Hail Mary

HAIL MARY

Jim Knighthorse Series #3

by

J.R. RAIN

Acclaim for the novels of J.R. Rain:

“
Be prepared to lose sleep!”

—
James Rollins
, international bestselling author of
The Doomsday Key

“
I love this!”

—
Piers Anthony
, bestselling author of
Xanth

“
Dark Horse
is the best book I’ve read in a long time!”

—
Gemma Halliday
, award-winning author of
Spying in High Heels

“
Moon Dance
is absolutely brilliant!”

—
Lisa Tenzin-Dolma
, author of
Understanding the Planetary Myths

“
Powerful stuff!”

—
Aiden James
, author of
Plague of Coins

“
Moon Dance
is a must read. If you like Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter, be prepared to love J.R. Rain’s Samantha Moon, vampire private investigator.”

—
Eve Paludan
, author of
Letters from David

“
Impossible to put down. J.R. Rain’s
Moon Dance
is a fabulous urban fantasy replete with multifarious and unusual characters, a perfectly synchronized plot, vibrant dialogue and sterling witticism all wrapped in a voice that is as beautiful as it is rich and vividly intense as it is relaxed.”

—
April Vine
, author of
The Midnight Rose

OTHER BOOKS BY J.R. RAIN

The Lost Ark

The Body Departed

VAMPIRE FOR HIRE SERIES

Moon Dance

Vampire Moon

American Vampire

Moon Child

Vampire Dawn

SAMANTHA MOON NOVELLAS

Christmas Moon

SAMANTHA MOON CASE FILES

Vampire Blues: Four Stories

Vampire Games: Four Stories (coming soon)

JIM KNIGHTHORSE SERIES

Dark Horse

The Mummy Case

Hail Mary

ELVIS MYSTERY SERIES

Elvis Has Not Left the Building

You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog (coming soon)

THE SPINOZA SERIES

The Vampire With the Dragon Tattoo

The Vampire Who Played Dead

The Vampire in the Iron Mask (coming soon)

THE GRAIL QUEST TRILOGY

Arthur

Merlin (coming soon)

WITH SCOTT NICHOLSON

Cursed!

Ghost College

The Vampire Club

WITH PIERS ANTHONY

Aladdin Relighted

Aladdin Sins Bad

WITH SCOTT NICHOLSON AND H.T. NIGHT

Bad Blood

SHORT STORIES

The Bleeder and Other Stories

Teeth and Other Stories

Vampire Nights and Other Stories

Vampire Rain: Four Stories

SCREENPLAYS

Judas Silver

Lost Eden

SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGIES

Vampires, Zombies and Ghosts, Oh My!

NON-FICTION

The Rain Interviews (2008 - 2011)

Hail Mary

Published by J.R. Rain

Copyright © 2011 by J.R. Rain

All rights reserved.

Ebook Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to your favorite ebookstore and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

To Susanna...still the bravest girl I know.

Acknowledgments

A big thank you to my core team: Sandy, Eve and Elaine!

Hail Mary

Previous

Yesterday, in a small desert town called Apple Valley, ol’ Boonie was finally put to rest amid much fanfare. Jones T. Jones was there. He even shed a tear, which may or may not have been legit. Anyway, I thought he was going to miss his mummy. They had gotten along so well together.

I was still drinking too much, but that was not insurmountable. That was fixable, and someday, when I had put my own mother’s murder to rest, I would put my drinking to rest, too. And then I would ask a certain someone to marry me.

But first things first.

A door to my right opened and a bespectacled young man with no chin poked his head out. He was dressed in a white lab coat. “It’s ready, Mr. Knighthorse.”

“
How did it turn out?”

“
Great, I think. You can thank the marvels of modern technology.”

So, I followed him in. Took a seat next to a flat-screen computer monitor that was turned away from me.

“
Here you go,” he said. And turned the monitor toward me. “Twenty years, just like you asked.”

On the screen before me was the headshot of a white Caucasian male of about forty. I leaned a little closer, aware that my beating heart had increased in tempo, thudding dully in my skull. The man on the screen had not aged well. His face was weathered from too many years in the sun and surf. His blond hair was turning a dirty blond, almost gray. Blue eyes and white teeth.

