Extreme Danger Read Online Free PDF Page A

even less welcome shapes. “No. He’s definitely not me. This house changed owners recently. A few weeks ago.”
    She nodded. “I see. P-p-please,” she whispered. “Let me go.”
    Nick crossed his arms over his chest. She could still be lying but Sloane was the name of the guy who owned the nearest house. Nick had a file on him. Jerome Sloane was a rich art dealer in his fifties, who divided his time between Seattle and San Francisco. He had files for the owners of all the other properties on the small island as well. Sloane had left Frakes Island the second week of August and he hadn’t been back.
    Plausible cover story, the voice in his head whispered. Anyone else could have done the same research that he had done.
    “OK,” he said. “Let’s assume, for a second, that this is true—”
    “It is true! I swear, I never meant to—”
    “Shut up.” He gave her a thin smile. “Assuming that it’s true, explain to me what you’re doing here in April. And more specifically, explain what the fuck you were doing trespassing stark naked, waking me out of a sound sleep and scaring the living shit out of me at—” He checked his watch. “12:40 A.M.”
    Her eyelashes fluttered. “I?” she asked delicately. “Scared you?”
    “Explain,” he growled. “And you’d better make it convincing.”
    She let out a shuddering breath. “I, um, had some p-p-personal problems lately. I wanted to, you know, to get away from it all. Marla persuaded Jerome to give me the keys to his island house. She told me about your beautiful pool. I just didn’t think. She said nobody would mind. I guess she was, um, wrong.”
    He processed that. In point of fact, he had not yet had time to rig up the security system for the poolhouse, just the video. His beeper had gone off when she tripped the infrared set up at the perimeter.
    This sucked. His chances of living through Zhoglo’s impending visit were slim enough without involving clueless innocent bimbos who organized weddings and banquets. “Do you trespass naked often?” he asked, genuinely curious.
    Dark, curling lashes swept down over enormous leaf-green eyes. She had a dusting of freckles on her nose. Concentrate, damn it.
    “No,” she whispered. “I’ve never done anything like this in my life. It was, um, an exercise. I’m trying to be—I want to be more, ah, adventurous.”
    Adventurous? He stared at her. His lips twitched. His cock lengthened. Hell, he’d show her adventure. A hot, sweaty adventure that she’d never forget. Left, right, sideways, upside down, inside out.
    No, he wouldn’t. “Adventurous?” he repeated.
    She shrugged as best she could. “I know it sounds stupid. But I’ve always been a good girl.” The rest of her explanation came faster. “I brushed my teeth, I did my homework, I took my vitamins, I worked hard, I put myself last…I guess that’s why my fiancé thought I’d make such a good politician’s wife—”
    “Fiancé?” He came down on the word, like shark jaws chomping.
    “Ex-fiancé.” She added the prefix with vicious emphasis. “I’ve never had the nerve to misbehave, so the bastard figured there would be no dirt for the gossipmongers to dig up. He might as well marry a department-store mannequin, that condescending, manipulative son of a bitch—”
    “Can we stick to the subject, please?”
    Too late. The chick was on a roll. A detail came back to him—the nearly empty wine bottle he’d glimpsed by the pool. She must have carried it in. Finished most of it off.
    “The snake cheated on me!” she said heatedly. “With Kaia! She’s the adventurous type. Her nose is pierced. She’s trekked in Nepal. She’s gone on safari. Whoop de doo for her. Bitch.”
    Her fury made his mouth twitch. He hadn’t smiled in so long, he almost didn’t recognize the sensation. Sort of like a tic.
    She didn’t appreciate it. Her eyes narrowed. “What’s so funny? Do I amuse you?”
    “Sorry.” He looked her slowly up and