Read Online All or Nothing by Elizabeth Adler - Free Book Online Page A

computer, and was definitely not pleased when the phone rang.
    “What?” she demanded, clamping it to her ear and continuing to stare balefully at the computer screen. When were they gonna make these darn things as easy to use as they promised? It couldn’t be just her. Everybody had problems with them. Maybe there was something to be said for good old–fashioned typewriters and fax machines instead of E–mail. . . .
    “What?” she said again. Only now she wasn’t looking at the screen anymore. She grabbed the phone as though it might get away from her, ballpoint clamped in one large hand. “Okay, where?” She wrote quickly. “When, what time? . . . Okay, okay, yeah. We’ll be there, sugar. You can bet on it.” She laughed at the reply. “Okay, so you’re not my sugar. At least now I know the truth. Yeah, like if you’re a sex symbol I’m Cleopatra. . . . More like Mark Antony, huh? Well, to tell the truth I always thought he was better–looking than Cleo. . . .”
    She was grinning as she put down the phone. “Bingo!” she yelled loud enough to lift heads from desks. “I’m outta here.” She grabbed her hat and swung through the door. “Bulworth and I have business to attend to.”
    Bulworth saw her coming. Hat rammed over her red hair, elbows aloft, broad shoulders swinging . . . you couldn’t miss her. He shrank back into his black leatherette booth, hoping she might not see him.
    “Sir.”
    No such luck. He glanced up from his chicken matzo–ball soup. Darn it, he hadn’t even gotten to the main course yet. “What is it, Powers?”
    She slid next to him in the booth without even a by–your–leave. Powers really knew how to piss a guy off . . . she was more one of the gosh–darn guys than he was. . . .
    “They found the car,” she said breathlessly. “Abandoned by the side of the road in a remote canyon. Helicopter reconnaissance spotted it a short while ago. I’ll bet my boots it’s hers.”
    “So why would anybody want
your
boots, Powers,” Bulworth replied gloomily. “And what car did they find, anyway?”
    “A metallic–gold car. And I’ll bet it’s a Lexus.”
    Bulworth put down his spoon, looking regretfully at the chicken noodle and matzo–ball as he signaled the waitress. “Cancel the brisket, sweetheart.” He lumbered to his feet. “And put this on my tab, will ya? We’re in a hurry.”
    By the time they reached the car he was already on the phone mustering up his “boys”: detectives, forensics, prints, photographer, coroner’s wagon––though as yet they did not know if they had a body. He was willing to bet on it though. And on who had done it.
    The police convoy trailed up into the hills winding around deserted roads to the place where the vehicle had been spotted by the helicopter crew. The road was narrow, the terrain steep and unsuitable for a chopper to land, so it had backed off and was waiting a couple of miles away for instructions. They passed it on the way up and Bulworth got out to talk to the two cops. They told him the car was almost impossible to spot, hidden under overhanging trees and scrub. The sun glinting off the windshield had alerted them and they had gone down as close as they could, identified that it was a vehicle.
    “Guess we’ve found Laurie Martin,” the chopper pilot said.
    “Guess so.” Bulworth grinned as he slapped him on the shoulder. “Good work, guys. I’ll get back to you.”
    He got that adrenaline rush up the spine as they swung around the curve. And there it was. Laurie Martin’s metallic–gold Lexus 400. All four doors hung open and in the deep canyon silence he could hear the buzzing of flies. He knew what that meant.
    He scanned the dusty blacktop carefully, but even as he looked, the gusty canyon wind lifted the dust, scattering it. Whatever tracks or footprints might have been left were long gone, he knew it. Nevertheless, his boys were already out there, down on their hands and