Deadly Little Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page A

interest in Gates’s father. When he turned her down and fired her from her job as his secretary, she hired someone to kill the family and burn down the warehouse.
    â€œAnd for what?” Ana asked the photo of the killer. “He didn’t want to be with you. Big deal. Other fish in the sea.” She’d never understand why people killed for the illusion of love. Had she been hurt by lovers? Of course, but once they’d betrayed her, she didn’t want them back. It baffled her why anyone would pursue someone who didn’t want them.
    Extreme cases like the Bromleys creeped her out. It wasn’t as if Bromley’s dad had dated the woman, then shoved her off. She’d never had him, but killed him for not wanting her.
    Losing family was never easy, nor did the hurt of it ever fade. If anyone knew that, Ana did. She didn’t want to feel any sympathy for Bromley, but she did. She’d lost her own parents to a terrorist’s bomb. “Damn it. I need to keep that filed away, not let it affect me.”
    â€œSomething new, Burton?” Pretzky had crept up behind her as she worked, and Ana shrieked as she spun in her chair.
    â€œJesus, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” she said, without thinking about whom she was speaking to.
    To her surprise, Pretzky grinned, though it was more akin to a malicious smirk. “You were talking to yourself.”
    â€œBad habit.”
    â€œIt is,” Pretzky snapped, the smirk still in place. “Break it. It’ll get you killed.” Letting that unpleasant thought dangle for a moment, she added, “What’s up?”
    â€œNothing substantial,” Ana managed, still trying to slow her heart rate.
    â€œLexisNexis?” Pretzky crossed her arms, her expression dubious as she scanned the open windows on Ana’s monitor and on her laptop. “ Entertainment Weekly ?”
    Ana sighed when she felt her eyelid begin to twitch. She’d never had tics or twitches before Rome. Since then…
    She hated having to explain her somewhat unorthodox research methods. Of course, she’d hate it even more if Pretzky figured out she was doing a run on Jen’s new guy, so she went with the bullshit.
    â€œThe high-net-worth individuals noted in the files on this case are all either business moguls or celebrities. In order to cross-reference the vectors…” she said, deliberately making her voice more monotonous as she rattled off technical search terms. “Anyway, these vectors, when managed properly with a broad spectrum matching logarithm can frequently yield a substantial data mine for cross-referencing active searches.”
    She could actually see Pretzky trying to follow her methodology, and was relieved to note her temporary boss getting lost on the way. Pretzky liked to believe she understood every facet of the Agency’s work, especially computer crimes. In reality, she didn’t understand what Ana did at all. Then again, most people didn’t, which was why Ana got superior results and, until Rome, plum assignments and grade and pay increases.
    Pointing to a field on the second screen Ana was utilizing for her multiple searches, Pretzky snapped, “That entry is in Italian. Your translation skills aren’t an issue here, Burton.”
    â€œI’m aware of that.” Ana winced, and took a breath so she wouldn’t sound so God-awful defensive. It was all she could do to keep her voice level and unemotional. “It’s a pertinent entry on one of the individuals in the file who lost more than five million dollars in the art fraud case.” It was a big fat lie, of course. That entry involved Gates Bromley and an Italian supermodel on the Riviera, not his boss’s art. She said a little prayer of thanks that the open window detailing Jen’s boyfriend’s financial data was decently covered by the photograph of the model.
    Fortunately, Pretzky didn’t read, or