a bit? You’re probably not going to get anywhere at this point.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the bumper-to-bumper confusion on the street behind him.

“It’s a good thing I don’t drive, then.” She smiled again and nodded at both Tiff and Kenny. “See you around.” She briefly touched Jack’s chest and walked away, slipping into the crowd of confused bar patrons, bystanders, cops, and paramedics. Jack followed her with his eyes until he could no longer see a trace of her pink hair.

Kenny began to pump his hips, spanking the butt of an imaginary woman. “You gonna hit that, Jack?” He wiggled his eyebrows. “That bitch was like buttah.”

Jack was used to Kenny referring to women in less than flattering terms, but this time, he felt like smacking him on the back of the head with his shoe. “You’re full of shit. Shut the hell up, all right? I’m not in the mood.” He slipped a cigarette between his lips, remembered they were defective, and reached up to take it out of his mouth. After a moment’s pause, he shrugged and lit it up, anyway.

Kenny punched him in the arm. “Dude, you were so digging that waitress!”

“Yeah, Jack, you couldn’t take your eyes off of her,” Tiff said with a snort of disgust. “Talk about obvious. Why do men go for big-tittied bimbos like that? And ugh, that hair! Who did she think she was, Rocker Barbie?”

Kenny shrugged. “I’m sorry, but you totally lost me after ‘big-tittied bimbos’.”

Jack flung his arm out to stop Tiff from launching herself at his cameraman. Behind him, the goth girl snarled and tried to get at Kenny. “All right, never mind the waitress. We need to get into the bar somehow and look at the boat…” He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around to find his former co-worker Greg Stevens behind him.

“Forget the bar, Ridley. You’re not getting in.” The blond and usually polished NBC correspondent had already loosened his tie and unbuttoned his suit jacket. “They’ve got that place on lockdown. There’s some serious shit going down and nobody’s talking. I hear they’re calling in the Feds, too. People are starting to get scared, man.”

Jack narrowed his eyes at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Combined with the ducks in Sheffield Park turning pink, the apple trees bearing oranges, and cats giving birth to puppies, folks are talking end-of-the-world stuff.”

Jack removed the cig from his mouth and stared at Stevens. His boss Harry had dismissed the recent rash of weirdness that’s been happening all over Chicago as tabloid garbage and didn’t bother sending Jack and his team to investigate. For once, Jack was happy to agree with him. Was there something to all of it, after all? The hard-bitten cynic in him refused to believe it. “What have you been smoking, man?”

A smirk curled Stevens’ lips. “If you hadn’t been so busy covering psychic dogs, Ridley, you would have known about this. What happened, man? You used to be on top of this stuff. Was that Peabody award a fluke, after all?”

Jack’s fingers curled into fists and he took a deep breath to keep himself from rearranging Stevens’ pretty boy face with a few well-placed punches. When he got his temper under control, he bared his teeth in a parody of a smile. “It was nice seeing you again, Stevens. Let me know how this ghost-ship thing turns out.” Without looking at his crew, Jack snapped his fingers and jerked his head. “Let’s go, kids.”

Kenny and Tiff jogged to catch up to him. When they were about a block away from the bar, Tiff grabbed his arm to stop him. “JR, what’s going on? Are we really going to let that assmunch Stevens scoop us on this?”

Jack placed his hands on the girl’s shoulders. “Hey, there’s nothing to be done here tonight. You heard Stevens. No one’s talking and everyone’s a little freaked out right now. We’ll come back when it’s not so crazy and give it our good old-fashioned myth-busting treatment, all right? We’ll blow those guys out of the water.”

Tiff gave him a reluctant smile. “I wish you’d punched him, Jack.”

Jack sighed and tugged at the hem of his jacket. “Stevens is an asshole, but the fucker’s well-connected. If I had punched him, it would have gotten back to Harry and he would have fired my ass faster than you can blink.”

Kenny looked at the two of them and shook his head. “Man, you guys are really depressing me.” He kicked a flattened can of soda on the street, then looked up, a grin slowly crawling across his face. “You know what would make this night passable? Waffles. Who’s with me?”

Jack thought of his dark, empty apartment where a bottle of Jose Cuervo waited for him and realized he wasn’t quite ready to go home. He supposed he could sit in the shadows and jack off thinking about the pink-haired waitress. He sighed and dragged a hand over his hair. Forcing himself to smile, he slapped the kid on the shoulder. “All right, but you’re buying.”