Pretty Girl Gone Read Online Free PDF

directory assistance into the pad of my cell phone, and then later the first lady’s office, the human current jammed up behind me like debris caught against a rock in a fast-flowing river.
    I wanted to warn Lindsey that her cover had been blown. The Brotherhood knew exactly where we had met and when, which meant there was a leak on her end. Only he or she didn’t know what we spoke about, which meant the source wasn’t necessarily someone close to Lindsey. My chief suspect was her bodyguard or driver or whatever the big guy was. But I couldn’t get through to her. I was passed from a receptionist to an assistant to an aide until I finally connected with a senior aide who took my name and number. I had the impression that she took a lot of names and numbers without passing them on.
    I didn’t think it was possible to just show up at the front door of the Governor’s Mansion on Summit Avenue in St. Paul, but there was another option. I used the memory function on my cell to dial Nina Truhler’s number. She answered on the fourth ring.
    “Rickie’s, how may I help you?”
    “Nina, you answer your own phones now?”
    “I’ve even been known to sweep out the place. How are you, Mac?”
    I could hear music in the background. Hoagy Carmichael. “Stardust.”Nina owned and managed a jazz club on Cathedral Hill in St. Paul that she had named after her daughter.
    “Very well, thank you, especially now that I’m speaking to you.”
    “Oh, you sweet-talker. What’s going on? Anything interesting?”
    “Yes. Interesting. That’s a good word for it.”
    “You’re off on another one of your adventures, aren’t you? I can tell by your voice. It always sounds excited when you’re into something.”
    “Am I that obvious?”
    “To me you are. What is it? Can I help?”
    “I can’t tell you what it is. Truth is, I’m not exactly sure myself, yet. But yes, you can help.”
    “How?”
    “Can you get away tonight?”
    “I could be talked into it.”
    “Remember that $3,600 dress you gave yourself on your birthday.”
    “Yes.”
    “Would you like a chance to wear it?”
    Turned out she did.
    After arranging the logistics for our date, I said good-bye, deactivated my cell phone, and slipped it into my jacket pocket. Almost immediately afterward, a man grabbed me. Strong fingers closed around my right hand and yanked violently, twisting and pulling it up between my shoulder blades. The pain in my shoulder forced me to cry out, a moment of weakness I immediately regretted. At the same time another hand pressed hard against my spine, steering me out of the skyway traffic, driving so hard and fast I didn’t even think of ordering my legs to resist.
    He flung me up against the thick glass wall of an office that sold life insurance and leaned his full weight against me, pinning me there. My forehead was mashed against the glass and the point of my elbow was wedged between my body and his, making the pain in my shoulder even more excruciating.
    I couldn’t see his face, but I felt his lips close to my ear.
    “Do the right thing,” he hissed.
    “What? What do you mean?”
    “Do the right thing,” he repeated.
    “What is the right thing?”
    He stepped back and shoved hard again, using his weight and leverage to bounce me against the glass wall. He released me.
    I wasn’t thinking now, merely reacting. I spun around into a fighting stance, my legs wide apart, the outside edge of my heels more or less lined up with my elbows, my feet at forty-five-degree angles, my body sideways, my hands curled into forefists and held high in front of me. It’s called a “horse” stance and exposes few vulnerable targets to an opponent. Only there was none.
    I craned my neck searching for a target. A few pedestrians had stopped and were staring at me. I tried to look around and past them, spotted a man with brown hair and a dark blue jacket—it could have been a Minnesota Twins baseball jacket—swiftly bobbing and weaving away