Operation Whiplash Read Online Free PDF Page B

wasn’t overburdening the dog. Anyone trying to get into the Ford without my permission was due to get hung up in a wolfish set of incisors.
    I walked on the grass at the edge of the sidewalk to muffle my footsteps. This far out of town there were no pedestrians abroad. The last time I’d been at the motel I’d driven into a waiting semicircle of lights-out police cruisers. That had been the start of the chase that ended disastrously for me fifteen miles east of town.
    I didn’t know Robin’s room number, but I didn’t anticipate any difficulty in locating her. She didn’t have a car, and an empty slot in front of a motel room door would be a good indicator. The long, low building was dark as I approached it except for its neon-lit sign and a dim night-light in the office. Through slitted venetian blinds, I could see the night clerk asleep in his chair behind the front desk. A smaller sign beneath the elaborately neon-scrolled LAZY SUSAN MOTEL said NO VACANCY.
    There were two units with no cars in front of them. I drifted down the line of motel room doors until I could put my ear against the first one without a car. When my hearing adjusted, I could hear a rasping masculine snore. I wouldn’t have made book that Robin hadn’t acquired masculine company, but, having sampled her sexual appetite, I felt it unlikely a male companion would be permitted that sound a sleep. I moved on, almost to the end of the building, to try the second carless door.
    When I couldn’t hear anything. I picked the lock. The chain latch wasn’t on, and I stepped inside into darkness. I could hear Robin’s even breathing. I closed the door, then advanced to the bed and shook a bare shoulder. “Mario?” Robin’s voice mumbled sleepily after a second shaking.
    “It’s Drake,” I said.
    She slid from the bed and turned on a lamp practically in the same movement. The effect was spectacular. Bent over as she was, a shorty nightgown covered only the upper third of her sleekly handsome bare ass. “What do—how—how did you get in?” she demanded shakily when she turned around.
    “Better keep the chain latch on if you’re fussy about what gets inside your drawers, Robin,” I advised. “Who’s Mario?”
    “A man who took me to dinner when I was here before,” she answered.
    “And for dinner he gets a key to your room?”
    She shook the implication off with no difficulty. “What are you doing here?” she wanted to know. She still looked sleepy but she no longer sounded befuddled. “I thought the idea was we weren’t going to be seen together.”
    “Unless there’s someone in the bathroom, nobody is seeing us now,” I returned. Then I got serious. “There’s been a change in the game plan, Robin.” I sat down in an armchair, and after a moment’s hesitation she seated herself on the edge of the bed. Her nightgown crept upward, and she saw my attention fixed upon the furry juncture of white, firm thighs. She made no effort to conceal the target of my gaze. I wrenched myself back to reality. “Nate Pepperman’s dead, Robin.”
    She stared at me blankly. “Dead?”
    “Very. His face is slashed and his throat is cut. You do remember who Nate Pepperman is?”
    She tried to rally from the state of rigid shock into which my information had thrust her. She swallowed hard.
    “The—the little man,” she said in a half-whisper. “But I don’t—I don’t believe you. You’re just—just trying to scare me.”
    “Why the hell should I try to scare you?” I demanded impatiently. “Pull yourself together, Robin, because I’ve got a few questions to ask.”
    She didn’t seem to hear me. Her face was chalky-looking, and the tip of her pink tongue flicked nervously at her pale lips. “?-he’s really dead?” she stammered.
    “Positively. Now get with it, Robin. I want to know where to start to find Hazel. Was anything at all said last Wednesday morning in Pepperman’s office that would give you the least idea where she