It Should Be Fun, a Carl Tanner Novel, #2

By Shayla McBride

Carl Tanner's in for a bumpy ride! For starters, he's not at the top of his game. The nasty women of Sonora did an almost perfect job of killing him, and he's got the dings to show for it. When his new boss at Palmyra group asks a little favor - "It should be fun." - Tanner figures a double-paid week as bouncer at Crave, a ladies' strip club, ought to get him mind off the aches and pains he acquired in Mexico. Twenty years in the Navy, giving and following orders, hasn't prepared Tanner for the club' or its clients. Management doesn't want him there. His supervisor is inebriated, his sidekick a moron. He's stuck in the back hall under the speakers. He thinks it couldn't get worse until he begins to interact with the clients. They don't listen, they sure don't follow orders no matter how nicely phrased. Too many of them want to personally measure him for a G-string. And then there's January Jones. The petite thirty-something blonde claims she has a migraine but Tanner knows migraines and the lady doesn't have the right symptoms. Turns out she hates strip clubs. Why is she here? The odd intimacy that springs up between them makes Tanner uneasy. He knows he's a klutz around women, his technique always been rated a D-minus. So why is Jan Jones hanging around? As Tanner investigates, a series of provocative events make him question the reasons why he's been sent undercover. Something isn't adding up. As he discovers the horrific truth, he's swept into a race against time where others hold all the cards and nothing he learns makes sense until it's almost too late. When the last pieces of the puzzle become clear, it's also clear that January Jones may hold the last, deadly, clue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shayla McBride
• Release date: Feb 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781370727346

Shayla McBride

Shayla McBride lives on Gulfcoast Florida. At one point, after several years in the Peace Corps, she planned to live in Paris. France. But her kids live in Florida so here she is, living a sweet tropical life and not luxuriating in la Belle France. But, oh, for a decent bit of bread!Shayla's keen on gardenng (or at least keeping the greenery at bay), third-world travel, Asian street food, anything to do with kitchens (from total renovation to totally new recipes). She's a sucker for things literary, felines of all sorts, almost any red wine, darkest chocolate, and writing.New writers hold a special place in her heart; she was one for way too long. Now she seeks to help those on that path. After A is for Author, it's back to suspense fiction, destroing whole cities and taking people out.

Book preview

IT SHOULD BE FUN

A Carl Tanner Thriller #2

Deception, danger, desire, death...with Carl Tanner

Shayla McBride

What you want may not be good for you

IT SHOULD BE FUN

Carl Tanner, Book Two

Copyright 2019 by Shayla McBride

PantserPress

Originally published as part of the Omega Team Kindle World under the title It Could be Fun.

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover art by SelfPub Book Covers, artist Bee Javier

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Hello from Shayla

Chapter One: I’ve seen way too many naked men.

Chapter Two: Maybe a royal blue or indigo G-string.

Chapter Three: Saturday, you’ll be part of the show.

Chapter Four: Most women probably like to look at naked men.

Chapter Five: How do you know she even got here?

Chapter Six: Sequined G-strings are, like, so in right now.

Chapter Seven: The toughest guy in the building wears silk boxers?

Chapter Eight: You fuck, I’m gonna gut you like a fish.

Chapter Nine: I am not omnipotent.

Chapter Ten: The bastard’s taking goddamned trophies.

Chapter Eleven: …had to have a night vision scope. And a silencer.

Chapter Twelve: Sir, you’re bleeding.

Chapter Thirteen: Put some clothes on!

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A New Hero

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What’s Next? Preview NOT MUCH CHOICE, Tanner’s next mission.

Also by Shayla McBride

Hello from Shayla!

Thank you, Carl Tanner, for showing up when I was searching for a hero with some rough, tough years on him but still hotter’n a jet engine. Carl’s U. S. Navy career as a helicopter pilot proved he was lucky in a firefight. But, despite years of best efforts, he’s not so lucky in love.

