Flirting With Danger Read Online Free PDF Page A

Richard paced the long room. “I want to talk to Miss Smith.”
    “So does the Palm Beach PD. And the FBI, now. You know how they hate it when influential foreign businessmen from allied countries almost get blown up.”
    Richard dismissed that with a wave of his hand. The maneuverings of the FBI, little as he liked them, didn’t interest him at the moment. “I don’t care about anyone’s agenda but mine. Someone broke into my home, killed someone who works for me, and stole something that belongs to me. And ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’ doesn’t begin to answer the questions I want to ask.”
    Donner sighed. “Yeah, okay. I’ll see if I can find out how close they are to nabbing her.” He shook his head. “But when we get arrested for interfering in a police investigation, I’m not representing you.”
    “If we get arrested, then I’m firing you for doing a sloppy job.” Smiling, Rick reached for the phone. “Now leave. I have work to do.”
     
    Two flipping days . Samantha sank into the cushions of her couch and chose another channel with the TV remote. She hated sitting around under the best of circumstances, and this was far from the best of anything. Still, the media wouldn’t give up the story. And while they had hold of it, she couldn’t turn her attention elsewhere.
    By now they’d run out of new information, and so for the last day she’d been hearing the same story with a handful of twists—the life of Richard Michael Addison, the loves of Richard Michael Addison, the philanthropy of, the businesses of, yadda yadda yadda. And then there were the facts they did have, and kept repeating on every news broadcast: There’d been an explosion, a guard, now identified as Don Prentiss, had been killed, and several valuable items had been destroyed. And the police were looking for a white female, height five-foot-four to five-foot-seven, weight 120 to 150 pounds, in conjunction with the investigation.
    “One hundred and fifty pounds, my ass,” she muttered, changing channels again. Wrong weight or not, she knew what it meant; one suspect being sought, one person they were blaming. Her.
    Every instinct told her to run, so she could look at what had happened from a safer distance. The problem was, if they thought she’d tried to kill Addison, there was no safe distance. And no safe way to get there. Airports, bus stations—they’d be watching everything. Well, they could just keep watching, though it didn’t make her feel any better to hear on the morning news that the police were “expecting to make an arrest at any moment.” She didn’t believe it, but neither was she willing to ignore the threat.
    And so she sat on the couch, sipping a soda and eating microwave kettle corn, watching the tail end of the midmorning news—and tried to figure out what had happened. As a thief, she was exceptionally gifted. Her father had said so, as had Stoney, and a few of the discreet clients she’d worked for.
    She enjoyed the independence that her skills provided her. She enjoyed the challenge of her chosen profession, enjoyed the feeling that temporarily possessing some of the world’s rarest objects gave her. And she enjoyed the money she received as payment, careful as she had to be about spending it. Retirement, her father had repeated endlessly while he taught her the skills of the trade. Work toward twenty years from now, not for tomorrow.
    That goal was why she lived in a small, neat house outside of Pompano Beach, and it was why she worked for a pittance as a freelance art consultant for some museum or other. Andthat, quite simply, was why she didn’t kill. People who killed in the quest for inanimate objects didn’t get to retire peacefully somewhere in the Mediterranean and employ handsome houseboys.
    All of which made one thing clear. If she wanted to retire, she needed to figure out who had set that bomb. She’d either been played for a fool, or she had the worst luck in history. Either