Read Online Lure of the Wicked by Karina Cooper - Free Book Online Page A

plunked herself on the heated tile beside her and slid her perfectly toned, stripped pink legs into the water.
    Naomi arranged her features into a smile. “Naomi.” She didn’t offer a hand.
    Neither did the redhead with the absolutely magnificent display of cleavage between the lapels of her mint green robe. She smiled easily enough, arranging her robe to reveal the maximum amount of leg possible. “This place is something else, isn’t it?”
    Hell wasn’t the word Naomi should offer. “That it is,” she said instead. Mild enough. “Do you come here a lot?”
    “No, it’s my first time.” She tipped her head toward Naomi, dropping her voice. “Although between you and me? If it puts me in Phin Clarke’s circle, I’ll be here every chance I get.”
    It took even more effort not to laugh out loud. Naomi wasn’t going to claim that she knew him any better than the pop tart sizing him up, but something told Naomi that he wouldn’t touch the redheaded barracuda with a harpoon.
    She ignored the slow, lazy curl in her belly, the awareness of something hot and entirely unwelcome at the mention of his name. Phin wasn’t her business.
    Except in the suspected-accessory-to-harboring-a-fugitive sort of way.
    Right.
    “I mean,” Jordana was saying, straightening her perfect legs and raising just the tips of her fire-engine red toenails out of the rippling, heated surface. “Really, I mean, have you seen him? Oh. My. God. The man has, like, shoulders you wouldn’t believe.”
    “Wouldn’t I?” Naomi murmured. Her gaze drifted past the singer toward the steady stream of people, of conversation. Snippets assaulted her from every direction.
    Stocks. Travel plans. Family. Feed channels and the future. So normal.
    Assuming normal meant the kinds of plans that involved private jets and personally funded tuition at universities that didn’t accept applications from people like her.
    Her jaw shifted.
    “And really, it was so terrible.” Jordana sighed sadly. It jerked Naomi’s attention back to her, to the gossipy glint in her hazel eyes.
    “Oh?” What had she missed?
    Clearly pleased to have a coconspirator, Jordana scooted her amply rounded ass across the tile. “Didn’t you hear ?” she demanded gleefully. “After the accident, Phinny ordered every maintenance tech to show up and get to the bottom of the mess. It was, like, three in the morning.”
    Had he slept at all?
    Naomi forced herself to remember that she didn’t care. “Did they find the problem?”
    Jordana frowned, puzzlement shaping the cosmetically enhanced angle of her eyes. “Problem?”
    “With the door?”
    “Oh!” Her expression cleared. “Who knows? You’ll have to ask them.”
    “Oh, of course.” The urge to grab the shallow redhead by the scruff of her neck and plunge her face-first into the shallow water made Naomi’s fingers flex with greed.
    Spoiled, selfish little—
    “And then I heard that after she got out of the clinic, Alexandra Applegate left at dawn.”
    —fly on the goddamn wall. Naomi straightened. “What?”
    “Alexandra Applegate. Don’t you know who that— Oh.” The singer nodded, as if reaching some conclusion. “You’re not from here, right?”
    “Right,” Naomi murmured, but her mind was spinning. Alexandra Applegate. Hell . Of course that was who the old woman was.
    Why hadn’t the Mission warned her the bishop’s own fucking grandmother was here? Why the fuck hadn’t she recognized her?
    Except she’d never met the woman, and pictures just didn’t match up to lobster red skin, stringy white hair, and blue lips.
    “Whatever.” Jordana rolled her eyes, flicking wet fingers across the pool. “She probably went home and sobbed into her million-dollar wardrobe. I heard that she was ready to shut this whole place down, which would piss me off. I mean, I just met Phinny.”
    Naomi didn’t have the patience for this shit. “Shame,” she said dryly. “Well, nice chatting with you.” She pulled