It’s called age-progression technology, and it’s used to identify runaways and kidnap victims. The man on the screen before me was the eighteen-year-old kid from the pier, the kid who had taken an interest in my mother. Except in the age-progression photograph, he wasn’t a kid anymore. He was a man. An older man who clearly loved to surf and still lived in Huntington Beach. An older man with three adorable kids who loved their grandfather. An older man who was the son of the homicide detective who investigated my mother’s murder.

“
I hope this helps,” said the technician.

I was finding breathing difficult.

“
Are you okay?” asked the technician.

The room was turning slowly. From somewhere very far away, I heard the technician ask again if I was okay.

I felt sick and stumbled out of the small room and found the nearest bathroom and threw up my lunch and breakfast. I flushed the toilet and sat on the seat and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and tried to control my breathing.

I sat like that for a very long time.

Chapter One

I was doing vertical leg crunches behind my desk when someone knocked on my office door.

I was tempted to ignore the knocking and finish the set. After all, looking like me takes a lot of work. But I happen to enjoy eating, not to mention my girlfriend has an expensive Kindle habit which, for some reason, somehow got attached to my credit card. So now every few days, I get email notification from Amazon saying that books like
The Help
and
Tattooed Dragons
have been purchased, although mostly it’s a steady stream of Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts novels.

So, I compromised and cranked out ten more crunches, rolled over, and pushed myself up to my feet.

At the door, I verified that the smallish shape behind the pebbled glass wasn’t pointing a weapon at me and opened the door.

The smallish shape turned out to be a woman. Her eyes were red and her nose was a little puffy. She had been crying. I am, after all, an ace detective. Then again, lots of my clients come here crying, or leave here crying. Or both. I haven’t cried since I was ten. I was going on twenty-one crying-free years. A streak I was proud of.

She looked me over. “You’re all sweaty,” she said.

I couldn’t tell if she disapproved or not. And since I didn’t care if she approved or not, I said, “I’m sweaty. I’m also six foot four with shoulders nearly as wide as this doorway. I’m a lot of obvious things.”

She blinked. “Are you Jim Knighthorse?”

“
And that,” I said, “is what I’m most proud of.”

“
You’re also kind of cocky.”

“
Cocky is good in my business.”

She looked me up and down some more, craning her head to do so. “I suppose it is. So, can I come in, or are you just going to keep blocking the doorway with those wide shoulders of yours?”

I grinned and stepped aside. She moved past me and paused just inside my office, taking it in. Doesn’t take long to take in. A bookshelf filled with Clive Cussler and James Rollins novels there, a sink with a Mr. Coffee next to it, a couch for Cindy and I to roll around on, a filing cabinet with my physical case files, four client chairs and my hand-tooled, leather-topped desk. The desk was obnoxiously big and more than one pissed-off client had mentioned something about “penis compensation,” but I dismissed it since the desk had come with the office. Besides, I had big feet.

“
What’s with all those pictures?” she asked. She motioned to the wall of photographs behind my desk.

I shut the door behind me, headed over to my desk and slipped into my new leather chair. The leather made rude noises that we both thought best to ignore.

“
Wait,” she said, stepping forward. “These are pictures of you. All of them.”

“
I’m very photogenic. At least, that’s what Cindy tells me.”

“
Who’s Cindy?”

“
The most beautiful girl in the world.”

“
Are you always like this?” she asked.

“
Like what?”

“
So...confident?”

“
Only when I’m not.”

“
And when are you not?”

“
Almost never.”

She turned away from one of the pictures and looked at me. “Are you for real?”

“
Ask that inside linebacker in the Oregon game.”

“
The inside what?”

“
That picture you’re looking at. The guy with his feet kicked up in the air. He might concur that I’m real enough.”

She did look, shook her head, then came over and sat in one of the four client chairs. I couldn’t think of a time when all four were filled at once, but I’m ever optimistic.

“
Okay, I get it,” she said. She crossed her legs and kicked her foot. A sort of nervous tic. “You were a jock who liked to bash heads and hurt people. But are you a good detective?”

For an answer, I opened one of the desk drawers and extracted a sheet of paper from one of the file folders. I handed it to her.

“
What’s this?”

“
A list of referrals.”

“
And they’ll vouch for you?”

“
Some more enthusiastically than others.”

She folded the paper and put it in her purse. “Thanks. Detective Chad something-or-other recommended I see you. He said you don’t scare easy.”

“
Detective Hansen,” I said. “And not yet.”

“
He also said you could be a handful.”

“
You have no idea.”

“
Is that a sexual reference?”