Read Online Sugar and Spite by G. A. McKevett - Free Book Online

one’s team.
    “I’ll take a rain check for the moment,” she said, “until we see what Jeffries is going to do. Obviously, if they try to pin this on Dirk, I’ll have my work cut out for me.”
    “We all will.”
    Savannah smiled. “Consider yourself kissed, my friend.”
    “By you… what a nice way to start the day.”
    She stifled a frustrated moan, just thinking of what it might be like to start the day by kissing a hunk like Ryan Stone. A nice fantasy. But reality was Dirk snoring in her guest room.
    She thanked Ryan again, assured him she would call if she needed them, and said good-bye.
    No sooner had she turned off the phone than it rang again. She was prepared to give a reporter an earful of colorful Southern phraseology when she heard a familiar voice, sounding oh so official.
    “Lieutenant Jeffries here. I need Dirk Coulter.”
    “Dirk is in bed,” Savannah said, as gently as possible. “He was up all night. Could I possibly have him call you in a few hours?”
    “Wake him up. Tell him to come down to the station.”
    “Now?”
    Stony silence on the other end.
    “Okay, Lieutenant. I’ll get him there right away. Is there… some particular problem?”
    “Just have him here in twenty minutes and tell him under no circumstances is he to speak to the press. No one!”
    “Oh, I see,” Savannah mused aloud. “A bit of a public-relations debacle?”
    But Jeffries hadn’t heard her. He had already slammed the phone down in her ear.
    Slowly, Savannah dragged her tired body up the stairs and down the hall to the guest room. Dirk looked pretty much exactly as he had a few hours ago, when she had undressed him and tucked him in. He was sprawled across the covers, looking as though someone had shot him. But he was snoring too loudly for a corpse.
    “Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty,” she said, shaking him gently.
    He grumbled and pulled the covers over his head.
    “Get up,” she said. “The lieutenant called. He wants you on the carpet in twenty minutes, and you smell like a saloon.”
    More rumblings, but no movement.
    “Take a hot shower, kiddo, and I’ll whip you up some coffee and pancakes.”
    The head emerged, one eye opened.
    Savannah smiled, satisfied. She knew Dirk, his habits, his preferences, the way to motivate him.
    Free food did it every time.
    As she made her way to the kitchen to stir up some hotcakes, she decided to give him real maple syrup and melted butter. It might be his last meal on the “outside” for a long time.
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CHAPTER SIX

    Savannah wasn’t sure exactly what was wrong with Dirk, but she was sure he was—as her Granny Reid would say—a far piece from being all right. He sat in the passenger’s seat of her Camaro, staring straight ahead, like a prisoner being led down the hall toward the electric chair. As she drove, she watched him with her peripheral vision, the way he was shaking all over, especially his knees, which were practically knocking together, like a cartoon character’s. But he wasn’t funny. Savannah was more than a little concerned by the way he was breathing—fast, hard, and progressively more erratically.
    She wasn’t sure if he was having some sort of old-fashioned panic attack, or worse, a heart attack. Thinking back on all the cheap pizza, buckets of happy-hour buffalo wings, two-for-the-price-of-one burgers and hot dogs she had seen him happily consume over the years, she wondered if the king of cheap was going to have to fork over big bucks for an angioplasty to clear all that bargain crud out of his arteries.
    “You okay, buddy?” she asked, reaching over and jostling his forearm. His muscles were knotted and tight with tension. He flinched at her touch.
    “No,” he replied with a degree of candor that told her he certainly wasn’t his usual cantankerous, closed-off self.
    “What can I do to help?” she asked.
    “Turn this buggy around and head south until we hit Tijuana.”
    She shot him a sideways look. “You
are
kidding.