In Too Deep: a Vampire trilogy

By R.C. Murphy

Meghan Sterling—CIA agent.

For six months, she’s been living in Central California under the name Clara Osbourne—and not by choice. The Cold War is over; however, she’s still tasked with infiltrating a potential cell of Russian sympathizers, possibly ex-KGB operatives. The CIA has heard they’ve found a way to render the vast agricultural hub of Fresno, California useless, tainting the produce as well as beef, milk, and poultry produced in the county.

The problem is, the CIA has Meghan following the wrong group. She doesn’t realize their mistake until she’s already in too deep and working with Jarlan and his partner, Rich, in what she thinks is a security company guarding Emerald Produce. She’d never have guessed they were vampires. Until Jarlan forgets she’s off the lunch menu and attacks.

Meghan helps Jarlan control his bloodlust, but she can’t ignore her duty to her country. Someone in California wants to wreak havoc on the economy and food supply. If it isn’t the vampires, then who is it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: R.C. Murphy
• Release date: Jan 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9780988272170

R.C. Murphy

R.C. Murphy spends her nights writing urban fantasy novels and a slew of short stories for her blog, The Path of a Struggling Writer. By day she is a not so mild-mannered housewife, wrangling vampires, demons, and various other nasty creatures. R.C. has joined forces with fellow writers, artists, and actors to form the Zombie Survival Crew where she reviews movies, TV shows, as well as penning articles on important survival skills.

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Just Ink Press, LLC

In Too Deep

Copyright 2013 by R.C. Murphy

All rights are reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Published by Just Ink Press, LLC at Smashwords.

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eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

A Just Ink Press novel

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or were used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Just Ink Press, LLC

1016 S Roosevelt Street

Tempe, AZ 85281

Edited by N.L. Gervasio

Cover Photo Copyright fotorince

Cover design and interior images by N.L. Gervasio

ISBN-10: 0988272172

ISBN-13: 978-0-9882721-7-0

First electronic publication: September 2013

For information, address:

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[e-mail]

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Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

About the Author

Dedication/Acknowledgements

Special Preview

Other Just Ink Press Books

February 1992

Fog in California’s Central Valley was a creature not to be trifled with. It swallowed up buildings, cars, and people without a second thought. The fog took more lives than automatic weapons. A trickster on par with Loki, it manipulated distances, making people believe they had plenty of time to slow down, when in actuality they were seconds from becoming intimate with the rear bumper of a semi truck. Surviving the fog was the most difficult part of life in the valley. Or so Meghan thought.

Meghan Sterling tugged the scarf around her neck tighter and tucked the ends into the too-big uniform jacket hanging off her shoulders. Cold crept in on the heels of the fog. The warehouse parking lot she patrolled was damp, freezing, and didn't make her job any easier. Whose brilliant idea was it to become a security guard? She cursed and shoved her gloved hands in her pockets. It was time to make another pass around the back quarter of the property. Whoop-dee-doo. More weeds and fog. And being forced to deal with the two men stuck working the graveyard shift with her.

Walking with her chin tucked into her scarf, Meghan made her way to the rear of the massive warehouse. Why farmers were so protective of a warehouse full of oranges, she had no clue. The money paid her expenses, but it wasn’t worth the frostbite and vampire-like work hours. She’d need a month-long vacation on the beach when the job was finished.

Let’s grab a bite to eat, a male voice said from around the corner of the warehouse.

Meghan stopped before she stepped into view, listening to her coworkers, despite the lack of movement, which made her colder. She had no desire to trade not-so-witty banter with them any time soon. They were okay on the eyes, actually possessed brains, but ran out of non-manly things to talk about after five seconds in her company. She couldn’t make herself pretend to be interested in the Superbowl.

All you think about is your stomach, Jarlan. Give it a rest. We’re not done here. You can eat on the way home.

I’m tired of fast food. When’s the last time you sat down to a nice warm meal, Rich?

Too long to remember, but we agreed to this job. We can’t leave Clara to watch the place by herself.

Jarlan laughed. She’d piss herself watching shadows if she knew the truth.

Meghan held her breath. Six months of lurking and waiting were about to pay off. She tucked in closer to the warehouse wall. The heel of her boot caught a pebble and ground it into the asphalt. The noise was deafening to her ears. This is why I’m not a ninja.

Cover blown, she plastered a smile on her face and stepped out to meet them near the back door, measuring her pace so it didn’t look like she’d been listening in. Have the oranges turned into man-eating monsters yet?

Rich shook his head and grinned. No, not yet. All’s quiet here. What about the front, Clara?

Meghan rolled her eyes, afraid for just a second they’d stick from the cold. Not even a roach. What’s the point of babysitting produce at three in the morning?

Money. Jarlan clapped Rich on the shoulder with one of his massive hands.

Could the guy be any bigger? He should be in the WWF, not in the middle of nowhere California. Then again, if he was who she thought he was, his size had a purpose. She needed to keep an eye on him.

