Running Scared Read Online Free PDF

eyelashes clogged with mascara. Outside the window whose only curtain was dust, the motel’s faded neon sign blinked on and off, on and off, a slow heart beating in the darkness advertising rooms by the night or the week or the month.
    The phone kept ringing.
    She shoved her hands through the bleached length of her hair and kicked the man sleeping beside her. “Chrissake, Tim! Get the fucking phone!”
    “Shit,” mumbled Tim Seton. “Listen to you. And here you’re always telling me to watch my mouth around the dumbs.”
    “The only dumb in this bed is you, and we all know that assholes don’t have ears, so I don’t have to watch my fucking mouth, do I?”
    Tim turned his beautiful profile away from her and fell back asleep.
    The phone kept ringing.
    With a hissing curse Cherelle clawed her way across Tim until she could see the Caller ID readout.
    “Virgil,” she muttered. “Shit.”
    Virgil O’Conner was one of their best dumbs— clients , she corrected herself silently. Paid cash. Up front. No hassle, no bouncing checks, no credit card trail. She wished they had fifty more like him. Hell, even five. With that and a little luck in Vegas, a girl could do as well as her childhood pal Risa already had.
    Thinking of Risa made Cherelle slide back toward the good old days, when two smart Arkansas orphans had stuck it to the—
    The phone was still ringing.
    She shook off the last of her half-sleeping memories, pulled her vortex persona around her like invisible robes, and picked up the receiver. When she spoke, her voice was hushed and gentle.
    “Good morning, Virgil. I sense that you’re having a difficult time.”
    “Gotta see you.”
    “Let me check my—”
    “No,” he interrupted. “Now, Lady Faulkner. It’s gotta be now. While it’s still dark. That gold is killing me.”
    She barely bit back the gutter words that were doing back flips on her tongue. “Gold, hmmm? Did you fall asleep over the pictures in one of your old books again?”
    “Got things better than any damn book. You come quick. You’ll see.”
    “Virgil . . .” It’s the middle of the fucking night, you moron . She clenched her jaw, swiped hair out of her eyes, and said carefully, “All right, I’ll come, but I’ll have to ask for double the usual fee. I’m sorry, but that’s the—”
    “If you get here before dawn, I’ll give you four hundred,” he cut in.
    “Cash?”
    “Yeah.” It was all the money he had left, but he wasn’t worried. If this appointment didn’t do the trick, he didn’t think there would be any others. “But you gotta get here fast.”
    Cherelle swallowed. “I’ll be with you before dawn. Peace and prosperity, Virgil.”
    Before the client could answer, she dumped the phone in its cradle and shook her partner hard enough to make his blond-streaked hair fly. “Up and at ’em, pretty boy. Virgil has four big ol’ bills waiting for us.”
    Tim opened one beautiful blue eye. “Who do we have to kill?”
    “Ha, ha. You can’t even step on a cockroach. You have to have your jailhouse buddy do it for you.”
    The other blue eye opened. He smiled like a china angel. “It gets done, don’t it?”
    With a sound of disgust she dropped his shoulders and finished crawling over him to get out of bed. “Haul that sexy butt out of the sheets. We have to be at Virgil’s before dawn.”
    “Socks won’t like it if we aren’t here when—”
    “Socks can fuck himself.”
    “Hey, you’re always down on my buddy.”
    “I never went down on him, not even when he offered me a hundred.”
    Snickering, Tim stretched. He liked jabbing at his lover. It was his way of getting even for not being half as smart as she was. Neither was Socks, for all his bragging. Next to Cherelle, they were both stupid. But that was okay.
    Thinking was a pain in the ass.
    So he left thinking to Cherelle unless it was more up his buddy’s alley, like fencing the occasional TV or DVD player. He didn’t tell Cherelle about