Read Online Holy Terror by Graham Masterton - Free Book Online Page B

else am I good for?’
    â€˜You could be a magician. Look at that David Copperfield. He makes a fortune.’
    â€˜I can just see two thousand people flocking to Carnegie Hall to see an ex-detective produce hard-cooked eggs out of his ears.’
    She took hold of his chin and turned his face sideways until he was looking directly into her cornflower-blue eyes. ‘Think about it. It could have been you that was shot today. Then it would have been Salvatore coming to tell me that I was a widow, and I’m not even married yet.’
    â€˜You always said you wanted to be a free spirit.’
    â€˜If it’s a choice between losing you and keeping you, I’d rather not be free at all.’
    â€˜Well, that’s just as well. We Irishmen expect our women to cook all of our meals and wash our shirts and blacklead our stoves, at the same time as bearing us twenty-three children and holding down a job at Grand Central Station, sweeping out the trains, to keep us in beer money. You won’t have the
time
to be free.’
    She was silent, stroking his hair. After a while he said, ‘What?’
    â€˜I don’t think this is the right moment to tell you.’
    â€˜Tell me, for Christ’s sake. Don’t keep me in suspense.’
    â€˜Well, I had a call today. I
could
get a job.’
    He stared at her. ‘Meaning?’
    â€˜Meaning nothing at all. Except that I
could
get a job.’
    â€˜A good job, you’re talking about, like you had before? A full-time, well-paid job?’
    She nodded. ‘Frank Rossi wants me for a new late-night discussion show.’
    â€˜So you’re going to take it?’
    â€˜I don’t know. I wanted to discuss it with you first.’
    â€˜Why do you have to discuss it with me? It sounds like a wonderful offer. Take it.’
    â€˜It’s just that if I
did
take it… well, you wouldn’t have to work at that security job any more. You’d have time to look around for something that wasn’t so dangerous.’
    â€˜Lisbeth, I used to be a police detective. As far as I’m concerned, this job doesn’t even register on the Richter Scale as mildly risky.’
    â€˜How can you say that, when you could have been killed today?’
    â€˜A 747 could have fallen on my head, whether I was chief of security at Spurr’s Fifth Avenue or not.’
    â€˜That’s ridiculous. I could have been sitting here on my own this evening. And every other evening to come.’
    Conor kissed her. ‘Do you know what my grandfather used to say? He said that when a woman comes to live with a man, she brings two suitcases with her. One suitcase filled with pretty underwear and another suitcase filled with chains.’
    Lacey went to change while Conor finished his beer. He glanced toward the bedroom door and he could see her reflection in the mirror. After his experience with Paula, he still found it extraordinary that he could love a woman so much. But he loved everything about her, right down to the way she scolded him for eating hamburgers, and the way she sang shrill, wildly off-key songs when she was decorating. Bob Seger would have wept to hear her sing ‘Hollywood Nights’.
    Her real name was Lisbeth Johannsen. She was very tall, with shoulders like a swimmer. She had blond flyaway hair, high Nordic cheekbones and a tip-tilted nose. Conor always said that she had pink satin pillows instead of lips.
    She had started her working life as a researcher for NBC, eventually graduating to television reporter and then to early-evening anchor. But her career was mortally wounded by a disastrous two-and-a-half-year relationship with Larry Elgar, a failed producerwho drank Stolichnaya for breakfast and regularly beat her. She couldn’t turn up to present the six o’clock news with two black eyes and a plaster over the bridge of her nose, so she was forced to quit. Eventually, however, a gay friend called