Best-Kept Lies Read Online Free PDF Page A

“That’s where I’m putting my money.”
    She froze. How could he have guessed that she would leave her precious child with Sharon Okano? She and Sharon hadn’t seen each other in nearly nine months, and yet Striker had figured it out.
    “You wouldn’t take a chance on a relative, or you would have left him in Montana, and your co-workers are out because they might slip up, so it had to be someone you trusted, but not obvious enough that it would be easy to figure it out.”
    Her heart constricted.
    He reached forward and touched her shoulder. She recoiled as if burned.
    “If I can guess where you hid him, so can the guy who’s after you.”
    “How did you find Sharon?” she asked. “I’m not buying the ‘lucky guess’ theory.”
    Kurt walked to the coffee table and picked up his beer. “It wasn’t rocket science, Randi.”
    “But—”
    “Even cell phones have records.”
    “You went through my mail to find my phone bill? Isn’t that a federal offense, or don’t you care about that?” she asked, then her eyes swept the desk and she realized that he couldn’t have sorted through the junk mail and correspondence that was hers, as she’d had it held at the post office ages ago.
    “It doesn’t matter how I got the information,” he said. “What’s important is that you and your son aren’t safe. Your brothers hired me to protect you, and like itor not, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” He drained his beer in one long swallow. “Fight me all you want, Randi, but I intend to stick to you like glue. You can call your brothers and complain and they won’t budge. You can run away, but I’ll catch you so quick it’ll make your head spin. You can call the cops and we’ll get to the bottom of this here and now. That’s just the way it is. So, you can make it easy for everyone and tell me what the hell’s going on or you can be difficult and we’ll go at it real slow.” He set his bottle on one end of the coffee table and as he straightened, his eyes held hers with deadly intensity. “Either way.”
    “Get out.”
    “If that’s the way you want it. But I’ll be back.”
    So angry she was shaking, she repeated, “Get the hell out.”
    “You’ve got one hour to think about it,” he advised her as he made his way to the door. “One hour. Then I’ll be back. And if we have to, we’ll do this the hard way. It’s your choice, Randi, but the way I see it, you’re damn near out of options.”
    He walked outside and the door shut behind him. Randi threw the bolt, swore under her breath and fought the urge to crumple into a heap. She forced starch into her spine. Nothing was ever accomplished by falling into a million pieces. It was hard to admit it, but Kurt Striker was right about one thing; she didn’t have many choices. Well, that was tough. She wasn’t going to be railroaded into making a wrong one.
    Too much was at stake.

Four
    K urt slid behind the wheel of his rental, a bronze king-cab pickup. The windows were a little fogged, so he cracked one and turned on the defrost to stare through the rivulets of rain sliding down the windshield. He’d give her an hour to sort things out, the same hour he’d give himself to cool off. There was something about the woman that got under his skin and put him on edge.
    From the first moment he’d seen her at the Flying M, he’d sensed it—that underlying tension between them, an unacknowledged current that simmered whenever they were in the same room. It was stupid, really. He wasn’t one to fall victim to a woman’s charms, especially not a spoiled brat of a woman who had grown up as the apple of her father’s eye, a rich girl who’d had everything handed to her.
    Oh, she was pretty enough. At least she was now that the bruises had disappeared and her hair was growing back. In fact, she was a knockout. Pure and simple. Despite her recent pregnancy, her body was slim, her breasts large enough to make a man notice, her hips round