Uncovered (Dev and Lee Book 4) Read Online Free Page A

Strike leans forward, almost purring.
    “Don’t get the wrong idea,” she says. “I’m a Sabertooths fan. I think this is our year.”
    “You grew up in Crystal City?” Strike asks.
    “Actually over on Fox Beach, by the ocean.” Her attractive, pointed muzzle turns toward me with a smile. “Now, I know him, of course, and I’ve read about you. You’re a defensive player, right? Linebacker?”
    It’s a relief to be addressed as a football player and not “that gay football player.” So I nod. “Outside linebacker.”
    “Well.” She grins. “Our coyote linebacker can kick the shit out of your coyote linebacker.”
    Crystal City has a pair of coyote linebackers, in fact, but I assume she means Polecki, who wears the same number #55 as Gerrard and plays his position, middle linebacker. I just grin back at her. “Maybe we’ll see.”
    “You know,” Strike says, “if we end up in the Championship against the Sabretooths, I might be able to get you tickets.”
    When we land and get to the limo, he sits alongside her facing me. It’s an amusing contrast; he’s huge, and has to sit either with his knees almost at chest level or his feet resting on the seat beside me. Charisse keeps a professional but amiable demeanor, and Strike just keeps edging closer to her, once picking up her tail to move it gently out of the way. The continuing flirtation sets me on edge. But Charisse takes it in stride, even returning it, and it’s none of my business anyway. I’m the gay one. So I don’t say anything, I just sit back and watch the crowded streets of Crystal City go by.
    I never thought of myself as a country boy. Hell, I went to school in Hilltown, and I live in downtown Chevali, and those are both respectable cities. But Crystal City isn’t a city. It’s an unending landscape of concrete and glass and people. It’s like someone took Chevali and squeezed it down so you could fit it onto the Forester U. campus, and then put a hundred of those campuses all right next to each other. Where Chevali is low and spread out, every building in Crystal City is at least three stories, and usually four or five, and there are several clusters of skyscrapers on the horizon that look like any of them could be the downtown area. About the only thing similar to Chevali is the warm sun in winter and the range of mountains you can see to the east. We pass strip mall after strip mall, crowded with more kinds of people than I can count, gold fur and red fur and brown fur, long tails and short tails and fluffy tails, dye jobs that make Strike look restrained. I even see one species I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, a woman with a long narrow muzzle, but she’s past the window before I can look twice.
    When we finally make the turn into the studio lot, I think at first that it’s another strip mall. Then we drive past building-sized posters of some TV shows I recognize, and it occurs to me that I should’ve called my actress friend Caroll while I was out here. I take out my phone, but we’re already pulling up in front of a large beige building and Charisse ushers us out of the car almost before the car’s stopped.
    “Right in here,” she says, holding open a door, and I step through into another world.
    It couldn’t be more different from the Ultimate Fit setup. There’s a small village inside, clusters of chairs and people walking about, constantly moving, all centered around a small stage on which approximately eight hundred lights are trained. When Charisse closes the door, no noise from outside penetrates, all the movement echoes, and my whiskers twitch with the air currents bouncing off the walls. Scents flit by me here and there: people, the sizzle of high-powered lights, and…food.
    As I turn, stomach rumbling, Strike nudges me and lifts his nose toward a table stacked with edibles. Busy people run over to it, grab things, and run away again, while others just stand by it eating. “That’s the catering