Silver Sparks Read Online Free PDF Page A

camera straps slung over their shoulders, and hands cupped around their eyes as they peered in the windows. Crap—only tabloid reporters could be that bold. Still, that didn’t mean she had to put up with fingerprints all over the glass, or scratches if one of those cameras banged against the side of the car.
    “Hey, guys!” They looked up. “Hands off the car, okay?”
    They straightened immediately. “Maggie! Could we get a quote from you about your fight with Rafe De Luca?” They both jogged toward her. “Is it true your fight was because he was upset about your police record?”
    “What?” She scowled, mouth hanging open in astonishment. One of them chose that instant to raise his camera and take her picture. She snapped her mouth closed. “Who have you been talking to? I don’t have a police record.”
    They kept coming, throwing out questions as they did. “How long have you and Rafe been seeing each other?” That was from the shorter one who’d taken her picture.
    “Weren’t you the secret woman he was with in Hawaii last month?” asked the taller one as he, too, reached for his camera.
    “No! We aren’t . . .” She realized she was falling into their trap, and shut her mouth, glaring. Another priceless Kodak moment was captured with a flash. “No comment!” She slammed the door.
    Leaning against it, she took several deep breaths. Fists pounding on the outside vibrated against her back, and she jumped away. The reporters continued to shout questions, and she moved to the front of the store so she couldn’t hear.
    She hadn’t handled that well, but they’d taken her by surprise with that crap about a police record. She needed to keep her cool and politely deflect questions with noncommittal answers. Next time she would be ready.
    Maggie concentrated on calming her anger and her galloping heart. After a few seconds the pounding and shouting stopped, leaving the store in blissful silence.
    Light streamed through the two big front windows, but with the overhead lights off, the area near the back wall was dim. Soothing. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling calm seep back in. Fortune’s Folly in the early morning was her favorite retreat from the world, and she let it work its magic on her now.
    She was alone here, if you didn’t count the hundreds of corpses. “How’s it going, George?” Maggie ran her hand over the rippled black body where it hung on the wall, encased in its tomb of limestone. “Sorry about that lawyer. We haven’t all evolved to the same level.” The giant trilobite was silent, but she imagined tiny black eyes blinking kindly behind the protuberances on George’s fossilized head. George would understand—he was that kind of guy. In the four months he’d hung on her wall, they’d had many one-sided conversations, and he’d never once failed to agree with her.
    “How’s your lady friend? Has she noticed you yet?” The sandy-colored stone slab held the bodies of five more trilobites, all giant specimens about a foot long. One lay nearly within reach of George’s outstretched antenna, as if he’d spent the past five hundred million years trying to get her attention. Maggie gave him a warning tap on the head. “Just keep those feelers off her ass, buddy. Girls don’t like that.”
    Pulling a long dusting rod from beneath the checkout counter, Maggie began brushing invisible cobwebs off the displayed fossils—more chunks of ancient ocean mud, teeming with the bodies of prehistoric fish, crustaceans, and ammonites. They were popular items among her customers with twenty or thirty thousand dollars to blow on an interesting conversation piece.
    She worked her way toward the front of the store, humming to herself as she smoothed silk wall hangings. She’d nearly forgotten about rude reporters when a tap on the front door made her look up. Through the glass, four men waved and signaled for her to come to the door. Two were from the parking lot, but the