To Free a Spy Read Online Free PDF

give a damn where my bed is. Before and after they’re through with me they’re gonna play the tables downstairs or in the Trophy Club. Give you their money. You know it’s true, and all you have to do is give me a furnished suite. One I can live in. Like an apartment. No checking in and out at the front desk. And I want maids when I call them. No knocking on the door, ‘…Sorry, just checking your room, Ma’am….’ That’s a fatal interruption if my customer’s about ready to buy me a new ring—one, I might add, I can help him pick out in one of your nifty jewelry shops downstairs.”
    Frank had suppressed a smile when she playfully ended her proposal with a modified curtsey that day and lifted her skirt to reveal much of her legs. He walked to the window of his office and looked out at the ocean for a couple of minutes before returning to her.
    “Okay, I’ll do it, Karly, but it’s strictly business. I’m not into sport sex and I run a business here. I ever get the idea it’s not paying off for me in dollars, that’ll end it. There won’t be any discussion. Understood?” Then he walked over to where she was standing and enveloped her with his arms. Secretly, Frank loved her like the daughter he never had.
    That was three years ago, and Frank put everything into her suite she had asked for. He threw in an allowance for room-service meals and gave her access to old Doc Ricardo, the house physician who’d been with Frank since Day One. Gallardi didn’t go out of his way to promote sex, but he wasn’t naïve either. It was going to happen with or without Karly Amarson, with or without the Golden Touch, and with or without Frank Gallardi.
    Karly and Doc Ricardo had become close friends. He never judged her and he frequently examined her in his small office on the third floor to be sure she was still healthy. He never hit on her but they would often have dinner together at a good restaurant at one of the other casinos. They were possibly Frank Gallardi’s most loyal business associates within the hotel and casino. Karly knew that Doc, who had no specific duties other than an occasional guest or patron emergency, kept his eyes and ears alert for anything business or personal that might be harmful to Frank or the casino or hotel. Like Karly, he lived in the hotel and she felt like she could call on him for anything at any time.
    She had selected the furniture and artwork for her suite, the kitchen appliances, designer cookware (as if I’m going to cook!) and the finishes for the walls and floors. She insisted on the precise shades of rust and cream in the rugs to complement the Italian marble and now she thought how well they looked together.
    Karly walked over to the bookcases that framed the fireplace, where a blown-glass vase in a swirl of sunrise reds pointed to the sky and occupied its own shelf. Leather-bound books lined other shelves and Karly pulled down The Portrait of a Lady , by Henry James. The book fell open, allowing a bookmark to flutter to the floor. She sat on the sofa and read a couple of passages to remind herself what was happening when she last put it down. There’ll be plenty of time for reading after tonight. She took in her place once again and thought how different her life was now compared to the two years she spent in New Orleans a decade ago. Yet another phase would begin tonight!
    As she was finishing her drink Jag’s signature rat-a-tat-tat on her apartment door broke the silence. She made a final mirror check. Everything she had on, he’d given her. Like the diamond necklace and earrings, which she figured were fake. They might be CZs but she didn’t mind: The rocks were big and no one could tell cubic zirconium from diamonds anyway. But the diamond ring was real for sure. She was with Jag at Tiffany’s in Manhattan when he bought it for her. She had asked for their initials to be engraved inside the ring’s gold band and he had agreed to “KA & JAG”. She touched the