Read Online Hell on Wheels by Julie Ann Walker - Free Book Online Page B

frown around it at her. “If you’re just going to offer up inane observations, why don’t you go back to whatever it was you were doing?”
    “Because, Frank ,” she emphasized his name and his eyelids twitched, “at the moment this is much more interesting.”
    Ali glanced back and forth between them, one eyebrow raised. Everyone else at the table was so accustomed to their constant bickering they didn’t bat a single lash, which only served to exacerbate Frank’s frustration. He was supposed to be the shining example of how they should all conduct themselves, lead by example and all that bullshit, but he couldn’t seem to wrangle his temper—not to mention his libido—whenever Becky was around. It was a problem. One he’d yet to find a solution to.
    “Fine,” he growled, unaccountably mad at her, and even more pissed at himself for his lack of self-control. “But if you’re determined to stay, zip it, unless you have something constructive to add.”
    Becky pantomimed zipping her lips, while simultaneously managing to give him her patented, you’re-such-an-asshole look.
    If she only knew…
    He swung his attention back to Ali because continuing to scowl at Becky wouldn’t do a damn bit of good to further this conversation, nor would it do a damn bit of good for his redlining hormones. “Okay, let’s start at the beginning. You say someone broke into your home?”
    “Sort of.”
    “How can someone sort of break into your home?” he asked, pretending he didn’t see Becky’s exaggerated eye roll.
    “Okay, look, what I’m about to tell you is going to sound crazy and maybe a little paranoid.” Ali rubbed her temples as she sat up straighter. From what Ghost said, the woman was closing in on the twenty-five-hours-of-continual-consciousness mark, and he could tell she was starting that inevitable slide into mental oblivion. That place where the body was still moving, the mouth was still able to string a few largely coherent words together, but the brain was checking out. Good-bye, see you in, oh, say four hours.
    He’d been there more than a time or two himself. She needed to get some sleep and soon. But first they needed some answers, because she’d come into their shop so wired he was surprised her underwear wasn’t picking up signals from the Hubble Space Telescope.
    “Why don’t you give us a try,” he told her. “We specialize in paranoid and crazy.”
    She tried to laugh, but the strain she’d been under, combined with her lack of sleep, made the effort fall flat. Rolling in her lips, she looked around the table as if she’d suddenly lost her nerve, then, “It all started about a week after we found out about Grigg.”
    Everyone at the table, including him, shifted uncomfortably.
    She continued, unconsciously flicking at the tab on her soda with her thumbnail. The hollow metallic pinging was particularly loud in the strained silence of the conference room. “I came home from work one day and just knew someone had been in my condo.”
    “Was anything missing? Moved?” Ozzie asked, leaning back in his chair and running a hand though his mad scientist hair. The kid might have terrible taste in music and T-shirts, but he had an IQ off the fucking charts.
    “No, everything was just how I’d left it, but there was this…this feeling. It sounds dumb, I know��”
    “Not as dumb as you’d think,” Frank assured her. “Intuition is a powerful tool. One each of us sitting around this table has learned to credit. Plus, given the level of technology you’ve been wearing beneath your clothes, I’d say your paranoia was on the money.”
    Ali flashed him a grateful smile.
    I’m just racking up the hero points with you today, aren’t I, sweetheart? Right, if she knew of the wild fantasies he was entertaining about Becky, she would surely be wearing a totally different expression. The kind someone might don after catching the neighborhood weirdo garbed in nothing but a trench coat in