Showdown at Lizard Rock Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t know. You make your plans and I’ll make mine. You like playing games? I know a few I’d like to teach you.”
    Kaylyn blanched. “We’ll see, Mr. Vandergriff. How do you like playing cops and robbers? A little time in jail ought to make my point if my protest didn’t. All right, Chief, you can let me out now!”
    “No can do, Katie, my girl,” the chief called from the front office. “This time it’s official and we have to go by the rules. You’ll have to wait to be bailed out.”
    “Oh, my Lord. Now look what you’ve done, Mr. Vandergriff. I’m due back at the nursing home for a special program tonight. I can’t stay in here with a—a pervert. The patients will have a heyday with this little bit of gossip.”
    “Oh, shucks, you can’t leave yet,” King said. “This little party is just what I had planned for my day. By the way, what do you do at this nursing home? Teach courses in civil disobedience?”
    “It’s a combination retirement and nursing home. We offer full care and a place for those who need occasional looking in on. I’m the recreation director.”
    Kaylyn pulled the voluptuous blond wig off and slung it on the cot. She ran her fingers through her own honey-colored, curly hair while she paced backand forth. King had every right to wonder what kind of recreation director she was, she thought. Everything was getting out of hand. She hadn’t intended to let this happen.
    Harold stumbled to the side of his cell and peered myopically at her new hair.
    “Oh, my goodness,” he said, slurring his words. “They’ve shaved your head. I’m so sorry, ma’am. I didn’t know you were going to the Big House. That’s the State Pen,” he explained to King. “If you two want to be ‘together,’ I’ll trade cells.”
    “
Harold,
” Kaylyn said. “One last time. I don’t want any part of Mr. Vandergriff.”
    “Pity,” King said with a drawl. “That might be one thing we could cooperate on, Ms. Smith.”
    “Too bad.” Harold moaned. He turned to King and shook his head slowly. “They’ve shaved her head,” he announced solemnly. “They always do, you know.”
    “Calm down, Harold,” Kaylyn said in exasperation. “I was wearing a wig.”
    “So you’re not bald,” King said. “I was beginning to wonder.” He leaned against the bars separating the three cells and gazed past Harold at her.
    Without the wig she was even more appealing. A cap of damp blond curls curled over her head. Her blue eyes had lost their sparkle and she looked exhausted. Hell, she didn’t belong in a jail cell. With a body like that she belonged at some man’s breakfast table, flushed and warm from a night of lovemaking.
    King turned away. “Damn!” She was doing it to him again, rattling his concentration. Even two cells away, his body was aware of her.
    “I wish you’d listen to me,” she said sadly. “Why would you want to destroy something for no goodreason? That was the whole point of my mission today—to stop the waste and destruction of the springs.”
    “When you plan a mission, you really do a job on it,” he said. “Since you appear to have my undivided attention, tell me more about your protest. You’ve already made me do more
wasting
today than I can remember.”
    “They send you to the chair for wasting somebody. I heard it on TV,” Harold said.
    Kaylyn ignored him. “All right. I’ll try to explain.” She wished she could get her mind off her itchy ankles and onto her real problem. If she ever got out of this, she’d never, ever, go near poison ivy without a full suit of armor. “The springs, Pretty Springs,” she said seriously, “they have to be saved.”
    “Why, Ms. Smith? I mean, I understand the sentiment you have for the site, but seriously, wouldn’t you rather have new money and new jobs in the county?”
    She sighed. How could she explain the springs to someone who hadn’t seen the results? She’d just end up sounding like some kind of new-age nut.