Read Online The Bliss Factor by Penny McCall - Free Book Online Page B

Larkin and someone in his group. And yeah, hitting him over the head was a bit extreme. So was the gun, but some of these people were a turkey leg short of a feast, and he wasn’t the kind of guy you took on face-to-face. She could even understand how one of these kooks might think it took a gun to put a good scare into him.
    All she had to do was discover who’d sent the clowns in the Honda, figure out what their beef was, and get them to talk it through. Child’s play, right? Except she’d lived with a group of these people the first eighteen years of her life. They were a hell of a lot harder to handle than children. But if there was even a remote chance of solving this thing and getting Larkin off her hands, she had to take the shot.
    She kept her eyes open, making sure she didn’t run into anyone who knew her. She checked behind her at fairly regular intervals to quiet the buzz between her shoulder blades. Since she failed to spot anyone threatening, she wrote it off to the general feeling of menace that had dogged her since the guys in the Honda had used her car for target practice.
    The first circled booth she came to was called Earth Enchanted, proprietor Onyx Chalcedony. Yeah, slight possibility that wasn’t her real name.
    Rae wandered the booth, sifting her fingers through the bins of semi-precious stones, looking at the mystical and Celtic symbols strung on chains as pendants or fixed to hoops for earrings. She worked her way around the small enclosure, moving steadily toward the back room.
    “Can I help you?”
    “Jeez.” Rae jumped, slapping a hand over her heart as she spun around.
    A small woman wearing a deep red wench dress stood close behind her, eyes darting around so quickly they looked like screen-saver balls bouncing off the sides of her eye sockets.
    “I’m just browsing,” Rae said, turning to look at the next section of goods.
    Onyx jumped in front of her. The dozens of stones at her wrists, neck, waist, and ears rattled, and her fingers worried at the cords twisted around her neck. “The designs are mystical,” she said of the silver pendants on the counter in front of Rae. “I create them right here in my shop—” She lowered her voice. “—according to ancient Celtic rituals that imbue them with special protective powers. Are you from the police?”
    She ought to be more worried about the men in the white coats, Rae thought.
    “The Secret Service? The IRS?”
    “I’m from Grosse Pointe.”
    “You look like an accountant.”
    Rae looked down at herself. She had a point. “Maybe it’s the jacket.”
    “No.” Onyx narrowed her eyes, gave Rae another lightning-fast once-over. “You’re wearing turquoise earrings. Turquoise is for money, success—love, too, but you’re not wearing a ring, so that’s not it.”
    “They’re just earrings,” Rae said, trying not to be insulted. She wasn’t entirely successful.
    “Your eyes are squinty, like you spend all day staring at numbers.”
    “What’s wrong with numbers?”
    “People use them to hang you.”
    “Rope works better.”
    “Not kill, hang. You know, out to dry, twisting in the wind. Taxes, social security, license plates.” Her eyes darted around, and she dropped her voice to the scratchy whisper that had freaked Rae before. “It’s all a way for the man to keep track of you, keep you under his thumb.”
    “Uh-huh, sure.” Rae reached for a pair of earrings, managed to get a look into the tiny back room, and didn’t see anything suspicious. Heck, there wasn’t much of anything to see at all, just a cardboard box with plastic bags sticking out of it, and a small table with what appeared to be a tackle box, probably where Onyx made her paranoia talismans. “If I see the man —” She used finger quotes. “—I promise not to mention your name.”
    Onyx narrowed her eyes.
    “Speaking of men, do you know the guy who makes the armor?”
    “Why, did he say something about me? Is he a cop, too?”
    Rae