Shannon Read Online Free PDF Page A

neighborhood. All he would find out was rumor and innuendo. It wasn’t like the men looking for her would ever dream to look for her here. They would waste time scouring Roxbury, West End, maybe even Cambridge.
    “There’s nothing to find,” she lied without blinking. The thing about lying is you had to find the truth in the lie—that way you could speak it with complete conviction. There was nothing he needed to know, nothing that affected him and his in any way. In essence, there was nothing for him to find.
    “So you say, sugar.” Turning back to the pile of folders, he pitched the one on the woman who’d just left in the small barrel by the desk. “Are you ready for the next one?”
    Shay turned back to the matter at hand, but she kept the warning in the back of her head. If he even looked like he was beginning to unearth her secrets she needed to be gone. Best to come up with an escape plan now. Being unprepared had almost been her downfall; she wasn’t about to get caught up again.

Chapter Three
     
     
    Twenty girls was more than enough for one night. Really, it wasn’t, but Shannon had about all he could take.
    “Send the rest of the girls away, Mickey. Tell them to come back tomorrow at noon.” But then he glanced at the woman who’d fallen to sleep on his lap. “Make that six in the evening.”
    There was no way he was going to be done exploring this creature that had wandered into his life by noon. Maybe by six he would’ve fucked her out of his system. He doubted it, but he was damn sure going to try.
    “Magpie?” Mickey spoke for the first time tonight, nodding toward Magda. He was a man of few words, literally. Magda was also asleep, or pretending to be. No doubt she had watched the interviews avidly, really to report to Paddy the first chance she got. Not that Shannon gave a shit, but having snitches in every aspect of his life rode his nerves hard. The quicker he weeded out Paddy loyalists the better.
    “Take one of the room and leave her tied near you. You can pick one of the girls if you like.”
    “Not here.” Mickey shook his head, but that was all he offered by way of explanation. He walked over, untied Magda, hefted her over his shoulder and trudged out of the room without another word.
    Shannon sat for a moment looking down on the woman he held. Sunshine, his ass. Not only had she never been any kind of pro, she’d never been a stripper or a mistress or anyone’s side chick. This was a woman who was used to running shit—she knew her worth and demanded others treated her as such. Oh, she had tried to be all compliant. There were times when, questioning the women trying to get into a house, her vast knowledge of running whores shone through. In fact, he was willing to bet she could straighten out the Arsenal, organize the bookies, and work out a schedule of goods coming off ships with Kieran, all without breaking a sweat.
    So she wasn’t knew to criminal life, even though she hadn’t ever worked the ground floor. For one thing, she was educated. A Boston girl for sure, but one that had either some college or a degree or two. So what the hell was she doing here, trying to become a pro? Her hands were soft and smooth, telling him she wasn’t blue collar, but there was a toughness about her. Plus she saw things he hadn’t in some of the applicants. Drugs was an easy call on the first girl, but she’d spotted a girl on the run from an abusive relationship, a chick with mental issues not obvious until she started to probe, two girls trying to hide from the cops, and four underage girls trying desperately to be older than they were. There were a lot of other little problems she found, leaving the grand total of women hired at twenty, less than a third of what he needed. But the hires were quality.
    The thing that nagged at him, that he couldn’t quite shake, was the fact she could spot chicks who had possibly been plants for his father. Not that she knew what she was doing, but