“First, it’s called command, if I were in command.”
“That,” she said. “What would you do?”
He was silent but only for a few seconds before he said, “I’d take inventory.”
“Inventory?” she repeated.
“Yeah, you know, what do I have, what do you have…?” he said. “I’d also do an inventory of the team members’ skill sets. You’re a runner, that’s great, but alas, right now I’m an anti-runner, with my knees. But okay, what else are you good at? Arguing a court case—not gonna do us a helluva lot of good out here…”
“What are your skill sets?” Ashley asked him. “An ability to pull an extra baseball cap out of your ass during a thunderstorm would be awesome.”
Jim laughed. “Okay, so you’re way funnier than I thought.”
“What,” she repeated as pleasantly as she could, “are your skills sets?”
From SEAL Camp
Tall, Dark & Dangerous #12
© 2018 Suzanne Brockmann
Available in ebook and print from Suzanne Brockmann Books and in audio from Blackstone Audio
(60,000 words or 200 pages)
Excerpt from Out of Body
Out of Body by Suzanne Brockmann
A romantic comedy with otherworldly elements
First published July 2018 from Suzanne Brockmann Books
Now a feature film starring Jason T. Gaffney and Kevin Held
Friends to lovers, with a supernatural twist...
Henry’s been in love with his best friend Malcolm since college, but after he kisses Mal on Halloween night, things go desperately wrong. Awkward turns to just plain weird when Mal mysteriously vanishes.
And weird gets freaky when Henry starts to wonder if he’s being haunted by Mal’s ghost.
Henry’s other friends think he’s losing it—that Mal’s just run from conflict. But freaky turns to full-on crazy when, with the help of a “spirit guide,” Henry casts a spell that allows him—and only him—to see and hear Malcolm, who’s been right there, in his house, the entire time.
If Mal really is a “lingering spirit,” he won’t “move on” until he completes some undetermined “unfinished business.” And Mal—who’s been in love with Henry since forever, too—assumes his task is to help his best friend woo and fall in love with another man.
But sometimes things aren’t what they seem, being invisible doesn’t always mean you’re dead, and love really can conquer all…
From Chapter Nine:
Henry
I was a mess.
I lay there, in my bed, in the dark, physically ill at the idea that Malcolm was really dead.
Although… the alternative was that he’d sat there, laughing and enjoying the “joke,” as I’d cried my eyes out on my living room floor.
So if Mal wasn’t dead, he was, like, the world’s biggest asshole.
Unless he was only trying to make me believe that he was the world’s biggest asshole so that I’d fall out of love with him.
As I lay there, eyes wide open, I grabbed onto that possibility with both hands, like Jack’s grip on the floating door as the Titanic sank. (That analogy made better sense to me at holy-crap o’clock in the middle of the night. But I bet you know what I mean. There was some intense stupidity happening for both Jack and me.)
Somehow—Gina—Mal had found out that I was hoping to nudge our platonic relationship toward the romantic end of the friendship-scale. And he panicked. And instead of sitting me down and giving me a gentle Let’s just stay friends speech, he’d created this elaborate Halloween-themed, high-asshole-factor prank, meant to dissuade me of ever thinking about him romantically again.
And stupid, stupid me. Instead of thinking, Jesus, Mal’s a shithead, my fucked-up brain had dreamt that he’d kissed me. Tenderly. Gently. Lovingly.
He’d kissed me and…
Smiled. He’d smiled at me and said… Yes, it is a very stupid dream, but let’s see how much you remember when you wake up, okay?
“The orb!” I exclaimed. In my dream, Mal had said something about the orb being… red…? I leapt out of bed, grabbing my phone from its charger as I raced into the living room.
“Where the hell is that thing?” I asked aloud as I looked around, trying to remember where Gina had put it… On the bookshelf!
There it was.
And—holy shit—dream-Malcolm had been right.
It was glowing brightly red.
“Oh, my God…” I quickly scrolled through the recent calls on my phone, and found Pat’s number and dialed.
It went straight to her voicemail: “You’ve reached Pat Bergeron, leave a message! Peace!”
“Pat?” I said, my voice cracking. “It’s Henry—Collins. You were right and I apologize. I’m really, really sorry. Malcolm and I need you. Badly. So if you can fit me in before next Thursday, please do, and if not, I’ll see you then.”
I ended the call and rushed over to my computer, opening the laptop and Googling Pat Bergeron, Spirit Guide.
Her website came up right away—complete with obnoxious auto-play new-age music, all Tibetan drums and ocarinas and chimes. I swiftly muted it and said—aloud, in hopes that Mal’s wind-noise speakers had mics that picked up everything, “This is where, if this is a prank…? You’ll jump out and mock me for the rest of my life.”
There, on Pat’s oddly normal-looking, blue-sky-themed home page was a link for the book she’d mentioned: the Crimson Book. I hit the link for the e-book edition, and leaned in closer to read the page…
“Because this is where I spend—holy fuck! Seven hundred dollars…? On an e-book…?” My voice went up an octave. “Are you fucking kidding me…?” I took a deep breath. “Okay, but see, I’m doing it. See?” I spoke loudly and clearly for anyone listening in. “Visa card, name: Henry Collins. I’m typing in the card number, expiration date, January… And I am now hitting enter, and my credit card is being charged seven fucking hundred dollars because you’ve convinced me that you’re dead and you’re haunting me and I will live—gladly—with your mockage til my own dying day. Just please jump out at me now, Mal, please…”
Malcolm
I could not jump out at Henry—at least not in any way that he could see.
“I wish I could,” I whispered as the clock ticked.
He’d come running out of his bedroom, surprising me—and not just because he was stark naked again. He’d remembered at least some of what I’d told him while he’d been asleep. So things were sort of looking up.
“Okay,” Henry said, after he’d waited long enough and nothing had happened. “I just bought a seven-hundred-dollar e-book. Let’s see what it can tell us.”
I leaned in to look at the e-book he’d opened on his computer screen. “Oh, my God, it has infinity pages?” How could a book with infinity pages have a table of contents—and yet it did. “Ooh, you can input search words…” I pointed to the screen.