Money isn’t everything, friend. Rich tucked a strand of his long brown hair into the knit cap pulled down over his ears. We’re almost done for the night. Will you be okay by yourself until dawn?

Nodding, Meghan waved them off. Nothing ever happens out here. If something does, I’ll eat my boots.

Jarlan’s hazel eyes fell to her feet. Not much leather there. You’d have better luck getting a full meal out of a rat. They’re big enough out here, away from the city.

Rats? Meghan had been trained to face a lot of things, but rats made her skin crawl with their naked tails and sharp teeth. Out in the sticks, they were the size of cats. She stole a look around the employee parking lot. Something skittered over the pavement near the eastern fence line. Her shoulders tensed. Please, don't let it be a rat. She'd much rather face anyone stupid enough to cut the fence with three security guards standing in eyeshot.

A leaf tumbled into the jaundiced light puddled on the asphalt. Meghan shook her head and rolled her shoulders to shake off the tension.

The big man laughed. Try not to bludgeon any foliage to death while we’re gone. If something posing an actual threat does come along, use the phone in the guard’s office. Stay out of the warehouse. Without the code, you’ll send an alert to the police and I’ll be stuck doing enough paperwork to level a forest. Take care, Clara.

Rich flipped a wave and the men headed for their cars parked near the gate up front. They couldn’t be more different. Rich was tall, but Jarlan stood easily a foot taller than her. Jarlan’s black hair never grew over a quarter of an inch long in the six months she’d been working security alongside them. She was fairly certain he’d scowled at it in the mirror one too many times and it refused to grow any longer for fear of incurring his wrath. Jarlan joked quite a bit, but when he didn’t want to speak, he wouldn’t. Rich at least attempted to hold civil conversations. And Rich didn’t look like he could bench press a car.

Neither of the men were safe to be alone with. Not if the intelligence she’d received was to be believed.

Meghan finished her walk around the back of the property and slipped into the small guard shack beside the locked front gate. Jarlan and Rich were gone. The taillights of their cars turned the fog beyond the fence line blood red. With them gone, she gave into her desire to curl up beside the small space heater she’d brought in. It clicked, warming up.

Might as well take care of business.

Picking up the phone, she braced the headset against her shoulder and punched in a number she had memorized better than her social security number.

You’ve reached the Osbourne’s. We’re not in right now, please leave a message.

Hey, Mom. It’s Clara. Still no luck on the apartment hunt. Can you save the classifieds for me? I’ll pick them up tomorrow.

Meghan hung up and rubbed her frozen forehead. Waiting for results was the worst part of going deep cover. It’d taken weeks to establish her legend as Clara Osbourne, working god-awful hours with the security firm until she talked her way onto the warehouse gig. It wasn’t like the CIA would send her the money she needed to pay rent. Her cover needed to be organic, untraceable. In other words, she actually needed the damn job she pretended to work.

The heater clicked softly, filling the quiet guard shack. Meghan wiggled her toes inside her boot and cursed. They were so cold, moving hurt. Was it possible to get frostbite without temperatures dropping below thirty degrees? She wasn’t sure, but her toes screamed, Yes! when she scrunched them together in a vain attempt to encourage the warmth from the heater to work into her frozen flesh.

After almost two hours of hiding inside the guard shack, Meghan grabbed her flashlight and headed out to do her last sweep around the property. She made a pit stop outside the front door to the warehouse and jiggled the door handle. Like every night she tried, it was locked. She didn’t have enough know-how about the security system to disable it and slip inside to get a good look at what was actually stored in there. The security company said Emerald Produce stored citrus in the building. Then again they wouldn’t come out and say, By the way, the company is a front for a Russian sleeper cell. No, that’d make her job too damn easy.

She finished her walk around the property and ducked into the relative warmth of the guard booth to finish up the end-of-shift paperwork the guys left her. How kind of them. Her handwriting was nearly unreadable, but she refused to take off her gloves to scribble notes about how quiet it’d been during her eight-hour shift in the fog and cold. Not even a rat to keep me company tonight. Thankfully.

Grabbing her purse, flashlight, and lunch bag, Meghan locked up the shack and climbed behind the wheel of her truck. Saying a prayer, she turned the key and the engine sputtered to life. Along with the lack of help with her rent, the CIA refused to grant her enough to buy a semi-reliable vehicle. They gave her enough cash to get to Fresno, California, buy a car, and feed herself for about two weeks. Until the first check from her security job came in, she’d been living in her truck and hitting a rent-by-the-hour motel on a stretch of Golden State Blvd nicknamed Motel Drive to shower. It was a wonder she hadn't caught an STD just looking at the bathrooms.

Her drive home was a twenty-five minute trip up Clovis Avenue to her apartment. The complex wasn’t anything to write home about. It was surrounded by mostly empty fields, but had the lowest crime rate of everything she found in her price range. Meghan parked in the spot designated as hers and took a breath to brace herself against the cold outside. She bee-lined down the sidewalk and into the middle of the sprawling complex, shivering despite the jacket, scarf, and gloves. The latter made finding the right key for her door a pain in the ass. She managed after calling the key an asshole—twice.

