Chill Factor by Chris Rogers Read Free Book Online

previous semester Dixie’d trained Ryan and his schoolmates in a gentler version of the same Israeli defense techniques she taught to women. The private school her nephew attended remained blessedly free of violence, but Dixie believed children should learn to take care of themselves as early as possible. “Guess I needed you there, kid, to snap-kick that glass wall out of my way.”
    “Yuh!” He jumped from his chair and shadow-kicked his bedroom wall, then popped a series of jabs at a Grim Reaper poster. “Hee-yuh!”
    Dixie looped an arm around his neck to wrestle a cheek smooch, which was getting harder now that the imp had learned evasive moves. And jeez—he’d grown since Christmas! Why hadn’t she noticed? She succeeded in planting a nice wet one on his temple.
    “Aunt Dix!” He eeled out of her grasp and plopped onto his chair.
    As she knuckled his head, Dixie caught a glimpse of her name on his computer monitor.
    My Aunt Dixie made those bank robbers eat their shorts.
    “Ryan, only
one
bank robber—a woman, and—”
    “You saved the manager and all those people from getting killed!”
    “Hey, guy, I know you want me to be the hero in this story, but that’s not quite the way it went down.” After the bullet smashed through Len’s office wall, Dixie’d stayed on the floor. Later, as she left the shooting scene after identifying Edna’s body, a news photographer had captured her face on video, and her family had indeed seen the TV coverage. Three of the seven pager messages during defense class had come from Ryan, two more from his mother. Returning the calls, Dixie’d calmed Amy with a few reassuring words, but Ryan refused to be satisfied with less than a play-by-play account—and now Dixie knew why: He’d bragged to his E-mail buddies that he had “inside” dope. Ryan’s enthusiasm for his aunt’s escapades never flagged.
    “One bank robber,” she reaffirmed now. “And no heroics. If I did anything smart, Ryan, it was staying still, allowing the woman to take the money and go, so that no one in the bank got hurt.”
    “Was she like Juliette Lewis in
Natural Born Killers
, all crazy and mean and waving her gun around?”
    Crazy and mean?
    “No, Edna was …”
An off-key voice leading goofy camp songs when their two families drove to Brazos Bend. A sturdy arm stirring a pot of stew over the open fire or knocking spiders off the tent. A nervous thumb whisking dirt from Dixie’s cheek after a bad fall.
“Edna Pine was someone your mother and I knew growing up, Ryan.” Someone Dixie had loved like an aunt. “Someone who must’ve taken a very wrong turn … or had a very good reason for what she did this morning.”
    Her nephew’s face screwed up in concentration. He craved juicy details to convey to his friends.
    “The robber was coolheaded and determined,” Dixie admitted. “And a pretty good marksman.” That bullet had missed by a hair. Was the miss intentional?
    Ryan’s fingers danced over the keyboard. When Dixie saw him type “cold-blooded killer” in his E-mail message, she thumped the back of his head and left the room.
    In the kitchen she found her sister sliding chocolate-chip cookies from a baking sheet to a platter. Amy baked only when she was upset, then she turned out enough goodies to give the neighborhood a sugar high for weeks. Through the oven window Dixie saw a sheet cake rising. A pecan pie cooled on the counter. And the three-course lunch Dixie’d been promised looked ready to eat. A busy morning in the Royal kitchen.
    “It
wasn’t
Aunt Edna,” Amy declared, offering Dixie a warm cookie. “You were mistaken. We all have twins, don’t we? Didn’t I see that on A&E? Look-alikes. James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, all those Elvises? Why not an Edna Pine look-alike? I called Marty in Dallas and told him not to worry, it was
not
his mother, no matter what the police say. This is all a terrible mistake. You’ll sort it out, Dixie, and he’ll see.”
    “I’ll