Read Online Smoke Screen by Sandra Brown - Free Book Online

this…this whatever it was. Jay’s death had brought Raley Gannon out of obscurity. He had left Charleston five years ago, never to be heard of again. At least not by her.
    Possibly he and Jay had stayed in touch. Jay had never mentioned him, though, and it had never occurred to her to ask him about Raley Gannon. As soon as he was no longer news, she’d forgotten about him.
    He bounced the tablets in his palm. “It’s going to be a long, uncomfortable night for you. Take the pills.”
    She hesitated only a second, then opened her mouth.
    “No way in hell am I going to let you bite me. Stick out your tongue.”
    She did. He set the tablets on her tongue, then pressed the water bottle against her lips again. He poured more slowly, she swallowed more easily, until she’d drained the bottle. He turned and walked into the kitchen to throw away the empty bottle.
    “Did you…” She stumbled over the words, tried again. “Did you have anything to do with what happened to Jay and me night before last?”
    “Why would you ask that?”
    “Did you?”
    On his way back, he dragged a chair from the small dining table and placed it no more than two feet away from the one in which she was sitting. Straddling it backward, he folded his arms over the back of it. “You tell me.”
     
    Britt Shelley, Miss Calm, Cool, and Collected when in front of a television camera, was remarkably composed facing her kidnapper, too. Oh, she was afraid, no doubt about that. But she was putting up a good front. He had to give her high marks for not going hysterical the moment she recognized him, which she’d done almost immediately. Although his appearance had changed, she’d placed him. His face anyway.
    “Do you remember my name?”
    She nodded.
    “You should.”
    It was she who had hammered the last nail into the coffin of his reputation. She’d sealed his fate but good. No telling how many other reputations she had demolished since then. Should he be flattered that she remembered him out of so many? Probably not. Maybe she never forgot the faces and names of the people she destroyed.
    “I remember you, Mr. Gannon.”
    “From five years ago. But your memory can’t account for hours of time night before last. Or so you say.”
    “It’s the truth.”
    “Sounds like an awfully convenient case of amnesia.”
    He could see that she was plotting the best way to handle him. He could almost follow her thought processes as she considered one tactic and then discarded it in favor of another.
    She said, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know, if you’ll take the tape off my hands and feet.”
    So, she’d decided to try to bargain. “No deal. Tell me what happened in Jay’s place that night.”
    “If you’ll remove—”
    “Tell me what happened in Jay’s place that night.”
    “Don’t you think I wish I could?”
    So much for her bargaining scheme. It gave way to shouting and frustration. Fear, maybe. He saw a tear pick up light in the corner of her eye, which left him unmoved. He’d been looking for it, expecting it.
    “You could have saved yourself the dramatic kidnapping, Mr. Gannon. And the gasoline to and from Charleston, and the jail time you’re going to serve for this, because it’s going to yield nothing. I’m blank, completely blank on what happened after Jay and I got to his town house.”
    She looked at him imploringly, tilting her head at an angle that looked defenseless, blinking until the tear slipped over her lower lid and rolled down her cheek. “Free my hands and feet. Please.”
    Bargaining to frustration to tearful appeal in under sixty seconds. The lady had talent. “No.”
    “I’ll tell you anything I can,” she said. “I promise. But I’m very uncomfortable. Please.”
    “No.”
    She nodded toward his open front door. “Where would I go? I don’t even know where I am.”
    “Tell me what happened at Jay’s place.”
    Her head dropped forward, sending a curtain of pale hair over each