Boyfriend from Hell (Saturn's Daughters) by Jamie Quaid Read Free Book Online

drive-through window.
    I returned my attention to the building the presumed thief had emerged from. It was a multiple-office building, closed and locked on Saturdays. I could run a cross-check on the number and get a list of names for this address, but there could easily be a dozen offices inside. And a hundred employees or more, not to mention customers.
    As I examined the door, I had the uncomfortablefeeling of being watched, as if I had a target painted in the middle of my back.
    I glanced around, but there was no one in sight.
    Shrugging off my apprehension, I turned down the alley behind the building. A pretty orange tabby kitten looked up at me expectantly, and I leaned over to scratch its head, grateful for a little normality. “You’re a tailless wonder,” I murmured, admiring his wiry form. “Does that make you a Manx or one of us weirdos?”
    He bumped my hand with his head, and I mentally promised him any fish I found inside the Dumpster. Luckily, the bin hadn’t been emptied since yesterday. I swung inside, encountering mostly boxes and papers that people were too lazy to recycle. A few fast-food wrappers didn’t offer anything promising for the kitten.
    My deposit bag was a bright blue denim on the outside, not the brown vinyl the bank handed out. The color ought to stand out in this mountain of white and tan. I continued searching. The denim concealed a metal mesh liner supposed to deter the sharpest knife. The zipper had a lock that only I could open. As I said, I’d learned caution with age. If nothing else, I wanted the bag back. I quite liked it.
    After flinging a mountain of boxes and trash to the alley, and half a hamburger for the kitten, I spotted blue fabric sliding down a paper avalanche at the back. Snatching a corner before it vanished, I retrieved the bag and examined it for knife slashes—but it was the lock that had been broken.
    Swearing, I climbed out of the bin and sat on the curb to examine the zipper. Still feeling as if I was being watched, I shuddered as unease crawled up my spine. Not liking creepy men or Leibowitz staring at me was one thing, but being fearful of nothing was not a good sign of mental stability.
    I glanced around to be certain I was still alone and tried to shake off the silliness. Max really had done a number on me if I started feeling afraid all the time.
    The kitten rubbed my ankle and purred, but my mind was otherwise occupied while I studied my portable fortress. Except for the lock, the bag looked intact.
    Not expecting to find anything, I checked the contents. Only the cash was gone . The large check from the detective agency and all the smaller ones were still there. So it was still an amateur thief, if he couldn’t cash the checks. Good to know.
    Succumbing to another uneasy feeling, I glanced around again.
    Was that a shadow on the other end of the alley? Still too jumpy after yesterday, I fled for Bill’s Biker Bar and Grill, deposit bag in my hot hand.

5

    B ill was big and burly, with an unruly haystack of fading ginger hair and usually a three-day beard. I’m not sure how guys manage to always have stubble, and I wasn’t going to ask. I was jittery and needed security, and Bill was it. I’d seen him heave a two-hundred-pound trucker through a plate-glass window, just like John Wayne in the movies. He was strong.
    He was polishing the bar and looked up in surprise when I burst in, since he never saw me down here on weekends.
    My fear must have been obvious, because he strode out from behind the bar and checked down the street as I landed on one of his stools, gasping for breath and from the pain in my hip. The sidewalk down the block had suddenly taken a notion to turn to green mud, and I’d nearly broken my neck sliding through it. Usually the Zone was kinder to me. I was ridiculously grateful to have Bill at my back.
    “No one out there,” he reported, ambling back to the bar and pulling out a diet Sprite, my drink of choice.
    “There was no