Fury’s Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page A

scumbag who had it coming.”
    Rachel tapped her pen absentmindedly on her pad of paper and I watched her for a second before it occurred to me what a bad idea it was to chronicle the details of my involvement in Miller’s death. I grabbed the pen out of her hand.
    “Hey!” she protested. “I was working on that.”
    “I know, but this isn’t Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Would-Be Rapist . The last thing we need to do is list the suspects and chart the clues. Let’s assume the cops do come question me—what are they going to think of witness lists lying around?”
    “Oh.” She looked down at her hands and bit her lip. “I didn’t think of that. God, this is so out of my league. I can’t believe this is happening.”
    “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.” I mentally kicked myself for snapping at Rachel. She was doing her best to deal with a wild situation. We all were. “You guys are beyond amazing. I can’t believe you’ve got my back on this. I just dropped some serious crazy in your laps and the first thing you did was ask how you could help.”
    I sat down on the arm of her chair. “And I take it back about Nancy Drew. We totally need a Nancy—and you even have the red hair. Alex and I are like the less cool, sidekick cousins.”
    Alex narrowed her eyes at me. “Speak for yourself.”
    “Save it, Bess,” I told her dryly. “Or do you want to be Cousin George?”
    “Ugh, fine. I’m Cousin Bess. So what are we going to do next?”
    “I think we need to go back to the bar and look around,” Rachel said slowly, thinking out loud. “That should help us figure out how to deal with the cops.”
    “Good idea,” I said. “If you guys can handle that, I’ll go talk to Nora and see what she might have told the police.”
    “All right, we’ve got a plan.” Alex grinned. It was the first real smile any of us had managed. “Now let’s go solve some shit.”

Chapter 3

    After Alex and Rachel left to check out what was happening at Spyder’s, I called in sick to work and did a quick Google search for Nora’s contact information. It pained me to think of the tips I’d miss at the restaurant, but after last night and this morning, there was no way I’d be able to last a whole shift without dumping a plate full of food in someone’s lap, as distracted as I was. After coughing weakly into my manager’s skeptical ear, I headed for my car and soon pulled up in front of Nora’s Poplar Street address. It was a small house with a postage stamp of a front yard. The old yellow siding was faded, but the grass had been cut recently and there were a few well-tended hanging baskets on the porch.
    I went up the steps and knocked on the door. Tiny, quick footsteps pattered toward me from inside the house and a little girl opened the door to look up at me with big eyes.
    “Is your mom home?” I asked her.
    “I know you,” she answered, and I frowned. Though I’d seen her photo, she’d never laid eyes on me before in her life. I waited, but she didn’t say anything more.
    “Are you supposed to answer the door on your own?” There was still no answer, so I prompted her again. “Is your mommy here?”
    “Nora’s not home,” a man said from behind the door. His voice sounded like good tequila tastes, somehow smooth and rough at the same time, and I remembered wondering what it would be like to lick some off of him. Heat crept up the back of my neck as the door swung open the rest of the way and I found myself face-to-face with Jackson Byrne.
    “Ruby, go play in your room for a while,” he said to the little girl before turning his attention back to me. “Nora’s down at the police station giving her statement about whatever it was you got her mixed up in last night.”
    His voice was hard and unfriendly, and I swallowed nervously. My hopes of persuading him and Nora not to tell the cops about me were evaporating quickly. Jackson’s scowl said he wondered why I wasn’t down at the