Black Widow Read Online Free PDF

the community college. Violet’s grandfather, Warren T. Fox, was running his store, Country Daze, up in the mountains above the city.
    Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux was busy perming, cutting, teasing, dyeing, and styling her clients’ hair at her beauty salon, while her sister, Sophia, was manning the Pork Pit for me, along with Catalina Vasquez, my best waitress. Catalina’s uncle, Silvio Sanchez, was off doing whatever personal assistants to assassins like me did.
    Phillip Kincaid and Cooper Stills, respectively Owen’s best friend and mentor, were playing poker on Phillip’s Delta Queen riverboat. And Detective Bria Coolidge, my sister, and her partner, Xavier, were dealing with the never-ending paperwork that came with being some of the few good cops in Ashland.
    So everyone was busy and distracted with their own lives, and I was the only one obsessing about Madeline and what she might have planned.
    Then again, that’s the way it usually was.
    Finally, an hour, two granola bars, and a bottle of water into my vigil, I was rewarded when the back doors of the mansion opened, and Madeline strolled out onto the patio, followed by Emery and Jonah. Madeline lookedlike she’d been working out, given her tight, white yoga pants and matching tank top. Her auburn hair was pulled back into a ponytail, while a white towel was draped around her neck, obscuring her silverstone crown-and-flame necklace. Emery and Jonah both still had on their suits from the dedication.
    Madeline tossed her towel aside and settled herself in an oversize, white wicker chair that overlooked the pool. A maid wearing a white shirt and black pants with a bright red bun of hair brought out a silver tray with a pitcher of lemonade and several glasses. Emery and Jonah both waited until Madeline had a tall, frosty glass of lemonade in her hand before sitting down in matching chairs across from her.
    I was pleased to note that Jonah didn’t look particularly comfortable, his briefcase sitting square and upright in his lap as if it would shield him from Madeline’s acid magic should she decide to unleash it on him. Jonah also tugged at his tie as if it were strangling him and eyed Emery with open suspicion, as if he expected her to try to beat him to death at any second.
    It would serve the weaselly lawyer right if Madeline killed him. After all, he’d tried to steal her inheritance and had embezzled from Mab for years before that. Madeline had as many reasons to want him dead as I did, if not more. I doubted that she would do the deed for me, though. Not while she thought that McAllister could still be of some use to her.
    Madeline and Emery sipped their lemonade, so I put down my binoculars, picked up the directional microphone, and flipped it on. Silvio had purchased the toy forme a few weeks ago. I’d told him what I wanted, and he’d shown up with it at the Pork Pit the very next day, with only a mild, chiding raise of his eyebrows as he handed me the bill. I would never admit it to him, but I kind of liked having an assistant, especially one as quiet, discreet, and efficient as Silvio.
    Once I turned the microphone on, I started fiddling with the knobs, trying to maximize the range and clarity of sound. Mostly, what I heard was the steady, high-pitched whine-whine-whine of the power saws that the dwarven workers were using, along with the heavy thwack-thwack-thwack s of nails being hammered into boards. Whatever the crews were doing inside the mansion, it sounded big, loud, and impressive. Exactly what I would expect, given what a splash Madeline had made when she came back to Ashland.
    After about ten minutes, some of the workers took a water break, and the sounds of the sawing and hammering died down to more muted, manageable levels. I leaned forward and adjusted the microphone a bit more, trying to get the most out of it that I could, before I pointed it at the patio again. It took me another thirty