Night Shift Read Online Free PDF Page B

scared.”
    “Why?”
    “You’ll cooperate.”
    She smiled. It was a full flash of a smile that almost stopped his heart. “No, I won’t. This is only a momentary respite. I’ll be giving you a hard time as soon as I recover.”
    “I’ll try not to get used to this.” But it would be easy, he realized, to get used to the way her eyes warmed when she smiled. The way her voice eased over a man and made him wonder. “Feeling better?”
    “Lots. Thanks.” She tapped out her cigarette as he guided the car back on the road. “I take it you know where I live.”
    “That’s why I’m a detective.”
    “It’s a thankless job.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead. They would talk, she decided. Just talk. Then she wouldn’t have to think. “Why aren’t you out roping cattle or branding bulls? You’ve got the looks for it.”
    He considered a moment. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment, either.”
    “You’re fast on the draw, Slick.”
    “Boyd,” he said. “It wouldn’t hurt you to use my name.” When she only shrugged, he slanted her acurious look. “Cilla. That’d be from Priscilla, right?”
    “No one calls me Priscilla more than once.”
    “Why?”
    She sent him her sweetest smile. “Because I cut out their tongues.”
    “Right. You want to tell me why you don’t like cops?”
    “No.” She turned away to stare out the side window. “I like the nighttime,” she said, almost to herself. “You can do things, say things, at three o’clock in the morning that it’s just not possible to do or say at three o’clock in the afternoon. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to work in the daylight anymore, when people are crowding the air.”
    “You don’t like people much, do you?”
    “Some people.” She didn’t want to talk about herself, her likes and dislikes, her successes, her failures. She wanted to talk about him—to satisfy her curiosity, and to ease her jangled nerves. “So, how long have you had the night shift, Fletcher?”
    “About nine months.” He glanced at her. “You meet an … interesting class of people.”
    She laughed, surprised that she was able to. “Don’t you just? Are you from Denver?”
    “Born and bred.”
    “I like it,” she said, surprising herself again. She hadn’t given it a great deal of thought. It had simply been a place that offered a good college for Deborah and a good opportunity for her. Yet in six months, she realized, she had come close to sinking roots. Shallow ones, but roots nonetheless.
    “Does that mean you’re going to stick around?” He turned down a quiet side street. “I did some research. It seems two years in one spot’s about your limit.”
    “I like change,” she said flatly, closing down the lines of communication. She didn’t care for the idea of anyone poking into her past and her private life. When he pulled up in her driveway, she was already unsnapping her seat belt. “Thanks for the ride, Slick.”
    Before she could dash to her door, he was beside her. “I’m going to need your keys.”
    They were already in her hand. She clutched them possessively. “Why?”
    “So I can have your car dropped off in the morning.”
    She jingled them, frowning, as she stood under the front porch light. Boyd wondered what it would be like to walk her to her door after an ordinary date. He wouldn’t keep his hands in his pockets, he thought ruefully. And he certainly would scratch this itch by kissing her outside the door.
    Outside, hell, he admitted. He would have been through the door with her. And there would have been more to the end of the evening than a good-night kiss.
    But it wasn’t a date. And any fool could see that there wasn’t going to be anything remotely ordinary between them. Something. That he promised himself. But nothing remotely resembling the ordinary.
    “Keys?” he repeated.
    After going over her options, Cilla had decided his was best. Carefully she removed a single key from the chain,