Hot Pursuit Read Online Free PDF

she’d been on at Cheltenham.
    Somehow, Bernie Fielding had become James Cook, and Nick Lucas had become Bernie Fielding.
    The girl sniffed and glanced up at the office door, licked her lips and then stared at the screen. She’d only come in as a favour because the girl who usually worked on Stiltskin had shingles and no one else had the right security clearance.
    Who would ever know? Surely one imaginary new life was much the same as any other? The girl looked over her shoulder to see if anyone else was looking. If her boss found out he’d make them stay behind to unravel what had happened and she’d booked up for ballroom-dancing lessons after work. An intensive five-night course, ‘Learn to Rhumba with Marj Cuthbertson’, accompaniedby Barry Telling on his electric organ. She’d been looking forward to it for weeks.
    One keystroke, that was all it would take. The girl took another look through the information. They’d printed up a whole new set of documents in the name of Bernie Fielding so that had to be the right one, didn’t it? There was even the docket to say he had been delivered to his new safe house. So why was it that James Cook’s bank account kept coming up as being active. She scrolled down. Very active by the look of it. Here was a computer error that loved shoes apparently. Bugger.
    The girl hesitated, weighing up the options – one pearly-pink nail-polished finger hovering above the delete key as she wrestled with her thoughts. The tea lady opening the office door made her jump and before she had time to really consider what she was doing the girl pushed delete, and James Cook’s name vanished forever from Nick Lucas’s file.
    Just like that. She hadn’t planned it exactly but it seemed that by an act of God, Nick Lucas was officially Bernie Fielding. She remembered him now – sexy-looking guy with dark wavy hair and big blue eyes. She bit her lip – he didn’t really look like a Bernie, but then again it was too late to change things now. Wasn’t it?
    ‘I thought you told me that you’d got a BMW?’ complained Stella tartly as she squeezed herselfpast Bernie’s guiding arm and into the passenger seat of a battered sunshine-yellow 2CV.
    Bernie had reasoned that Ms Hargreaves was hardly likely to need her car for a few days, having just been whisked off in an ambulance to deliver her new infant. He’d found the keys in her desk drawer and cheerfully arranged – via Stiltskin – for the car to be re-registered in his name. His new name. As he whiled away the hours until he had to pick Stella up from the post office, Bernie had given the absence of the fictional BMW some thought – not that it normally took him much effort to come up with a plausible-sounding excuse.
    He slipped in beside her and looked down, feigning grief.
    ‘I’m sorry, I suppose I should have told you earlier. My wife died last year.’ He spoke in a gruff monotone. ‘This was her runabout. I didn’t like to get rid of it – at least not yet. This car was like a pet to her. I try to give it a run out now and again. She would have wanted me to use it and it seemed – well – I wanted to take you out in it. She would want me to start over – and it felt right. “Bernie,” she used to say,’ he said, staring unseeing into the middle distance, ‘“I don’t want you moping around once I’m gone – I want you to get out and on with your life.”’ He looked at Stella to see how he was doing and then smiled bravely. ‘She was a good woman.’
    Stella touched his hand. ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry, you poor, poor thing, you,’ she said softly. ‘You must think I’m ever so tactless, but why did she call you Bernie?’
    He stiffened. Bugger, he was going to have to watch that. ‘Um – um – pet name,’ Bernie said after a bit of struggle. ‘She always reckoned I looked like that bloke out of Boys From the Black Stuff , you know – he reached around inside his memory discarding all manner of Bernards