Read Online Stone Cold Heart by Lisa Hughey - Free Book Online

delicate grasp. She shivered at the contrast between his rough fingers and the tiny cup as she recalled his dexterity with his hands.
    Oil paintings adorned the walls, high ceilings dripped with ornate mouldings, Persian rugs covered the endangered wood floors. Maids poured tea from bone china pots and served tea sandwiches on etched, sterling silver platters.
    About twenty men of varying ages mingled in the ornately furnished room. Not a single guest was a woman. The wait staff, all women, were dressed in formal maid uniforms with starched black skirts, a white apron pinafore, and a white peter pan collar.
    "Misogynist," Jess mumbled.
    The plan was to poison LeRoy. No scent, no discernible traces for an autopsy, unless you were specifically looking for the drug, and slow acting enough that Colin and the other relief organization attendees of this little soiree would be long gone when LeRoy died in his sleep.
    Keisha who was supposed to deliver the killing salts to the mansion had been trapped in another section of the city. A mob of citizens grew angry when the distributors of first aid kits ran out and so she was late to the servants' entrance at the back of the mansion.
    Keisha had lost her comm device. She'd managed to let them know before the tiny transmitter got ripped from her shirt while she protected the poison. However Keisha could still hear Jess and Colin.
    But now Jess tracked Keisha to the back door where she was trying, unsuccessfully it appeared to Jess, to get in. Of course, Jess couldn't hear her so she wasn't completely positive. Jess gave Colin a quick update.
    Jess followed Keisha's movements. This was the one part of the plan that Jess had felt was tentative but Keisha had assured both Jess and Colin that she would be able to speak the magic words. Whatever they might be. She hadn't shared. Damn, three days in her company, and Jess wasn't any more thrilled with her than she had been in Monterey.
    "Two turned away," Jess updated him softly.
    Even as the cook at the back door refused Keisha entrance, a group of women dressed in very short dresses, flat sandals, big party hair and bright red lipstick crowded in the doorway.
    "Are my eyes deceiving me or did this asshole get hookers for his party?" Jess snarled in disgust. "Holy crap, he did."
    Her fingers were slick on the stock of the Remington as she contemplated options. Her objections to shooting him had shortened as she lay in the rubble, and the heat seared her skin through her clothes.
    Jess observed the reception of the the relief organization officials in LeRoy's mansion. The tiny tea sandwiches made her stomach roil. The people of this country were starving. Starving . And he was serving sandwiches made with bread with the edges cut off? Where were those remnants?
    "You should go for it," Keisha said angrily.
    She had to make a decision.
    Did she shoot LeRoy? Keisha had told her to take the shot. They had no other choice. But that wasn't exactly true. Jess thought about the poison that Keisha had. Now that she'd tried to get in and failed, Keisha was off the table. But no one had seen Jess.
    If she took the shot, chaos would reign.
    She thought about what her brother had said when he'd convinced her to take this job. He'd spoken passionately about their ability to make a difference in the world. There had been a moment when he'd gotten a far away look in his eyes, and murmured about how differences weren't always in the expected manner.
    She slowed her breath and her heart rate, listened to the steady thud, getting into her Zen space, as her focus narrowed to the Medal for Humanitarian Relief pinned proudly to LeRoy’s chest. An obscene and deceitful display of qualities he didn’t possess. A false front he presented to the world.
    LeRoy laughed heartily at some comment that Colin had made. With the high-powered lens she observed the slight tightening round Colin’s eyes. He was wondering when the hell he could leave. The signal for him to take