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

Maybe thinking about graves when I hurt this much wasn’t a good idea. Still. It was a bit of a foggy memory, but it was still a good one.
    Imagine what it’d be like if I wasn’t concussed.
    Oh, boy .
    I put a painkiller in my mouth and realised I couldn’t swallow it. The pill was huge and my mouth was totally dry.
    Gagging, I stumbled out of bed and shoved through the door into a large open plan living room with a clean, shiny chrome kitchen. I stuck my head under the tap and chugged a load of water, and the pill went down.
    Breathing deeply, every nerve in my body wailing in pain, I leaned back against the kitchen counter and looked around. Luke’s flat was a big loft with high, apexed ceilings filled with lovely old beams. He had oak panelled floors—real oak, not the fake stuff I have in my flat—and a lovely leather chesterfield that I coveted immediately. His kitchen was new and shiny but all the other furniture looked old and loved. Faded rugs on the floor. A punch-bag hanging from the high beams.
    The place was spacious and lightsome. I hadn’t really pictured Luke’s flat in my head, apart from figuring it’d be full of complicated locks and timers and alarms and red beams criss-crossing the floor. But this was a really cool place.
    I stood looking around for quite a while before I realised I was completely naked.
    Oh. Hope he didn’t have any flatmates.
    As far as I could tell, there was only one bedroom, simply the smaller half of the loft, with a bathroom attached. I hobbled back through, looked at the bed which was streaked with dust and crusts of dried blood—eurgh—and at myself.
    Huh. No wonder the bed was a mess. No wonder Luke told me to have a shower.
    Briefly, I wondered where he’d slept. On the chesterfield? That leather probably wasn’t too comfy. And there were no spare sheets or anything lying around. In the bed with me? That figured. I finally have sex with someone as delicious as Luke, and I’m concussed; I get into bed with him, and I’m unconscious.
    Ha.
    I hauled myself into the bathroom and looked longingly at the shower. Then an idea struck me and I found myself in the kitchen, wrapping cling-film around my shoulder. Genius.
    I spent hours in the shower, half wishing it was a long, hot bath with scented bubbles, but it felt good to pummel my skin with the jets of water. When I moved into my flat my nannan had had one of those scary hose attachments on the bath, no proper shower. That was the first thing I bought. A big, throbbing power shower. Yeah.
    I washed my hair, which left khaki streaks all over the bath, and soaped myself all over several times. When I eventually stepped out, I peeled off the cling-film—the dressing was slightly damp but okay—and carefully washed the skin there. I nicked Luke’s razor and made myself presentable. I even found some Molton Brown moisturiser and slapped it on, making a mental note to tease Luke about it later.
    I looked utterly dreadful, bruised and perplexingly pasty, like a battered wife. My dark hair made me look white and frightening. I couldn’t believe nothing was broken and all I’d needed was a few stitches on my shoulder. There was a big bruise on my cheek and the back of my head had hurt when I washed my hair, in fact there was not very much of me that didn’t hurt, but under the circumstances I reckoned I’d got off pretty well.
    Next I started looking for clothes. Mine appeared to have run away—oh, Christ, her Ladyboat’s dress!—so I borrowed some of Luke’s, feeling very kinky in his underwear. I wrapped up my poor abused feet in layers of plasters and thick sports socks and cuddled into joggers, T-shirt and a hooded sweater. I had no bra—first time for everything—but that was the least of my problems. I looked like a homeless person as it was.
    He’d said something about a video on the coffee table, and when I went out looking for it, half hoping for something cool about special agent training, I found a tape labelled SOPHIE—Buffy , and was more touched than I think I’ve ever been.
    I used his phone to call home and check my messages. There was one: “Sophie, you’d better be listening to this from my house. It’s not safe for you to go home. Three fingers and one bullet do not a happy house make. Stay in my flat and don’t go outside until I get back, okay? I’ll be back in the afternoon.”
    Git.
    I looked at the clock on the state-of-the-art sound system (living with someone like