The Myron Bolitar Series 7-Book Bundle Read Online Free PDF

different now. More matter-of-fact. “You’re kidding, right?”
    “No. I’m serious. Please put your boss on.”
    “Okay, then,” she said. “Hold on a second.”
    A minute passed. Then two. Win said, “She’s not coming back. She’s just going to see how long the chump will stay on the line and pour dollars down her pants.”
    “I don’t think so,” Myron said. “She liked my voice, said I sounded hot.”
    “Oh, I didn’t realize. Probably the first time she’s ever said that.”
    “My thinking exactly.” A few minutes later Myron put the receiver back in its cradle. “How long was I on for?”
    Win looked at his watch. “Twenty-three minutes.” He grabbed a calculator. “Twenty-three minutes times three ninety-nine per minute.” He punched in the numbers. “That call cost you ninety-one dollars and seventy-seven cents.”
    “A rare bargain,” Myron said. “You want to hear something weird? She never said anything dirty.”
    “What?”
    “The girl on the phone. She never said anything dirty.”
    “And you’re disappointed.”
    “Don’t you find that a bit strange?”
    Win shrugged, skimming through the magazine. “Have you looked through this at all?”
    “No.”
    “Half the pages are advertisements for sex phones. This is clearly big business.”
    “Safe sex,” Myron said. “The safest.”
    There was a knock on the door.
    “Enter,” Win called out.
    Esperanza opened the door. “Call for you. Otto Burke.”
    “Tell him I’ll be right there.”
    She nodded and left.
    “I have some time on my hands,” Win said. “I’ll try to find out who placed the ad. We’ll also need a sample of Kathy Culver’s handwriting for comparison.”
    “I’ll see what I can come up with.”
    Win resteepled his hands, bouncing the fingertips gently against one another. “You do realize,” he began, “that this photograph probably means nothing. Chances are there is a very simple explanation for all this.”
    “Maybe,” Myron agreed, rising from his chair. He had been telling himself the same thing for the past two hours. He no longer believed it.
    “Myron?”
    “What?”
    “You don’t think it was a coincidence—Jessica being in the bar downstairs, I mean.”
    “No,” Myron said. “I guess I don’t.”
    Win nodded. “Be careful,” he said. “A word to the wise.”

Chapter 4
    Damn him.
    Jessica Culver sat in her family’s kitchen, in the very seat she had sat in innumerable times as a child.
    She should have known better. She should have thought it through, should have come prepared for any occurrence. But what had she done instead? She had gotten nervous. She had hesitated. She had stopped for a drink in the bar below his office.
    Stupid, stupid.
    But that wasn’t all. He had surprised her, and she had panicked.
    Why?
    She should have told Myron the truth. She should have told him in a plain unemotional voice the real reason she was there. But she hadn’t. She had been drinking unaware, and suddenly he had appeared, looking so handsome and yet so hurt and—
    Oh shit, Jessie, you are one fucked-up chick
.
    She nodded to herself. Yup. Fucked-up. Self-destructive. And a few other hyphenated words she couldn’t come up with right now. Her publisher and agent did not see it that way, of course. They loved her “foibles” (their term—Jessie preferred “fuck-ups”), even encouraged them. They were what made Jessica Culver such an exceptional writer. They were what gave Jessica Culver’s writing that certain “edge” (again, their term).
    Perhaps that was so. Jessie really couldn’t say. But one thing was certain: These foibling fuck-ups had turned her life to shit.
    Oh, pity the suffering artist! Thy heart bleeds for such torment!
    She dismissed the mocking tone with a shake of her head. She was unusually introspective today, but that was understandable. She had seen Myron, and that had led to a lot of “what if-ing”—a verifiable avalanche of useless “what if-ing”