Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle, Pauline Jones [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

proper ties that matched. Their blank, cool faces were almost identical, too. Only their hair was different, one light and one dark.

A mouth moved in the face of the light-haired guy, exposing a straight line of white teeth. “Will you please come with us, Miss Stanley?”

I clutched my purse to my chest, too shocked for words.

Willis had plenty to say. “She’s our witness. You can’t waltz in here and take her. Not till we’ve finished getting her statement.”

Like identical marionettes they pulled open their jackets, extracted matching leather wallets and flipped them open. Dillon took a hard look, then wheeled away.

“You damn spooks think you can do whatever you want.”

Willis’ face was tight with rage. “What possible interest could the CIA have in the murder of a math teacher in the suburbs?”

“I’m afraid we’re not at liberty to answer questions,” the dark-haired partner spoke this time.

Dillon slammed his hands down on the table, catching the point of my broken pencil and sending it sailing through the air. “You’re out of your jurisdiction. This is our case.”

The pencil hit the wall, then floor, where it rolled back between Dillon’s feet.

Neither spook reacted. Light hair said, “It’s still your case. You’ll just have to solve it without Miss Stanley. Like the man said, she’s ours now.”

They closed in on either side of me, grabbed my arms, and swept me out the door and down the hall. There was one brief check to our exit. A uniformed officer approached me holding up a familiar looking glue gun.

“Miss Stanley? I think this is your sister’s. We forgot to give it to her when she reclaimed her personal items.”

I recognized Rosemary’s monogram on the side. She loved that glue gun almost as much as her car. Still gripped by suits, I signed something, took the gun and shoved it in my purse. The spooks started us toward the exit again, my dragging feet barely brushing the floor, the glue gun cord slapping against my legs.

“It’s all right, Miss Stanley. Trust us,” dark hair said.

Trust the CIA? I don’t think so.

Outside a long, dark limo waited. They stuffed me in it with insulting ease. I landed untidily in a lap. A familiar smell teased my nostrils. I didn’t even have to look. But of course I did.

Kelvin Kapone.

Not a private investigator. A spy.

12

“Would you believe me if I said I’m not a spy?”

“No.” I slid off his lap and onto the seat next to him. “Why should I believe anything you say? You told me you were a private detective.”

“You told me I was a private detective.”

“You agreed with me.”

“I didn’t disagree with you. There’s a difference.”

“Only to a spook!” I straightened as much as I could in the soft, deep seat and looked haughtily out the window.

“And what would you have done if I’d told you I was CIA?”

I shrugged to indicate my total lack of interest in him or his lies. And then made the mistake of looking at him to see how he liked the cold shoulder. The back seat of the limo closed us in a dim intimacy that put interesting shadows across his clean cut face and highlighted his bright, white smile. He smelled of soap and after-shave, the expensive kind. His eyes held a nice mix of remorse and an engaging invitation to freely forgive, to come bask once more in their warm blue light.

“I wouldn’t have believed you,” I admitted, giving him a dark look. “Why would I expect James Bond to dive through my sunroof in the suburbs?”

He looked penitent, though his eyes lost the remorse and filled with wicked humor. “If it makes you feel any better, I was being chased on my own time. I went there because my mother asked me to.”

“Your mother? Are spies allowed to have mothers?”

“If we don’t have one, then one is issued to us.”

How could he keep his face so serious, while his eyes laughed so outrageously?

“If I’d known…” I began.

“You didn’t need to know.”

I looked up at that. “Oh really? And now I do?”

“Let’s just say the local police don’t need to know.” Then he had the nerve to grin at me.

It was practically atomic in intensity and stirred up all the things I shouldn’t be feeling. This guy was totally out of my league. I was a Baptist children’s book author. He was a CIA agent. End of story. So why did my lips curve in a smile loaded with idiocy? I shook away idiocy and asked, “How did you know I was at the police station?”

“Would you believe, we have our ways?”

I stared at him for a full minute before it hit me. I’m slow, but I get there eventually if I have enough really obvious clues.

“You’re—you’re having me followed, aren’t you?”

“You can ID a killer, Bel. Was I supposed to let you wander around unprotected?”

Men. They always insist on being logical. The idea of being followed around when I didn’t know it, made me feel completely illogical. What if I’d done something I didn’t want the CIA to know about? Like…like…I couldn’t think of anything I could do that would anyone, so I said, “If he’d seen me, wouldn’t he have tried to kill me by now? I mean, we were both at the Tandoor Club last night and no one’s tried to kill me. Except Rosemary.”

“I’d prefer not to wait until it’s too late. You saved my life, Bel.” He leaned close and ran a gentle finger along my cheek, sending chills down to my toes. “I’d like to return the favor.”

I couldn’t breathe. He was too close and his eyes so sincerely blue, how could I deny him anything?

“Well,” I licked my lips and offered grudgingly, “Okay, you can save my life. But I want it on the record that I don’t like being followed without my consent.”

“We try to keep everything off the record.”

I had to smile then. “Spook.” He grinned again, with the shameless brass of a man