Deadly Dance Read Online Free PDF Page A

you’re looking pretty damn good today,” Harrison said as he walked over to where Hannah was waiting for access to A-Tac’s inner sanctum.
    “I’ll take that as a compliment, I think.” Hannah smiled up at him as she turned the key to summon the elevator marked “professors only.”
    “Absolutely. I don’t think I could have pulled off what you did and still have made my classes this morning.”
    “But you were there, too,” she said as the elevator doors slid open and they stepped inside. “And you’re obviously working today.” She nodded at the briefcase he held in his hand.
    “Just grading some papers. No classes until tomorrow. And besides, I didn’t have to make my way out of a building full of hostiles wearing three-inch heels and a skirt slit to here.” He grinned, motioning to his hip as he inserted a second key in the slot behind the Otis elevator sign.
    “Well, for the record, I ditched the shoes, and the slit was self-inflicted.” She shrugged. “It was the only way I could move in the damn thing.”
    “That’s what’s so great about you,” he said, as theelevator lurched downward. “Always resourceful. Got to love a woman who thinks on her feet.”
    “Two compliments in one day. A girl could get the wrong idea.”
    His smile turned a little wicked. “Well, they do say that once a person saves your life, you owe them.”
    Their gazes met as the elevator lurched to a stop, and just for a moment, she let herself get lost in his eyes. Tina was right. Harrison was hot. Tousled brown hair and the half stubble of a beard. Broad shoulders leading to what had to be an equally muscled chest. And judging from last night, arms that could not only pull a woman to safety but also… She shook her head, clearing her thoughts, grateful when the doors slid open.
    She was already dealing with two jobs, which meant there wasn’t time for anything else, and just because the rest of the team were acting like A-Tac was the latest incarnation of the Love Boat, it didn’t mean she had to fall for all that nonsense. Hannah didn’t do relationships. The risk of fallout was simply too great.
    And besides, Harrison was her friend. He was joking around. Nothing more. She was the one with the runaway libido.
    “You okay?” he asked, his hand warm against her shoulder.
    “Yeah.” She nodded, as she slapped her palm against Aaron Thomas’s bust and a door in the far wall of the reception area slid open. “Just a little more out of it than I thought.”
    “A brush with death has a way of doing that.” His gaze had turned somber. “If you need to talk, I’m here.”
    “Thanks. But I’m fine.” Except for the part of her brainthat was still picturing him naked. “I do have something I want you to take a look at though.” She reached into her bag for Tina’s cellphone. “My grad student found this in her email,” she said as they stopped just outside A-Tac’s war room, the door leading to the elevator sliding closed behind them. “It’s pretty gruesome stuff.”
    “Gruesome as in?”
    “Torture. Murder. I don’t know. I’m not even sure it’s real. It could even be a student’s project. A horror movie or something. But just in case it’s not, I was hoping you could work your cyber mojo and figure out what’s what. And maybe track down who sent it.”
    “I take it your student didn’t recognize the sender?” he asked, taking the phone from her.
    “Well, she did. Or at least she thought so. But she says the guy whose name was on the thing wouldn’t have sent her something like this. He’s a recruiter for a Ph.D. program she’s interested in.”
    “Sometimes really frightening people hide under perfectly normal guises.”
    “You’re preaching to the choir.” Hannah nodded. “That’s why I brought it to you. And I told Tina to keep it to herself until you had the chance to look at it.”
    “Did you tell her you were bringing it to me?”
    “You
are
the head of the IT department.