s*t*a*r*s (Kindred Series-2)

s*t*a*r*s 8 - pt 134

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s*t*a*r*s/J*A*D*E*S

             Mike walks into his office to find Julie Reno sitting at his desk, feet kicked up on his desk.  “Well, look what the cat done drug in,” says Julie.  Her leather jacket is tossed on the desk and she’s brandishing her Blackberry like a weapon.  Julie has two phones, a Blackberry for work and an iPhone for her personal use.  Both of them seem attached to her hand a lot of the times.

             “What do you need, Reno?” asks Mike.  He scoots her from his chair and she stands, she then grandly swings the chair around for him to sit in. 

             “I need a million dollars,” says Julie.  She then snaps her fingers.  “Oh that’s a want.  I need a new camera and I can’t get approval from the tech geeks in accounting.  It’s like I asked for their first born.”  She pauses.  “That is if any of them every have sex.”

             “Where is your camera?” asks Mike.  His green eyes narrow and watch Julie’s reaction.

             Julie grimaces.  “I have the lens,” she says. Her eyes bat lightly. 

             “Where is the body of the camera?”

             “You remember that guy that attacked me the other week and I brained him?  No charges, of course, but nonetheless, I did some skull damage.”

             Mike groans, holds his head and says, “You did that with your camera?”

             “What did you think I did it with?” asks Julie as if he should have already known.  “My fists?  Do I look like Bruce Lee?  I’d have broken a nail, Mike!”

             “I’ll call downstairs to accounting and have someone go buy you one,” says Mike with a heated sigh.

             “A twenty megapixel,” says Julie, slinging her jacket over her shoulder.

             “Like hell!”

             “Fine, I want something big, and powerful, and…”

             “You’ll get the camera that we can afford!  If you want big and powerful go to Home Depot.  Go chase a cheating husband, will you?”

             “Nope, it’s a wife!”

             Mike shakes his head.  Julie was sometimes a bit crazy but she did know how to fit into any situation, she was as physical, if not more so than most men, and was the best investigator he’d ever seen.  He wondered, as he dialed accounting, why the hell she wasn’t a cop.

 s*t*a*r*s/J*A*D*E*S

             Alexandria Pezzini takes her helmet off, slings it onto the handlebars of her Buell and looks around.  Her dark blonde hair cascades midway down her back and her brown eyes seem to twinkle.  Her biker boots tap out a strutting song on the pavement; her worn jeans almost white with age hug her curves.  She slips into an open seat at the outside café.  “Hello, gorgeous,” says Alexandria.

             “Lay it on a little thicker,” says Jo.  Her hair longer combed and slicked back.  She’s wearing a suit, the blouse underneath unbuttoned, showing off some cleavage.  “I could handle sexy.”

             Alex, or as her co-workers called her, Pez winks at Jo.  “Fine, I’ll go with sexy.”

             Jo had been tapped to go under cover for one reason, she was gay.  The serial killer was striking in the LA area and going after lesbian couples.  Typically the couples had been high profile but new to LA, so they were couples who were experiencing their new surroundings.  The couples had also been very loose in their terms of being monogamous.  Pez, who had lived in New York until 9/11, and then spent three years in and out of rehab facilities to regain the ability to walk, was from San Francisco.   Alexandria was Alexis Pezzini and Jo was Jasmine Wade.  Alexandria was a stunt woman who worked on several high profile series and Jo was posing as an up and coming TV producer.  Jo had used her relationship with Helen Hefler, who owned three different movie studios, to put forth both cover stories.