Diary of an Ugly Duckling Read Online Free PDF

color of Au-
    dra’s bloomers as she had about the fight between
    Haines and Garcia that had precipitated it all.
    “Don’t you think?” she asked, struggling to sound
    innocent.
    “Yeah,” Audra mumbled, trying hard to smile,
    even though the memory of the event was the last
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    Karyn Langhorne
    thing she wanted to relive. In an instant, she aban-
    doned willowy Kate Hepburn for a vampy imitation
    of Mae West. “I guess when you rip your pants in
    the line of duty, you gotta expect the tale,” and she
    turned and wagged her behind at the other woman,
    “will be told.”
    Audra had expected Darlene to laugh . . . but in-
    stead the woman gave her a smile that mingled
    friendliness with pity and changed the subject.
    “I’ll radio your sergeant,” she said, grabbing the
    needed telecommunications device from its slot on
    the table. “Tell him you and Bradshaw will be a few
    minutes behind schedule—”
    “You mean Bradshaw’s in there now?” Mae West
    vamoosed, and Audra heard her own voice, rising
    nervously into the stratosphere again.
    “Well, yeah, Marks,” Darlene said, in “duh” tones.
    “He’s like a minute ahead of you.” She checked a
    thick-banded, masculine-looking watch on her freck-
    led forearm. “Make that two minutes, now.” She
    looked up and winked at Audra. “If you hurry, you
    might be able to catch him,” she finished, and Audra
    was pretty sure she didn’t just mean in the hallway.
    “Sit down, Marks. Sit down,” Deputy Warden Wood-
    burn said as Audra appeared in the open doorway
    of his office.
    Art Bradshaw had already settled his massive col-
    lection of muscles into one of the Warden’s two side
    chairs, but he jumped to his feet as soon as Wood-
    burn’s words indicated her presence. He didn’t
    speak—or even turn in her direction—just stood at
    attention as gallant as any movie prince for the few
    DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
    33
    seconds it took for Audra to navigate the room and
    ease herself nervously into the proffered chair be-
    side him. Audra took a quick second to admire his
    profile, the breadth of his football-player-wide
    shoulders and the smooth skin of his shaved skull,
    wishing in spite of herself that he’d turn so she
    could see his eyes. Her heart was doing a vaudeville
    soft shoe in her chest: If the man had spoken to
    her, she might have had another kind of accident—
    and she didn’t have any more uniform pants to
    change into right now.
    She squared her shoulders, imagining herself en-
    cased in one of those big-shouldered suits of the
    1940s, concentrated her attention on the deputy war-
    den and sat, making a futile attempt to cross her
    legs, diva-style, before giving up and folding them
    against each other, ankle to ankle. “Sir,” she said,
    crisply. “You wanted to see me?”
    Deputy Warden Stephen Woodburn looked like
    he’d been at work for hours. His desk was cluttered
    with papers, and a huge mug, running over with
    coffee, sat fresh and steaming on a manila folder,
    making a dark stain. On a credenza behind him
    were pictures of a brown-haired woman and three
    towheaded kids dressed in their Sunday best, an-
    gled for maximum visitor admiration.
    “Don’t look so nervous, Marks,” Woodburn said,
    grabbing the stained folder beneath his coffee cup.
    Audra read her name on a white label across its
    tab. “I don’t think you have any real reason to be.
    But . . .” he paused to skim through the folder’s con-
    tents, giving Audra a moment to skim her eyes over
    his short, graying hair, very precisely trimmed in a
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    Karyn Langhorne
    conservative cut, and the rimless glasses perched on
    a straight nose. The man’s eyes left the folder and
    found hers again. “We do have a slight problem that
    impacts you, and to a lesser degree, Officer Brad-
    shaw. That’s why I’ve asked you both to drop by be-
    fore assuming your duties this morning.”
    He paused the pause Audra knew came before
    any climactic bombshell in every