Read Online Dead on Delivery by Eileen Rendahl - Free Book Online Page A

have a lot of time. I walked quickly down the hall and slipped into the room.
    It only took a few seconds for my eyes to refocus in the dim light. I glanced around the room. There wasn’t much on the walls, and the shelves and desk were bare. The bed had a blue plaid bedspread and a wooden headboard. It seemed so generic. Then again, Bossard hadn’t been home long from wherever he’d been. I guess wherever it was, he hadn’t wanted to bring home any souvenirs.
    The hum was stronger here. I closed my eyes and let my senses guide me. I headed toward the bed. There was nothing on the bedside table. I opened the drawer and found nothing there. I got down on my hands and knees and lifted the bed skirt to look beneath the bed.
    Bingo.
    It was still in the box I’d delivered it in. It was small. No bigger than an index card and not much thicker than a deck of cards. Neil had never even opened it. I wondered how it had gotten under the bed and then shook my head. I didn’t even know what was in the box, but I knew how objects of power worked. Seemingly inanimate, seemingly with no will or volition of their own, they often ended up exactly where they needed to be. Someone dropped a box on the floor. Someone else accidentally kicked it. Suddenly it was under the bed of whoever it was intended for, working whatever magic, good or ill, that its maker intended.
    I reached for it. Damn. It was just out of reach. If only my arms were another inch or two longer, I could get it. I craned my head under the bed. I could almost slip it under the frame. My fingers brushed the box. I scraped my fingernails along the edge and caught a fold in the brown paper that covered it and pulled it toward me. I slumped with the relief of my success.
    “Hey! What the hell are you doing?” a voice demanded from behind me.
    I then executed a complicated series of maneuvers that I don’t think I could possibly reproduce or even explain. Suffice it to say that I managed to both bash my head against the underside of the bed and scrape my face along the carpet. I also, however, managed to palm the box up into the sleeve of my sweater.
    I stood. The voice belonged to a young man and I use the term man loosely. He was maybe seventeen at the most, but he was tall and solid looking.
    “Hi,” I said, giving my most disarming smile. “How’s it going?”
    “What were you doing under there?” He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled.
    Apparently my most disarming smile was about as effective as my feminine wiles. “I was, uh, looking for the bathroom.”
    “Under the bed?” The scowl turned to a look of incredulity. I couldn’t decide if that was progress or not.
    “Well, of course not. Don’t be silly. I, uh, came in here by mistake and then I, uh, dropped an earring.” He was standing smack dab in the center of the doorway. The only way out was straight through him. I could definitely take him. First of all, he wouldn’t be expecting it, and surprise was always a wonderful weapon. Second, despite him looking solid, he was only solid for a seventeen-year-old. That’s not all that solid. Still, it wasn’t a course I really wanted to take. I’d planned on being discreet. I like to stick to the plan whenever possible. Barreling over a seventeen-year-old on the second floor and then hightailing it out of the house didn’t really sound discreet to me.
    He squinted. “You’ve still got both your earrings in your ears.”
    I reached up to check my lobes. “Yep! Found it! Isn’t that great?” I started walking toward him, hoping he would shift out of my way.
    “Who are you anyway?” He didn’t shift. Bummer.
    “I’m Melina. I’m, uh, I was a friend of Neil’s.” I tried to put just the right hesitation on it so that I sounded still surprised and regretful that he was dead.
    “A friend from where? I don’t recognize you from around here.”
    I guess I didn’t get the spin right. “No,” I said. “Not from around