Right now, even being a guy who never gives up, he thinks his luck may have pretty much run out everywhere. A new security firm in Tampa, Palymra Group, decides Tanner’s still got the moves. His first job sends him undercover to Crave, a ladies strip club. And Tanner’s new civilian life does a one-eighty.

Can he figure out a way to politely fight off women who want to personally measure him for a G-string? Can he resist punching the dickhead club manager right in his too-perfect nose?

Is feisty Jan Jones his best shot at an HEA...or is she not at all as she has represented? In spite of their incendiary mutual attraction, it appears to Tanner that Jan’s a liar...and not a very good one, either. What’s she hiding? What’s she scared of? Why won’t she come clean?

Is Crave as advertised or is there something more sinister going on amidst the sensuous sparkle? Will it be too late in the end game when Tanner gets all the lies and deceptions and false trails straightened out? When it comes down to the wire, can he keep the woman he’s coming to love safe?

1

Wednesday, November 23

The deal was that Carl Tanner, after too long in Mexico’s Sonoran Desert taking down narcomonsters, would get his injuries tended to and then kick back for four weeks before getting his first Palmyra Group assignment. That deal had so far held for seven days.

Tanner sat at his favorite beach bar, savoring his second draft and gazing across the pale sand to the Gulf of Mexico as he ignored the pinches and pulls of his healing wounds. Any minute he’d get his longed-for desert fantasy: a blackened grouper sandwich with a double order of fries. And a side of slaw. And sriracha. Running for his life while surviving on cactus paddles and grubs had increased his appreciation for life’s little luxuries.

Nobody else shared the palm-shaded table. These days he appreciated shade a lot more, too. He wore cutoffs and a worn, baggy tee shirt, the better for his back and chest to heal. He’d left his flip flops in the car. The gouges on his legs didn’t show much. And he didn’t give a shit if they did, so long as no idiot asked how he’d got them.

The breeze off the water was balmy, high seventies, about right for this time of year around Tampa Bay. Better than the Sonoran Desert, for damn sure. More food and more beer, and the ladies were light years more friendly. He blanked the rest of it, forced himself to appreciate the barely moving gulf, and the stupefyingly boring sports babble from the bar TV.

Life, at this moment, was good: unexciting. Exactly what he needed. Now if only the grouper would arrive and—

His cell phone rang, a distinctive tone, and he groaned. The bartender, who’d been eyeing him, looked up from quartering limes and he tossed her a wink. She grinned and went back to the limes. He swiped open the connection.

You’re three weeks early, boss, he said. Palmyra doesn’t get to see me until after Christmas.

Anna Ponti, co-founder of Palmyra and the prettier of his new bosses, chuckled. He loved her chuckle. He’d do almost anything for that chuckle. Except agree to what could be his first assignment with Palmyra. Way too early.

How are you doing, Carl?

Fine, he clipped out. He knew schmooze when it came his way.

Senior management at Palmyra knew exactly how he was doing. Anna and her cousin and partner Pete Frantzen had seen him when he’d been carted off their plane at Tampa Executive Airport. The medic had surely copied Palmyra on his injuries, treatment and prognosis. All but the shrink; she’d promised to stay quiet. But Anna was nothing if not intuitive. It was one of her strengths, that uncanny knowing.

Really? That the best you can do?

Human kindness as well as business need-to-know prompted her question. But how he was doing was complicated, and it was his job to sort it out.

Yeah. Scabs are coming off.

What are your Thanksgiving plans?

His what? Oh. So that’s why they asked me if I wanted a turkey burger with cranberry sauce.

Jeez, come on over tomorrow. Plenty of room.

The bloodbaths that had passed for Tanner family holidays made him shudder at the thought of anything presented as a convivial gathering. I’ve had enough Thanksgivings, thanks. So...?

I know this is early, Anna said, but Palmyra has a little job that could be right down your alley. Fun, even. It’s in your back yard. And it’s finite, I figure one week. How’d you like to be paid double time to be a bouncer in a women’s strip club?

When? Two weeks from now, maybe.

Soonest. There are a few interesting circumstances.

