Unplugged Read Online Free PDF Page B

friend?” he asked.
    I considered telling him for the umpteenth time that Solberg was not my friend. In fact, I considered telling him a lot of things, like I didn’t care how good he smelled, he was still a knob-headed cretin from the depths of hell.
    “I wouldn’t be here,” I said instead, “but Elaine is worried about him.”
    “Elaine?” he asked as if he didn’t remember her.
    I scowled. Everyone with a teaspoon of testosterone and a single functioning brain cell remembers Elaine. “My secretary,” I explained. I was nothing if not patient.
    “Oh, yes,” he said, and leaning back slightly, folded his hands over his belt buckle. He was wearing dark dress pants and a navy blue button-up shirt with no tie. His face was lean, his neck dark, with no chest hair showing beneath the scooped hollow of his throat. I swallowed. “Your loyal employee.”
    I refused to drop my gaze, even though I knew exactly what he was referring to. Elaine had lied for me once or twice. He had found it neither believable nor amusing.
    “She’s been . . .” I drew a deep breath and jumped in. The water was icy. “She’s been dating him.”
    “Elaine,” he said, then paused, “and Solberg.” His lips twitched a little.
    “Yes.”
    He gave the slightest shrug as if to say it wasn’t his place to question the mystical ways of the cosmos. “And he’s gone missing?”
    “Yes.”
    Seconds stretched and frayed. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”
    For just a moment I let myself fantasize about dropping an anvil on his head. But I wouldn’t really do it. That would be wrong. And I didn’t know anyone with an anvil. “You’re just as funny as I remember,” I said.
    “Some things never change.”
    His grin, for instance. It couldn’t really be called a smile, since it barely quirked the corners of his mouth. Instead, it just shone with satanic mischief in his eyes.
    “Where does he live?” he asked.
    “What?” Despite everything, the anvil scenario was distracting.
    “Solberg,” he said, and slid a notebook across his nearly empty desk as he straightened. “What’s his address?”
    I gave it to him.
    He paused in the middle of writing. “That’s not our district.”
    “What?”
    “La Crescenta would have jurisdiction there.”
    “What are you talking about? His house isn’t thirty minutes from here.”
    He shrugged. The movement was slow and barely discernible. “Cops are territorial. I thought you’d learned that by now.”
    Something sparked in his eyes. I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t care. I’d learned my lesson last go-round. Jack Rivera, with his dark chocolate eyes and wood-smoke voice, was strictly off-limits, like cigarettes, and desserts with fat grams that ran into the triple digits.
    “Very well . . .” I rose to my feet and swept my purse dramatically onto my shoulder. Glenn Close should have looked so good. “Where is La Crescenta?”
    “Sit down,” he said.
    “I would love to converse, Lieutenant,” I said, “but I’m afraid I don’t have a great deal of time to—”
    “Sit down,” he repeated.
    I did so, though I don’t know why. Maybe it was because he was a cop, but God knows, I haven’t been exactly meek with authority figures in the past. I believe Father Pat, the patriarch of Holy Name Catholic School, had once called me the spawn of Satan, but that whole episode is a little blurry, as I was in a lust-induced haze with a boy named Jimmy at the time. He could spew Jell-O out of his nose on command. It’s hard to resist a guy with that kind of nasal capacity.
    “I’ll take the information,” he said.
    I wished I were still standing so I could look down at him. “Don’t do me any favors.”
    A muscle jumped in his jaw, then he dropped the pen on the notepad and spread his hands. “Listen, about the other night.”
    I raised a superior brow. “The other night?”
    “When we . . .” He drew a deep breath. His eyes narrowed a little. They were sharp and