A Smile as Sweet as Poison Read Online Free PDF Page A

about trolls and stalkers.
    A hotel, then. It was the logical option and there were a few on the outskirts of LA, ready to accommodate truck drivers, wannabe starlets and assorted runaways. Hazel could check in under a false name, pay in advance. No one need ever know she’d left her apartment until the dust settled.
    And if it doesn’t?
    Hazel eyed the stack of bills on the coffee table, the invoices yet to be paid. She was in no position to waste money, even on a cheap motel with moldy bathrooms and complimentary bed bugs.
    She had one other option. By no means ideal, it would save up on gas money, too.
    The loft was closer to the diner than her apartment, and there was always parking available in the street outside. Hazel stared at the phone in her hands for a long beat.
    This wasn’t her. She didn’t need help.
    Or, if she did, she didn’t ask for help.
    I’ll pay them back. She wasn’t rich, but she didn’t accumulate debt if she could help it.
    This turn of events called for an exception. She didn’t have much choice. The last time her address made it onto the World Wide Web, she’d woken up to a cardboard effigy with its head separated from its body in her mailbox.
    “Well, well. Someone’s missing me already?” Ward greeted as he picked up her call. His voice was a sing-song, an echo of the dangerous man Hazel had met weeks back.
    Startled by the similarity, she couldn’t find her voice at first.
    “Hazel? You there? Hellooo…”
    “Yeah, sorry.” Hazel scored her thumbnail into a bit of loose plaster around the living room window. “You at work?”
    “Making the world a better place, one bailout at the time.”
    He might have been a snake, but at least he knew her truth.
    As a nominal service to Dylan in the early days of his relationship with Hazel, Ward had run a background check on her. He claimed it was nothing more than a Google search, but as far as she knew, the only hits that bore both her name and likeness were social media accounts, maybe a few tagged photos. The most incriminating evidence out there usually referred to her by lurid slurs.
    Until now.
    However he’d dug out her secret, it meant that Hazel didn’t have to explain what she’d done or why she was hung up on not having cameras anywhere near when they fooled around together.
    “Hazel?”
    The sound of her name on his lips was nearly enough to prompt a confession.
    “I was thinking I’d take you up on that offer,” she blurted out. “The drawer in Dylan’s dresser. If that’s okay?”
    Silence stretched on the other end of the line. Then Ward sighed.
    “If you’re doing this because you feel pressured—”
    “Oh, bite me.”
    Ward laughed, a sharp and thrilling sound, enough to trigger a small, tepid smile of Hazel’s very own. When she was with him and Dylan all sorts of strange, absurd scenarios were suddenly made possible. She supposed it was like that for Sadie, when she was with Frank. Some people were compelled to put a name on that sentiment. Not Hazel. She had learned her lesson long ago.
    “So…would you be okay with that?” she pressed, trying to conceal her desperation beneath upbeat eagerness.
    “Very okay.”
    “Good.”
    “Will I—will we see you tonight?” Ward asked, tripping over his words.
    Hazel bit her bottom lip. She had traded in her morning shift, but she was still due to work from lunch to ten p.m. “Sure,” she told Ward. “I’ll see you at the loft.” She would figure something out.
    Perhaps Travis would agree to take her other shift, too. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind.
    She thought of his intense, measuring gaze and suppressed a shiver. She would ask Sadie.
     
    * * * *
     
    The apartment was silent when Hazel pushed past the heavy metal door and stepped over the threshold. Un-oiled hinges gave a protesting screech. She winced with the blast of sound.
    “Hello?”
    No answer came from the depths of the loft. As best she could tell, the boys weren’t home yet. Discomfort