Hellbox (Nameless Detective) Read Online Free PDF Page B

high school when he’d hit on her before she started going with Verriker. Laughed at him in front of a bunch of other girls, called him Frogface and told him his breath smelled bad, why didn’t he go home and drink a gallon of Listerine? Bitch. She had it coming to her same as Verriker did.
    How soon? Hell, sooner the better.
    Balfour popped another Bud and leaned back with his eyes closed, picturing how it would be. How he’d work it, step by step, and what he’d do afterward and the high he’d feel when he got the news. Biggest high of his life. It’d last a long, long time, too, he’d make sure of that. Go about his business, pretend to be real sad when somebody mentioned what’d happened. Keep a straight face and laugh like hell behind it, the way Verriker and the rest had been laughing at him.
    Just thinking about it started him chuckling. And once he got started, he couldn’t seem to stop. The chuckles turned into snickers and the snickers into guffaws.
    He laughed so hard thinking about Verriker dead, he almost peed his pants.

 
    4
    KERRY
    They stayed in bed late again Monday morning. No sex today, just cuddling and dozing. Weekend getaways were all well and good, but one or two nights wasn’t really enough time to relax and unwind. Even if they only spent a few more days in Green Valley, it would still have the feel of a real vacation—the first one she and Bill had had in a long time.
    Well, that was her fault as much as his. He’d been a workaholic most of his adult life and so had she. Long hours at Bates and Carpenter as a copywriter, even longer ones after last year’s promotion to vice president. The advertising business, like the detective business, put demands on a person that had more to do with passion and dedication than a striving for financial security. Ad woman wasn’t what she did for a living; it was who she was, what she’d been born to be. Same with Bill in the detective profession—the reason he’d been having so much trouble following through on his vow of semiretirement.
    But there came a time when you had to back off at least a little, take some time for yourself before you burned out physically, mentally, or both. Start seeing what else life had to offer while you were still young enough and healthy enough to enjoy the experiences. The breast cancer had taught her that. She’d been fortunate to survive the months of surgery and chemotherapy and psychic drain, even more fortunate that there had been no recurrence (knock wood) and the cancer seemed to be in permanent remission. Still, she hadn’t learned the slow-down lesson as well as she should have. Continued to work too hard, still didn’t treat herself to enough TLC. Bill’s decision to limit his agency time to two days a week had been something of a wake-up call for her. She hadn’t thought he would stick to it this time, any more than he had on his previous pledge, but so far he had. And if he could, so could she.
    A second home in Green Valley would be a good start. Quiet, stress-free environment, a place to relax, recharge your batteries whenever you felt the need. It would be good for Emily, too, in smaller doses. Thirteen-almost-fourteen-year-old girls were tightly wedded to their home turf and their circle of friends, but exposure to country life now and then ought to provide some perspective. Emily was extremely bright and well-grounded, but nonetheless impressionable and edging into a difficult period of adolescence. Kerry remembered her own early teens, the peer influences and the raging hormones, the silly choices and mistakes she’d made. Oh, yes, difficult and worrisome both.
    Having a second home didn’t mean that you couldn’t or shouldn’t go anywhere else. She’d always had a mild yen to travel, visit England, western Europe, parts of Canada, but she and Bill had been such urban-dwelling, work-driven homebodies that they’d never made any plans that went beyond the casual discussion stage. Talk