Read Online Collar Robber by Hillary Bell Locke - Free Book Online

exactly the kind of thing Proxy would do. Not Spanish, which she could use every day on either coast in the U.S. Not French, which would stamp her in the U.S. as a cultural high-flier with an elite education. German. And give her credit: she’d gotten us into our rooms a full hour before they were supposed to be ready.
    â€œI hate to screw up your biological clock even worse than it already is after a trans-Atlantic flight, but can you handle the Nesselrode thing with seven hours of sleep?”
    â€œTwo hits of Red Bull and I could handle it on five.”
    â€œGood. Go up and crash so you can meet him at ten tonight. I’ll go to Transoxana’s Vienna office and see if Meininger and I can figure out how to find another copy of the comparable sale documentation Szulz is peddling.”
    â€œGot it.” I hoisted the duffel bag that’s as close as I get to luggage if I can help it. “While Willy Szulz sits innocently in Pittsburgh, we’re moving on two separate fronts in Vienna to cut him out of the action.”
    â€œYep,” Proxy said, in a rare lapse from Standard English. “Good thing he’s there and not here.”

Chapter Thirteen
    Cynthia Jakubek
    â€œSo I’m getting up from my desk to go to lunch and the phone rings. Zack’s number on the caller ID. Guy I was seeing at the time. Zack calling means I can spend the noon hour either eating salad or having sex. I picked salad. In the elevator I realized it wasn’t really a close question. I met Sean on my way back from lunch that day. Ten months ago. Fate. Or providence. I’ll go with either one.”
    Abbey Northanger speaks in paragraphs. Entertaining paragraphs, but big blocks of words all the same that draw a little extra verve from her animated face and the gently curling auburn hair above it. She either has violet eyes or the best set of contact lenses I’ve ever seen in my life. She makes her living as a professional event planner. Judging from the Versace and Armani stuff that tastefully drapes her in public, she must be pretty good at it. We were meeting in my office around ten o’clock in the morning—early evening, of course, in Vienna, where Shifos was, even though I didn’t know it at the time.
    â€œSo Zach versus Sean was no contest?”
    â€œForm held, as they say in the NCAA. I’m not putting you off with this frisky-fossil stuff, am I?”
    â€œCalling people your age ancient is for kids who still need fake IDs.”
    â€œZach was pretty typical of what I call my B-S period—‘Before Sean.’”Abbey let an almost wistful smile slip across her face and disappear. “I don’t mean just sowing some wild oats. I mean giving Quakers and Ralston a run for their money.”
    â€œI hope the priest you get for your first confession isn’t fresh out of the seminary.” I smilingly imagined a fledgling cleric listening to Abbey describe her demolition of the sixth and ninth commandments. “His head might explode.”
    â€œOh, I’m sure they’ve got some crusty old ex-military chaplain who’s heard it all with jam on top lined up for me. Anyway, enough foreplay. Down to business. Sean said that you and I should talk.”
    â€œRight. You up to speed on Tally Rand’s little stunt?”
    â€œYep. Pure Tally. Anyone who says grass doesn’t impair judgment needs to tell me how someone with my brains got hooked by that weasel in the first place. He’d come back from his junior year abroad or whatever it was with some éclat that came across as pretty smooth out West, and he had a knack for standing up to cowboy wannabes who resented it. More muscular than he looks, and had a good right jab. Still, I should have smelled the shit even if it was in a silk stocking.”
    My ears pricked up at Pure Tally. Not my favorite lawyer for sure, but up to now I hadn’t stumbled over any hints about him bumping up