Ace Is Wild by Penny McCall Read Free Book Online Page A

crimes. I think you’re right about her potential threat level.”
    “She didn’t hold you at gunpoint.”
    “You telling me you were afraid of that little slip of a thing? With that face? And that body?”
    “Want to check for a staple in her navel?”
    “Not Hugh Hefner,” Mike pointed out unnecessarily, then ran down the non-Playboy Bunny facts they knew about her, which wasn’t much. “She knows how to use a gun, and she claims to be a mind reader, which we both know is a load of hooey.”
    Daniel nodded, thinking hooey was a pretty good way to put it. But . . . “She knew there was a hit out on me.”
    “Yeah.” Mike managed to convey a lot with that one word. But then Mike had been his handler, and Daniel figured they’d worked together long enough to both be asking the same questions and drawing the same conclusions.
    Like once they ruled out clairvoyance, ESP, gut feeling, and guesswork, the only thing left was direct knowledge. But from whom? How involved was she, and why warn him?
    “Ran a check after you called me from the helicopter,” Mike said. “Nothing on the taps, nothing in the air, no rumors. Far’s I know you’re completely off the radar of anyone who’d want you dead. Or at least they’re not talking about it. ’Cept to her.”
    “She put her own life on the line,” Daniel felt a need to remind them both.
    “True enough,” Mike said, “so what’s in it for her?”
    “Maybe she was just doing a good deed.”
    “Fraud with a heart of gold?” Mike snorted. “I don’t buy that psychic crap, and neither do you. The only way she could’ve known there was a contract out on you is if she heard it firsthand from the author or the contractor.”
    Mike was right, Daniel knew it, but it didn’t sit well. Vivi Foster didn’t seem like the sort of woman who’d be mixed up in the kind of criminal activity that would involve killing a federal prosecutor. Then again, she didn’t look like someone who’d bilk innocent people out of their hard-earned money—even when they asked for it. But she’d copped to that much.
    “Any way you look at it,” Mike said, “she’s dirty.”
    Daniel couldn’t have agreed more, but his version of dirty had nothing to do with rap sheets or criminal activity. His version of dirty would have broken decency laws in about thirty states and gotten them both arrested. Without realizing he’d turned, his eyes met hers and there was heat there, and knowledge. And a challenge. Bring it on, Ace, she was saying, but don’t expect an easy victory .
    Something flared inside him, something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Lust, he decided, for her, for the chase. Especially for the chase. If she understood anything about him, she’d know a good pursuit would be more of an aphrodisiac to him than anything else in the world . . .
    Of course, he thought, however she’d discovered it, she knew that about him. And she was using it. “She can’t be trusted,” he said, “but that doesn’t give us cause to hold her.”
    “The gun gives us cause.”
    “There’s more to be gained from letting her go. Call off the Boston P.D.”
    Mike blew out a breath, scrubbing his hands back through his marine-cut hair. “I’ll take care of it. All of it.”
    VIVI SAT OUTSIDE OF MIKE SOMEBODY-SKI’S OFFICE, thoughts muddled, nerves jumping, hopped up on adrenaline and having a hard time working past any of it long enough to get some halfway decent impressions. Except the ones that came through her physical senses.
    Daniel and the fed were in a closed room and far enough away to keep her from hearing much of anything, so her ears were no use. That just left her eyes, which was a problem. Not because her chair was situated to put her back to the windows. But because every so often she’d glanced over her shoulder, and each time her eyes had met Daniel’s. That was where the trouble started.
    She ought to be seizing the chance to get a read on him. But there was the