Sorry. Get someone else. There’d been a time when females taking off their clothes to the pound of raunchy music had been intensely interesting to him. Now, he didn’t give a rat’s ass. Wait one. Are the women the strippers or the strippees?

The ladies are called guests. The club’s called Crave, the strippers are male, and on average over a hundred women pay the cover each night to gasp and scream. There’s a minor problem at Crave that the owner needs corrected.

If it’s minor, why doesn’t the owner correct it himself? Or herself.

Himself. He wants anonymity. I accept his reasons, they’re valid, although I have no respect for his situation. Hypocrisy, her voice sharpened, turns me off. Pete thinks you’d be ideal.

One of Pete’s maxims: if you fall off the horse, get right back on. Even if you’re in a full body cast.

Quick and dirty?

She tsk-tsk’d. Fast and clean. I’m sending you the file. Should be there shortly. Take a look and let me know. By three.

It’s almost one now, he said. Why the rush?

You’ll see when you check the envelope. At least take a look?

I’m at Chevy’s, on the beach. Send it here?

I don’t want you reading this in a public place. Go home. It’s what, a quarter of a mile?

Busted. He lived – and currently drank – on Sunset Beach, a still-funky finger of land south of Treasure Island. His one-bedroom apartment, one of two tucked discretely behind a McMansion owned by people apparently allergic to Florida, backed onto the Intracoastal Waterway and sported a dock he spent a lot of time on.

Privacy was important, but convenience was the kicker. He could jog to the bar in five easy minutes. Today, he’d driven, gone to the firing range first. The-waitress slid his lunch on the table. He mimed a request for the check and waited until she left.

My grouper sandwich was just set in front of me. It is a work of culinary art. I just spent forever starving in the desert. I don’t want to go to a strip club, especially one with naked men. I’ve seen way too many naked men in my life. Find someone else, Anna.

Package just left the office. It’ll be forty minutes. Doesn’t take you that long to scarf down a sandwich. I’ve watched you eat, bud. She laughed but there was steel under the humor. Chow down and go home. Just consider it, that’s all I ask.

Why does it have to be me? Was he repeating himself? And whining? He must be more wiped than he’d figured.

You’re new to Palmyra, no connection yet. You’ll have a bullet-proof legend. Besides, it’s perfect casting. You’re big and tough, the perfect bouncer. And, she said again, it should be a lot of fun. All those eager ladies checking out the cute new bouncer...

All those eager ladies wound up by someone else. He liked to do his own winding up, thanks. Or he had before Mexico. The crazy ladies of Sonora had changed his mind about a lot of things, not least how nice women usually were. He could hear Frantzen in the back of his head: you fall off, you get back on. He sighed. I’ll take a look. No promises.

All I ask, Carl. One week, double pay, then your break recalibrates: thirty days off. And it should be fun.

She sure knew how to sweeten the pot. He scarfed down the sandwich, settled the bill and drove home.

***

The package arrived four minutes after he and Cat had gone through his front door.

He got a seltzer from the fridge, gave Cat a bowl of dry food garnished with a splotch of sour cream, settled at the kitchen counter and slit the flap. A half-dozen photos spilled out as he pulled a thin sheaf of papers free. He pushed the photos aside and read.

The present owner was a total sleaze, and not because he owned the club. Part of the file read like a piece of fiction. The back story had elements of the ridiculous.

Five years ago, Alfred Hatcher, a player even in his late seventies, had owned a gentlemen’s club on a busy boulevard in the unincorporated land north of St. Petersburg. On his seventy-seventh birthday, he’d fired all the female strippers, closed for a month, and converted into the only ladies strip club in the county. He’d hired local Chippendales. The new club was an overnight hit.

One Saturday night three happy years into his brilliant venture, Alfred did a couple of lines, drank a bottle of champagne while smoking a Cohiba Behike, and – while counting the night’s considerable take – had a massive coronary. The cleaning staff discovered him as they made their final rounds. Alfred was DOA.

He left the