Read Online Tell Me by Lisa Jackson - Free Book Online Page A

her mind on the article that was forming in her mind.
    All the while, as she waited for the little dog to sniff and take care of business, she thought of Niall O’Henry and how she would spin the story about him.
    “Are you about done?” she asked and looked around for the dog, who had disappeared into the shadows. “Come on, Mikado! I’m freezing.”
    No answer.
    “Buddy?” Her gaze scoured the magnolia and crepe myrtle lining the brickwork, but she couldn’t see the dog, nor did he respond. All she heard was the hum of traffic in the city. “Mikado?” Whistling, she walked toward the fence line, hoping he hadn’t found a space to crawl under. “Come!” Her heart started to pound a little faster when she finally saw him, unmoving, staring toward a corner of the yard. “What is it?” He growled, and her nerves tightened, even though she knew he could be focused on a cat on the other side of the fence, or a squirrel or some other rodent.
    Hearing the soft rustle of something moving through the undergrowth, the hairs on the back of her neck raised. Reed’s warning, “Be careful,” echoed through her mind. Shivering, she said, “Let’s go, buddy,” and quickly picked up the dog. His little body was tense, his ears cocked, his eyes trained on the encroaching darkness. “Give it up,” she said, and scratched him behind the ears as she hurried into the house and up the stairs.
    Once in her apartment, she snapped off the lights and moved into the kitchen to look down at the garden below. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. When she squinted into the darkness beyond the fence, she thought she saw movement, someone hurrying through the shadows of the yard and alley behind her property, but she couldn’t be certain and chalked the image up to her overactive imagination.
    Mikado barked for a treat, and she broke a small doggie biscuit into two pieces before making a cup of hot tea. She then headed up the stairs to her writing alcove and computer.
    The article came together easily, but there wasn’t a lot of meat to it, nothing special, and she frowned at her cell phone as Niall O’Henry’s lawyer hadn’t deigned to return her call. “Par for the course,” she grumbled and made the best of the information she had.
    Tomorrow. If she could just get in to see Blondell, then she’d have a real story. Somehow, she had to make it happen. For now, she logged onto her e-mail account at the paper, found the pictures Jim Levitt had turned in and picked two. One was a close-up of Niall as he stood solemnly at the podium. The second was a broader shot that showed the crowd that had convened around the steps of City Hall. It still wasn’t enough, so she searched through the paper’s archives and located several pictures of Blondell O’Henry at the time of her trial. Even in grainy black and white, she’d been a striking, petite woman with dark hair that framed a heart-shaped face. Her features were even, her cheekbones sculpted. Her large, smoky-gray eyes were rimmed in thick lashes, and her full lips were parted, showing perfect teeth and creating a slight enigmatic smile that could only be called sexy. Despite having three children, she’d been thin, with a few curves that were, as her father had said often enough, “in all the right places.”
    After attaching the digital photos she’d chosen for the piece, she sent everything to the Sentinel, then started work on a synopsis of the book she planned to write. It would take her a week or two to put the idea together and then to flesh it out enough so that Ina and her editor, Remmie Franklin, would approve.
    After working for two hours straight, she decided to call it a night, but as she was starting down the stairs, she spied her high school yearbooks piled on the bottom shelf of her bookcase. Her copies of the Robert E. Lee High School Traveller , named after the Southern general’s famous horse, had collected dust since she’d moved in. Now Nikki