Peril for Your Thoughts (Mind Reader Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page A

of my driveway, heading toward Full Disclosure. Stealing a move from the detective, I was just about to turn my phone off completely when it rang once more. I glanced down at the ID. Speaking of Full Disclosure …
    Turning on my Bluetooth, I answered the call. “Sorry I’m late, Jaz. I got hung up talking to my mother, but I’m on my way now. Anything wrong?”
    “Everything’s wrong,” she wailed, completely out of character for her.
    “Oh my gosh, what happened? It’s Darrin, isn’t it? I knew there was something off about him. Did he hurt you?”
    “I’m fine … he’s the one who’s not. Oh, my God, it’s so awful.”
    “Jaz, focus. What’s wrong with him?”
    “He’s dead, Kalli. Deader than the doorknob to Disclosure, and they think I killed him.”

    “You can’t seriously think Jaz is the one who killed Darrin,” I said to Detective Stevens later that day at the police station as we sat across from him in his new office with his partner, Detective Boomer Matheson. “You know her,” I added, appealing to the Nik I knew resided within him.
    “Not really,” he replied with an emotion as blank and bland as the white walls in the room. “Look, I’m not saying she did kill the victim, Miss Ballas.” The detective was in full cop mode now, with Nik the “nice one” nowhere to be found as he put forth his best professional side in front of his partner. Go figure. “I’m just saying she was the last person that we know of to see him alive, and he was found dead in her boutique with a bullet to the gut from the same type gun registered in her name. My hands are tied. I have to follow all leads. She has no alibi and admits to being with the victim all night long.”
    Detective Matheson sat on the edge of his desk and grunted over that last comment, obviously not worried about looking professional himself. If this was good cop, bad cop, he was definitely the latter. Of course, it didn’t help that he was one of the many broken hearts Jaz had left in her wake. A decent-looking man with russet-colored hair and hazel eyes, but his personality was seriously lacking.
    Jaz scowled at Boomer and focused on Nik. For the first time since I’d known her, she didn’t look glamorous. She was free of make-up and in a sweat suit. A designer sweat suit, but a sweat suit nonetheless. She pulled herself together and said, “I’ve had the gun for years. From back in my city days. You must know how it is, being from the city yourself. Small town or not, old habits die hard, Detective.” She blew her nose, genuinely upset. “I keep it behind the register, but it hasn’t been fired since I learned how to use it years ago at a pistol range.”
    “Maybe someone tried to rob her, found the gun, and shot him,” I said hopefully.
    “How could she not hear the gun go off?” Detective Matheson asked, sounding like he didn’t believe a word that came out of her mouth.
    “How could no one else hear the gun go off?” Jaz snapped back. “Besides, we’d had a lot to drink.”
    Again, Boomer grunted. “This is the business district. Most people go to their homes in the residential district to sleep,” he pointed out. “No one would have heard the shot from a puny gun like that.”
    “Normally size matters,” Jaz shot him a fake sympathy look, “but in this case, a gunshot sound is a gunshot sound. Loud and ear piercing.”
    “Kind of like someone else I know,” he countered back.
    “Unless someone was walking or driving through that area in the middle of the night. I don’t think the real killer would have risked it,” Detective Stevens cut in.
    “The throw pillow Jaz sits on behind the register was missing,” I said. “Maybe someone used it as a silencer.”
    He and Jaz both stared at me, looking surprised.
    “What can I say? I’m observant.” I felt my cheeks heat.
    Detective Matheson’s eyes narrowed, and I was sure I didn’t want to know what he was thinking.
    “Okay, fine. I’ve always