Page 72 of Statler

That was not it.

He felt completely off kilter now, although he’d been in somewhat of a perplexed state all day; a thing that wasn’t normal for him.

But…

Eliza.

His new bout of “addled-brain” had started the minute she had emerged from her car in a pair of…sinful jeans.

Yes. Sinful.

She’d previously looked pretty darned cute in her fifties-style dresses, but as sweet as they were, they hadn’t given him a hint or a clue as to what was underneath.

Now, Statler knew.

And he couldn’t get the tight curve of her ass out of his head.

Not to mention her breasts that were firm and high; showcased this evening under a well-loved t-shirt.

Stat had been totally blindsided.

Eliza had appealed to him before, but seeing her like this?

It was icing on the cake.

Her eyes were magnificent without the thick-framed glasses hiding their blue brilliance. And her hair…

He wanted to groan.

It was a thick curtain of lush mahogany, falling in elegant waves at least a foot down her back.

He could almost feel the softness…

But she was Flazer’s daughter…

And yet, his attraction hadn’t seemed to wane after she’d filled them in on the facts of her marriage and her father.

But how about that intel regarding Holden?

Somehow, Statler had managed not to fist-pump when he’d heard Eliza’s dead husband was one-hundred-percent the man who had contacted the FBI.

Stat felt nothing but sorrow that the last year of Eliza’s marriage had been so stressful for the couple, but he understood, from an operative’s point of view—which is what Holden had truly been—that he’d clearly been protecting her the best he could.

Her husband had been trying to walk a fine line between continuing to work for the factory and gleaning all the intel he could to turn over to the authorities, while still keeping a subservient profile. And in his own way, Holden had been trying to keep Eliza out of things, so that if things went south with him, she’d remain safe.

Holden dying in a hunting accident?

Not likely.

Which meant that besides illegal gun manufacturing going on in Liminal, there was also a murder to be investigated.

And where there was one, there’s was bound to be another.

Perhaps many more over the years.

It certainly added complexities to STUDS mission; ones for which Statler would be seeking Dark’s opinion before the night was over.

The final tilt to the pin-ball game that had been pinging in Statler’s head, of course, had been finding out that Flazer was Eliza’s father.