Read Online Smoke Screen by Sandra Brown - Free Book Online Page B

bar? That’s where I sat today. There are twenty or more barstools.”
    “People were standing three deep behind the stools.”
    “How many bartenders?”
    “I didn’t count.”
    “How many cocktail waitresses?”
    “A few. Several. Four, five, half a dozen. I don’t know.”
    “But all of them were busy.”
    “Extremely. There was noisy chatter, loud music, people—”
    “Did you ask a hostess if Jay was there yet?”
    “There wasn’t anyone at the hostess stand. I told you I spotted him.”
    “So you didn’t announce your arrival in any way?”
    “No.”
    “Did anyone approach you?”
    “No.”
    “Did you attract anyone’s notice?”
    “No.”
    He looked her straight in the eye, then deliberately dropped his gaze to her chest, and lower, to her bare thighs. He let his eyes linger there for a noticeable time before lifting them back to her face and silently communicating that he found it hard to believe no one had noticed her.
    She squirmed under his gaze. “Look, I’ve been over this time and again with the police. Nothing unusual happened. Nothing.”
    “You’re on TV every day. Nobody recognized you? You didn’t make eye contact with anyone besides Jay?”
    She closed her eyes as though resetting the scene in her mind and trying to squeeze out a memory. “I think maybe…maybe…” She opened her eyes but made a small sound of frustration. “Possibly I made eye contact with a man at the bar, but I don’t know if I’m remembering or imagining.”
    “Maybe when you’re not trying so hard it will come back to you.” He studied her for several moments, then said softly, “Unless this loss of memory thing is all a hoax and you remember everything.”
    If her feet hadn’t been secured, he thought she would have launched herself out of the chair and straight at him. Her face was flushed with so much anger, he thought she might try to attack him in spite of being hobbled. “Why would I fabricate a memory loss, Mr. Gannon?”
    “Well, one good reason would be that you woke up next to a dead guy, and you’re covering your ass.”
    “Nothing I did caused Jay to die.”
    “Let’s say the sex got rowdy or kinky.”
    “Let’s not.”
    “Before you knew it, your lover wasn’t moving. Or you had a lovers’ tiff that turned ugly.”
    “We weren’t—”
    “Maybe Jay went into cardiac arrest, which freaked you out, and you were useless to try and help him. Anything’s possible. You were both drunk on scotch—that was in the newspaper, too—maybe scotch isn’t your drink. It makes you wild, irrational, violent. You—”
    “None of that happened!”
    “How do you know if you can’t remember?”
    “I would remember if I’d killed a man accidentally or otherwise.”
    “Are you sure?”
    The taunt only maddened her more. “I’ve had it with this. And with you. Get this tape off me!” she yelled.
    “You can scream all you want, nobody is going to hear you, and you’ll only make that golden throat of yours hoarse. You wouldn’t want that to happen.”
    Blue eyes blazed at him. “I’m going to see you in prison for this. I can’t wait to cover your trial. I’ll be there with a microphone and camera the day they lock you up.”
    “Do you know how Jay died?”
    “No!”
    “Did you kill him?”
    “No!”
    “Did you fuck him?”

CHAPTER
6
    T HE VULGARITY SHOCKED THE ANGER OUT OF HER.
    “What?”
    “Want me to spell it?”
    She looked away, then down at the floor. “I need to use the bathroom.”
    The crudity had been intentional, and it had served its purpose. Anger sometimes escalated into stubbornness. If she went tight-lipped on him out of sheer obstinance, then he’d gain nothing.
    Now that she was subdued, he could be more lenient. A little more. He knelt down in front of her and used his pocketknife to slice through the duct tape around her ankles, then peeled it off.
    “Thank you.” She tried to stand but dropped back into the chair. “My feet have gone to