Read Online The Dirty Secrets Club by Meg Gardiner - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Meg Gardiner
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fire.
He'd seen it from the parking garage on Stockton Street, the one overlooking the tunnel. It made his guts tighten. Because Perry was going to be furious. At him.
Pray, he thought. Pray, you got what you wanted. Harding, dead.
But Perry had been specific about what else he wanted: Get the n ames of the leaders of the group from Harding. And don't blow lt: - But the whole thing had gone butt-ass wrong. Harding shouldn't have taken a passenger. She had screwed things up. Skunk was going to get the blame, but Harding was the one who blew it. And Angelika Meyer was the result. She 'd become a leftover, like a trail of grease spilled on the road. Dangerous if left there, and dirty, and liable to make further mess. Grease spots were what made things spin out of control.
The light turned green. Slowly he pulled out, the Caddy crossing the intersection regally, like a great white shark. The radio kept whining at him.
Pussies. Cheaters.
Things needed cleaning up. That meant it was going to get dirty again.
8
J o drove down 101 toward Palo Alto feeling pensive. Her truck
was a blue Toyota Tacoma, dinged up but so rugged that it would probably still be running after she herself was buried and part of the fossil record. It had been Daniel's, which is why she'd never gotten around to hammering out the dents and scratches along the side. He'd put them there on their last climbing trip to Yosemite, driving stupid the night they camped in Tuolumne Meadows. He threatened to tell people she'd done it mauling him in a fit of passion. You're a wild woman, he said. A crazy thing. Then he laughed.
She knew he wasn't coming back to fix them, but they were knocks she liked living with.
She glanced at her satchel lying on the passenger seat. Dirty Little Secret. She'd left a message for Lieutenant Amy Tang about Geli Meyer's note. Can anybody play ? She didn't know what to make of it. But she felt a disturbing certainty that Callie Harding had seen the note, understood Meyer's message, and acted on it.
Play implied a game. It implied a certain innocence, an expectation that the game might be dirty but fun. But secrets weren't always innocent. Dirty could mean dangerous.
She didn't think the note was a coincidence. She feared that Geli Meyer had badly miscalculated something. And had gone from draw-i n g smiley faces to fighting for her life inside Callie's speeding car.
She signaled and pulled off the freeway.
Palo Alto was thirty miles south of San Francisco. Green and qui-etly swanky, the town buzzed with intellectual energy. It was next door to Stanford University, in the heart of Silicon Valley. In boom times, that meant careworn ranch homes sold for a million dollars. When markets went bust, it meant tow trucks prowled high-tech parking lots looking for Ferraris to repossess.
She cruised along University Avenue. Under the October sun, the street was bustling. College-town vigor was overlaid with a geek-chic vibe. Old-fashioned beauty salons sat comfortably near the Apple store, that cathedral of the new millennium. She saw the downtown branch of the Stanford bookstore. She'd parsed out her meager funds there during medical school.
The coffee place was set back from the street in a shady Spanish-style arcade. She walked up at 10:20, propping her sunglasses on top of her head. A man with Nordic-blue eyes looked at her, down at his watch, and at her again. He tossed his Wall Street Journal on the table and followed her approach.
She held out her hand. "Jo Beckett. Thank you for meeting me."
"I thought you were going to be late." His handshake was as brusque as his tone. Accusatory, though she was early.
Gregory Harding looked as pale and sharp as a shot of vodka. His hair was so blond, it was nearly polar. His eyes were the chill blue of his dress shirt. The watch was a Rolex. Lean and tall, he bore himself like a birch switch. He had the confident detachment of the very wealthy. But his expression was ragged.
"You have a
He'd seen it from the parking garage on Stockton Street, the one overlooking the tunnel. It made his guts tighten. Because Perry was going to be furious. At him.
Pray, he thought. Pray, you got what you wanted. Harding, dead.
But Perry had been specific about what else he wanted: Get the n ames of the leaders of the group from Harding. And don't blow lt: - But the whole thing had gone butt-ass wrong. Harding shouldn't have taken a passenger. She had screwed things up. Skunk was going to get the blame, but Harding was the one who blew it. And Angelika Meyer was the result. She 'd become a leftover, like a trail of grease spilled on the road. Dangerous if left there, and dirty, and liable to make further mess. Grease spots were what made things spin out of control.
The light turned green. Slowly he pulled out, the Caddy crossing the intersection regally, like a great white shark. The radio kept whining at him.
Pussies. Cheaters.
Things needed cleaning up. That meant it was going to get dirty again.
8
J o drove down 101 toward Palo Alto feeling pensive. Her truck
was a blue Toyota Tacoma, dinged up but so rugged that it would probably still be running after she herself was buried and part of the fossil record. It had been Daniel's, which is why she'd never gotten around to hammering out the dents and scratches along the side. He'd put them there on their last climbing trip to Yosemite, driving stupid the night they camped in Tuolumne Meadows. He threatened to tell people she'd done it mauling him in a fit of passion. You're a wild woman, he said. A crazy thing. Then he laughed.
She knew he wasn't coming back to fix them, but they were knocks she liked living with.
She glanced at her satchel lying on the passenger seat. Dirty Little Secret. She'd left a message for Lieutenant Amy Tang about Geli Meyer's note. Can anybody play ? She didn't know what to make of it. But she felt a disturbing certainty that Callie Harding had seen the note, understood Meyer's message, and acted on it.
Play implied a game. It implied a certain innocence, an expectation that the game might be dirty but fun. But secrets weren't always innocent. Dirty could mean dangerous.
She didn't think the note was a coincidence. She feared that Geli Meyer had badly miscalculated something. And had gone from draw-i n g smiley faces to fighting for her life inside Callie's speeding car.
She signaled and pulled off the freeway.
Palo Alto was thirty miles south of San Francisco. Green and qui-etly swanky, the town buzzed with intellectual energy. It was next door to Stanford University, in the heart of Silicon Valley. In boom times, that meant careworn ranch homes sold for a million dollars. When markets went bust, it meant tow trucks prowled high-tech parking lots looking for Ferraris to repossess.
She cruised along University Avenue. Under the October sun, the street was bustling. College-town vigor was overlaid with a geek-chic vibe. Old-fashioned beauty salons sat comfortably near the Apple store, that cathedral of the new millennium. She saw the downtown branch of the Stanford bookstore. She'd parsed out her meager funds there during medical school.
The coffee place was set back from the street in a shady Spanish-style arcade. She walked up at 10:20, propping her sunglasses on top of her head. A man with Nordic-blue eyes looked at her, down at his watch, and at her again. He tossed his Wall Street Journal on the table and followed her approach.
She held out her hand. "Jo Beckett. Thank you for meeting me."
"I thought you were going to be late." His handshake was as brusque as his tone. Accusatory, though she was early.
Gregory Harding looked as pale and sharp as a shot of vodka. His hair was so blond, it was nearly polar. His eyes were the chill blue of his dress shirt. The watch was a Rolex. Lean and tall, he bore himself like a birch switch. He had the confident detachment of the very wealthy. But his expression was ragged.
"You have a
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