I, Spy? (Sophie Green Mysteries, No. 1) (Sophie Green Mystery)

quietly. “There’s someone there. Come back.”
    “The hell I will,” I said. Probably it was just some kids on their way back from the pub.
    On a private driveway, two hours after last orders.
    I held out my hand. “Give me your gun.”
    “The hell I will.”
    “There’s someone there. Give me your gun.”
    He’d reached me now and held onto my arm. “Stay here. I’ll go.”
    “No.” I wrenched away, invincible with anger, and walked straight into the building site, picking my way over the rubble, Luke swearing behind me.
    Then there was a loud shot, very close, echoing and pinging around my ears, and then a crack and a shudder, and then something smacked the back of my head and the world vanished.
     
    Unconsciousness is nice. Dark, dreamy, restful. Like sleep, but without the dreams. A nice place to stay. All warm and comfortable.
    But unconsciousness is like watching TV or reading a really good book. People never let you do it for long. Someone wanted me awake.
    The next thing I heard was Luke’s voice, urgent and distant, and the next thing I saw was a lighter kind of darkness as he lifted something off my face.
    “Sophie? Jesus, Sophie, say something.”
    I stared up at him, winded. “I think the dress is fucked.”
    He pushed more bits of rubble away from me. “Can you move? Can you feel your fingers and toes? Can you move them?”
    I worked hard to catch my breath. There was too much stuff on me, I’d fallen into a pile of rubble or something. Or…had the rubble fallen on me? “I can’t move at all.”
    Looking really scared now, Luke started shoving bigger bits of brick off me. I was covered in pieces of timber and brick dust and bits of concrete. I freed one arm, then the other, and tried to sit up. That… Was it a shot? Had someone shot me? It had knocked down half the building site—most of it, or so it felt, onto me.
    Luke heaved a bit of wood off my legs and grabbed my calf. “Can you feel this?” He ran his hand up and down my leg. “Sophie, can you feel it?”
    Oh, God, yes. Probably this was entirely inappropriate, but I was feeling other things as well. What he was doing was starting to make me feel dizzy. Not that I was desperate, but it had been a pretty long time and, well, you should see him.
    I nodded silently, staring up at him. He was a little bit blurry. He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves and he was dusty and frightened and he looked incredible.
    “God, Soph.” He pulled me against him. “I thought you were gone. I thought…”
    I put my arms around him. “I’m right here,” I said, and Luke kissed me. And then his hand went back down to my leg, moving up over the transmitter and garter belt, doing very inappropriate things that I begged him not to stop. And then he pulled the rather ruined dress off me and I pulled his clothes off him, and then we were naked and once we were naked we got pretty hot and pretty happy, and then…
    God, I can’t believe I had sex in the rubble.
    Afterwards I clung to him, breathless and sweaty and absolutely filthy and not caring at all, and he raised his head and kissed my nose and said, “You okay?”
    I smiled dreamily. “I’m great ,” I said. “How you doin’?”
    “Only, you are lying in the rubble, and a building did just fall down on you.”
    I’d sort of forgotten. It was that good.
    “I’m okay,” I said, and Luke frowned. He moved away from me, and I was weak as a newborn, trying to stop him. He got something out of his jacket—what, was it made by the Mary Poppins Carpet Bag Co.?—and flashed a bright light in my eyes.
    “Ow!” I pushed the torch away. “What’s that for?”
    “I think you have a concussion.” He hit himself on the head, which I thought was pretty funny. “Shit.”
    “I don’t have a concussion. I feel fine.”
    “Sophie, tell me your postcode.”
    I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t even think of the first letter.
    “Yeah,” Luke said. “Better get you to a doctor. Can you stand?”
    I was sure I could, but no one had told my legs that and they buckled under me. Luke held me up, pulled the dress back over me and shoved himself into his clothes, then picked me up in his arms.
    I was fuzzily impressed. I must have been dreaming. No man has been able to pick me up since I outweighed my mother. When I was fourteen. I’m tall, okay? My bones are heavy.
    I’d thought he might be taking me inside so I could snuggle up in bed with him, but he put me in