Dark and depressing was an understatement on the inside of her apartment. The lone second-hand recliner sat opposite the staircase where the bathroom and bedroom were. The rest of the living room was empty. Meghan dumped her armload of stuff on the card table serving as her kitchen table and headed straight upstairs for a shower. She hoped to hell the hot water heater worked. If she had to go to bed freezing and smelling like farmland, her meeting with her handler in the morning would seriously suck.

You smell like something a cow spit up.

Meghan looked across the table at an older, strawberry blonde version of herself. Janet's nose wrinkled at the smell coming off Meghan, and she couldn't blame the woman. She smelled more than ripe, despite the spit bath she'd taken before getting dressed. The water heater blew up last night and the complex manager just happened to forget to tell me or even leave a note. I swear, the guy gets his rocks off inflicting as much misery as possible on me.

She picked at the half-eaten stack of pancakes in front of her to give herself somewhere to look other than the pity in Janet's eyes. Janet asked to come to Fresno and act as her handler, her go-between from the CIA, just to keep an eye on Meghan. They'd gone through their CIA training together, despite Janet being twenty years older. Since day one, they clicked. Janet became the best thing Meghan had known to a mother in a damn long time. Her kindness made up for twelve years without her mom, nine without a parent to call her own. There was still a hole in her heart when she thought about her parents. Meghan was only three when her mother collapsed in the park near their house. The doctors said there wasn't anything anyone could have done. She had a heart condition none of them knew about until it was too late. Meghan's father spent three years blaming her for her mother's death. Until one afternoon, when he plowed his car into oncoming traffic. His drunkenness killed himself and a family of four. The youngest child had been a boy about her age.

The only thing that made her life after worth a damn was the fact that the CIA loved to bring on people with no families. It made going deep cover easier. Meghan wasn't sure whether it was true or not. The closest thing she had to family sat across from her, holding a mug of lukewarm diner coffee and looking concerned.

Meghan shoved a bite of pancake in her mouth. I'll be fine.

You always are. Janet ran a hand up the back of her boy-cut hair. She was thinking. Nothing good could come of it. You could use this to your advantage.

And do what, pose as a bum outside the warehouse during the day? I think they'd catch on eventually.

Janet gave her a look. Ask one of the other guards to use their shower. We need some sort of break in this case, even if we expose just one of these men as KGB.

I take it the soil and water samples aren't yielding anything.

Nothing I've found in the samples would end with the type of damage we were warned about. Janet shot a look around the mostly deserted Denny's before she continued. Ceres is sinking fast, unless we can find more information to tell us we're barking up the right tree, or if we're even in the right forest.

Project CERES, the official title, was basically Janet and Meghan busting their asses to make a blip on the radar piece of intelligence into something substantial. The CIA was having a hell of a time letting go of the newly-ended Cold War, which was why when they heard a KGB cell could be in Central California, they jumped into action. Meghan's job was to find the enemy operatives and stop them from destroying the agricultural hub in and around Fresno. At first, she thought her supervisors were insane. How important was some farmland near a city no one ever heard of, outside a handful of jokes in movies? Fresno's claim to fame came in being utterly unknown, unless one lived there. It wasn't until she’d arrived that she realized the full scope of what was at risk. Every bit of land around the city proper was farmland. The amount of produce, dairy, and meat shipped out of the county was astonishing. And here she was, completely clueless after six months undercover with spring on the way. If she didn't find answers soon, the spring harvest wouldn't happen. Food prices would rise and a lot of people would be forced to go without.

Meghan remembered all too well what it was like to go hungry. One of the foster homes she'd been left in after her remaining family refused to take her in the weeks following her father's fatal accident were obsessed with the weight of the women in the house. Every meal was measured, weighted, and cooked to be so bland, she forgot what salt tasted like. Most nights, she went to bed with a growling stomach, her head swimming from hunger. After the second time she blacked out at school, the nurse reported to Child Protective Services and Meghan was moved to another home. Still, the memory haunted her. It was impossible to forget what starvation felt like.

And she was quickly learning how awful it was to go without a shower when working out in the middle of farmland.

Okay, I'll work on getting into one of their houses. She hoped Rich would take the bait. Of the two choices she had, Meghan knew she had a chance of overpowering Rich should it come to it. Jarlan could wipe the floor with her before she ever landed a solid hit. It wasn't a matter of training; he had all the advantages, except for speed. Speed wouldn't be enough to get her out of Dodge if the man caught on to her snooping.

The waitress, with her bleached blonde hair fanned around her head like she'd stuck a fork in an electric socket, dropped the bill onto the end of their table and sloshed some more coffee into their mugs to top them off. Meghan reached into the front pocket of her jeans to see if she even had enough to cover her