Sasharia En Garde Read Online Free PDF Page B

Muller,” Sun snapped. “Who is this! And why are you using my daughter’s phone?”
    At first Dougie had thought asking where Sasha was a pretty
cool answer—like, lob the ball back at whoever was calling, if it wasn’t his
connection. He wouldn’t have to explain why he had Sasha’s phone. But.
    Dougie said, fast, “I’m tryin’ to find Sasha. She, like,
took off earlier. With some suit. I thought they were in here all afternoon.”
He snickered at the idea of lawyers doing the horizontal Olympics—and charging
people for their time. “But when I tapped at the door, like, it, you know,
opened. She ain’t here. Or the suit,” he added.
    The lawyer again, Sun thought. Stick to the point .
“What I am to understand is that my daughter was visited by, or is visiting, a
lawyer, but that does not explain who you are, and why you are using her
phone.”
    “Well it was just layin’ around—”
    “Lying.”
    “I am not!”
    Sun said with the quick, sharp consonants that made it clear
to Roger, at least, she was very angry. “The phone was lying there. Unless it was laying baby phones? Use the language properly, and tell me why you have my daughter’s
phone, and who you are .”
    Dougie cursed the old bag, Sasha, and the phone, but only
inside his head. He was about to sling her some bull but he remembered a show
on which the cops traced cell phones. Crap! Maybe it hadn’t been such a hot
idea to make his connection with someone else’s phone, like he’d first thought.
    “I’m Doug. Roommate,” he muttered. And, in a whine, “Like I
told ya, she like took off with the bozo in the suit, and hasn’t come back. Her
car’s out front and everything. I was hopin’ the phone would find her—”
    “What is the address?”
    Dougie stared at the phone, appalled. What if this old broad
really was a cop? He closed the phone and tossed it into Sasha’s closet.
“Hell.” He slammed the door behind him.
    On the other side of the continent, Sun looked across the
hotel room at Roger. “I have to go back,” she said.
    “Back to what?” Though he knew the answer.
    “To L.A., right now.” Sun’s eyes were tense with worry.
“Sasha would never—” She shook her head. “I have to find her. That strange
message she left, and she won’t take my calls? Some idiot using her phone,
obviously without her permission? I’m afraid I know where she’s gone.”
    Roger flung the hotel keycard on the nightstand. “You’re not
going to say something easy to hear or to believe, are you.”
    Sun spread her hands. “If she went out of the world, it means
she was taken against her will.” And when Roger shook his head, she studied
him, saying slowly, “You don’t believe me, do you? In fact, you never did.”
    Roger approached, stopping halfway across the room. “What
was I supposed to think? Oh, I never thought you outright lied. And I do know
the difference between lie and lay.”
    The feeble attempt at a joke did not bring an answering
smile, only a troubled stare. He half held out a hand, but Sun stood there by
the window of their suite in the Omni Hotel, below which the traffic of 52 nd Street hissed and honked, voices in at least three languages echoing up the
buildings.
    He said, “I always thought your story was one of your hippie
metaphors. Like your names—the fact that the name you gave me is not the same
one as on your passport, which isn’t the one you pay your taxes under. All your
identities seemed your way of keeping your friends at a distance.”
    Her brows snapped together. “I was always upfront with you .”
    “I know. I expressed it badly. I’ve the time, the money, and
I’ve always enjoyed being your cavalier
servente . No one else likes the same music, the same art, the same kinds of
conversations. And it was those things that convinced me, well, you might
change your mind one day. You might want more than a cavalier servente with time and money. And the same taste