She's No Angel. Leslie Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ the other two. But since neither seemed interested in following their brother down the path of wedded bliss, they might need a nudge.

      His oldest grandson Morgan was currently in China, photographing the great terra-cotta army near Mount Lishan for National Geographic magazine. Oh, what Mortimer wouldn’t give to be with him; though, of course, his knees could barely manage the stairs of his house these days.

      Anyway, with Morgan out of the country, beyond Mortimer’s reach, there was only one single grandson near enough to work on. That was the youngest. The one who probably most needed a soothing, loving relationship in his life to counter the violence he dealt with on a daily basis.

      Yes, it was most definitely time for Michael to fall in love. And if he needed a little assistance in that direction?

      Well, Mortimer Potts was more than happy to oblige.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Every man dreams of having a supportive little woman standing behind him. He just doesn’t realize that eventually she’s going to be holding a cast-iron skillet aimed directly at his skull.

      —Why Arsenic Is Better Than Divorce by Jennifer Feeney

      THE SIGHT OF A TALL BRUNETTE with a great ass trudging down the side of the road would have been enough to make Mike Taylor slow down for a better look, even if the woman hadn’t been barefoot. And swinging a tire iron. And, judging by her tight shoulders and clenched fists, mad as hell.

      But she was all of those. Which made her more interesting.

      He quickly ran through the possible explanations. “No broken-down car,” he muttered as he pulled his foot off the gas pedal of his Jeep, slowing to a crawl a few yards behind her. “No houses around.” Since leaving the highway, he hadn’t seen a single building or gas station. Just a few road signs counting down the miles to hell…make that Trouble, PA.

      So maybe she’d been mugged and had fought off her attacker. Or maybe she’d been the attacker and was still clinging to her weapon. His eyes shifted to the tire iron, looking for any telltale signs that it had been used to beat someone recently. Dripping blood, hair, any of that stuff. He saw nothing.

      The woman trudged on, impervious to the dig of gravel into her feet as she stuck to the shoulder of the two-lane road. Her soft, filmy dress swirled around her thighs, the afternoon breeze kicking it up a bit higher with each step. High enough to let him know her backside wasn’t her only terrific feature. The woman had some legs to go along with her obviously leather-skinned feet.

      He suddenly suspected she was talking out loud. Something was making it impossible for her to hear the six cylinders pistoning a few yards behind her. Judging by the bounce of her brown hair across her shoulders, he suspected her one-sided conversation was a heated one.

      “Interesting.” He wondered why he wasn’t tense, as he’d normally be if he spied a person armed with a dangerous object.

      Not that this woman emanated danger. Everything about her screamed frustration, not rage. Which he would have understood if he’d seen a disabled car, a broken cell phone nearby and a pair of woman’s shoes…what, stuck in the mud? Carried off by an animal? “Uh-uh.” Didn’t add up.

      She was becoming more and more intriguing by the moment.

      He hadn’t expected to stumble across anything intriguing this weekend. Not here, anyway, in the lousy little town his grandfather had been holed up in for the past year. His whole reason for coming here to visit was to try to convince Mortimer to bail out of Trouble. But pissed-off brunettes swinging tire irons did intrigue him, and would have even if he wasn’t a cop.

      He had no choice but to stop. No, he wasn’t exactly in his jurisdiction. And, since transferring to NYC Police’s cold case and apprehension squad a few months ago, rarely had cause to interact with current victims of crime. Or, considering the tire iron and her visible anger, potential suspects.

      When he interacted with the living at all in his more recent cases, he generally spoke to former neighbors or family members. Or even descendents, given the age of some of the case files. Frankly, he didn’t mind that as much as he thought he would when he’d been ordered to accept the transfer a few months ago. At that point, being forced “for his own good” to leave the twentieth-precinct vice squad had had him ready to tell the city to take their badge and shove it. It had felt like a kick in the gut.

      An undercover investigation into a high-end club drug ring run by a slime named Ricky Stahl had ended in a number of indictments…and a few embarrassed public officials with druggie kids they’d rather nobody knew about. It had also meant a transfer for Mike. His bosses claimed the area had gotten too hot for him. Mike thought the transfer was more likely payback from embarrassed politicians.

      Whatever the true motivation, he’d been shoved straight into 1PP, aka headquarters. He now spent most of his days pouring through musty, yellowed logs and evidence files that smelled as if they belonged in some grandmother’s basement. When not there, he was on the streets, tracking down hesitant witnesses with failing eyesight and dim memories. Every one of whom wanted to serve him coffee cake while they relived the worst experience of their lives…the murder of a loved one.

      Somehow, though, despite his initial insistence to anyone who would listen that he was being wasted, he’d grudgingly found himself getting interested in what he was doing. Maybe it wasn’t that surprising. He’d read his grandfather’s ancient Ellery Queen and Mickey Spillane mysteries by the gross as a kid. Solving puzzles, sifting through clues, he’d gotten a real charge out of that stuff once. Who knew he’d get a charge out of doing it for real as an adult?

      It challenged him, exercised his brain in a way that posing as a buyer or a john certainly never had. His first successful cold-case closing—solving the 1998 murder of a shopkeeper who’d been gunned down in his own storage room—had given him more satisfaction than he’d ever experienced in Vice. Not just because of how grateful the family had been, but because he’d felt triumphant at having solved an unsolvable mystery.

      He’d been a cold-case junkie ever since. Fascinated by the past, putting together one piece at a time of each intricate puzzle. So maybe that was why he couldn’t drive past the stranger…because she was a puzzle. Alone on the road five miles from town. Furious. Armed. And hot.

      “Yeah. Time to stop,” he muttered, not knowing whether the puzzle or the hot interested him more.

      Behind him, on the back seat, the closest thing Mike had to a commitment—a scruffy dog—lifted his head off his paw and yawned audibly. “We’re not there yet, go back to sleep,” Mike said, not even watching to see if the animal obeyed. He knew he would. Lie down was the only command the lazy mutt ever heard.

      Tapping his horn in warning, Mike pulled onto the shoulder behind the brunette. She swung around immediately, but, thankfully, the tire iron stayed down by her side.

      Remaining where she was, she watched warily as he stepped out. He shaded his eyes from the late afternoon sun setting over the town of Trouble ahead, squinting through his dark glasses to make out the woman’s features. He still couldn’t determine much, beyond the suspicion that her shape from the front was as good as it had been from behind. Maybe better, judging by the plunging neckline of her halter dress.

      Damn, the woman had more curves than a Spirograph.

      She’d stopped right beyond a battered road sign, which read Trouble Ahead. Somehow, he already knew the sign СКАЧАТЬ