Still Waters Read Online Free PDF

Kenny Spencer to join them. He smiled a nasty smile as he heard the woman behind him choke on her rebuttal. He doubted she had much experience with men turning their backs on her. It gave him tremendous satisfaction to think he might have been the first.
    “Kenny, take Ms. Stuart back to the station and wait for me there in my office.”
    “Yes, sir.” The young deputy turned toward Elizabeth expectantly. “Ma'am?”
    Elizabeth ignored him. She wheeled on Dane, grabbing his arm again as he started to walk away from her. “Are you arresting me, Sheriff?”
    “Not at the moment.”
    “Then I should be able to come in on my own, later,” she argued. “I heard you called in the boys from the state crime lab. I'd like to stay and see them in action. I do have a job to do here, you know.”
    “I don't give a rat's ass about your job.”
    “You have no right—”
    “I have every right, Mrs. Stuart.” He leaned over her, trying to intimidate her with his height and his scowl. “You're a witness in a murder investigation.”
    “I'm also a member of the press.”
    “I'll try not to hold that against you.”
    Thinking of her struggling new business, Elizabeth swung an arm in the direction of the small crowd waiting at the perimeter of the area that had been cordoned off by the deputies. “I have as much right to stay here as the rest of them.”
    She didn't like the idea of making money off a man's death, but then, that was the news. Nothing on God's green earth was going to bring Jarrold Jarvis back to life, but Jarrold could still help her pay her bills and put food on the table for herself and her son. She wasn't going to let Dane Jantzen take that chance away from her without a fight.
    Dane flicked a glance at the reporters and photographers who were waiting like hyenas at the site of a lion's kill. They watched for the opportunity to break past the deputies and snatch a juicy tidbit for their papers or news programs. They listened for every scrap of information they could catch. He could single out the ones who had come down from Minneapolis and St. Paul. They had a certain look—hungry, aggressive, clever. Their eyes gleamed with the same kind of excitement Ann Markham's had at the prospect of fast, hard sex. The others, from the smaller stations and papers in Rochester, Austin, and Winona, would be less assertive but no less persistent in their quest for dirt. That was the pecking order of the press. As far as Dane was concerned, none of them had any right to be here. A man had been killed. It was a tragedy, not a photo opportunity.
    Without looking at Elizabeth he gave a curt nod toward the nearest cruiser. “Take her, Kenny.”
    “No!” Elizabeth whispered furiously, no more eager to be overheard by her colleagues than Dane was. She leaned up toward him until they were nearly nose to nose. “
I
found him—”
    “Finders keepers?” Dane snorted, his eyes narrowing in derision. God, she was a cold-blooded bitch, eager to make a nickel off a man any way she could. It didn't even seem to matter to her whether the poor bastard was alive or dead.
    He thought of the men she had loved and left, of the way she had tried to milk gold from Brock Stuart. He thought of Tricia trading him in for a younger, more ambitious man and the L.A. press lapping up the story like greedy cats at spilled cream. The reins on his temper slipped a little farther through his hands.
    “You think you deserve an exclusive, Mrs. Stuart?” His mouth twisted into a grim smile. “Fine.”
    Elizabeth gasped as his hand closed around her upper arm. He set off once again toward the body, this time towing her in his wake as though she were a child's pull toy. He stopped, kneeling beside Jarvis and jerking her down with him so violently that she had to let go of her camera and grab the open car door with her free hand to keep from falling on Jarvis. The camera bounced hard off her sternum and the gravel of the drive dug into her knees as she