03 - Organized Grime Read Online Free PDF

his mouth wasn’t cooperating. “There’s something else, Gabby.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Arms of Love has a fundraiser tomorrow evening that I’m going to be participating in.”
    Delight sizzled up my spine. “A fundraiser? What is it? A concert? Dinner?”
    He licked his lips, suddenly looking ill-at-ease. “It’s a bachelor auction.”
    I pulled back in surprise. “A bachelor auction? You’re being auctioned off?”
    He ran a hand through his hair and left half of it standing on end. “I didn’t want to do it, but Lydia convinced me that I should. It’s for a good cause.”
    “Lydia convinced you? It sounds like you do know her.”  Tamp down the jealousy, Gabby. Tamp, tamp, tamp.
    He shook his head. “No, not really. Like I said, we’ve rubbed elbows at a few of the same events. That’s it.”
    I leaned back into the couch, a little too hard. “Well, I’ll be. I would have never guessed in a million years that you’d participate in a bachelor auction.” I hoped he caught the glimmer in my eyes when I tilted my head toward him. “Is it too late for me to get a ticket?”
     
    ***
     
    How did one find ecoterrorist groups? I couldn’t simply look them up in the phonebook and give them a call. Nor did people generally hang signs on their doors or put titles on their nametags proclaiming that they were environmental freaks. However, wouldn’t someone who was crazy about keeping the earth clean possibly belong to what looked like a peaceful, save-the-planet group?
    An Internet search last night had led me to one such group, and it just so happened that they were doing a presentation at a local library today on “Ways to Live Greener.” Of course, I’d decided that I needed to attend that meeting, scope out the people who attended and maybe befriend the instructor afterward. I needed to find out if Sierra was associated with the group and, if so, if anyone knew where she was right now. It was the only place I could think of to start my investigation. I narrowed my options down to the facts that I either needed to find Sierra or find who’d bombed Harrison Developers.
    As I drove to the meeting, I reflected on the first time I ever met Sierra.
    I’d just moved into the apartment building. My mother had passed away two months earlier from cancer. My crime scene cleaning business was just taking off, and Sierra’d just been hired by a local nonprofit—Paws and Fur Balls. I walked down the stairs of the apartment building wearing a new leather jacket and eating a hamburger. She’d just come from picketing a local restaurant and wore a chicken costume. We’d stared each other down for several moments. Finally, I’d said, “What’s up with the chicken costume?” just as she’d said, “Why are you dressed in a cow?”
    “I’m not dressed like a cow.”
    “I didn’t say like a cow. I said in a cow.”
    I looked at my jacket. “Really? In a cow?”
    “There are kinder ways of doing things.”
    “And there are more dignified ways of doing things.” I pointed to her costume.
    She looked down at her outfit and finally started laughing. “You’re right. I do look ridiculous. It’s always the newbies in the company who are stuck looking like chickens.”
    “Remind me not to ever work for your company.”
    She extended her hand. “I’m Sierra, an animal rights activist. And I’ll remind you not to work for my company if you remind me not to work for yours.”
    “You don’t even know what I do.”
    She waved a hand in front of her face. “No, but whatever it is its left you smelling terrible.”
    I’d just come from a particularly gruesome scene—a knife fight between two men in a kitchen. One of them had died, and tile floor didn’t exactly absorb anything leftover from the battle, so I’d had puddles of—never mind, actually. It’s pretty gross. Needless to say, the smell there had seeped into my hair and skin. Even after scrubbing myself clean and protecting my clothes with