Dial Em for Murder by Marni Bates Read Free Book Online

for their mom to arrive. I glanced down at the card, unsure what to expect.
    Sebastian St. James
    Certified Bad Boy
    He was the kind of guy who could get away with putting a warning label on his own business card. Then again, maybe being the kind of a seventeen-year-old who
carried
business cards was its own kind of warning. My fingers instinctively rubbed the thick cardstock, and as much as I hated to admit it, the velvety texture felt good.
    I flipped it over and in the left hand corner it gave the address and contact information of a Manhattan law firm where he must have one of the senior partners on retainer. For a boy who got his kicks using lock picks to steal whiskey from his own home, the ability to hand over his lawyer’s number had probably gotten him out of more than a few tight spots.
    Detective O’Brian poked his head into the waiting room and said, “Still breathing? That’s good. Try to keep that up, will ya?” before returning to his desk in the inner sanctum. Leaving me to sit there, twirling the business card in clumsy circles as I tried to distract myself by creating a best-case scenario. My mom would be thrilled to learn that I’d been accepted as a student in an elite private school. She’d break things off with Viktor and decide to learn how to be happy on her own. We’d go home and she might attempt some ridiculously complicated recipe from Hungary or Romania or some other Eastern European country, blasting Latin music from our crappy speakers until Mrs. Sampson in apartment 36 yelled at us to quiet down.
    I wouldn’t miss that old lady. Not in the slightest. She was the kind of woman you expect to end up splashed across the news as the Trick or Treat Killer who slips razor blades into homemade Halloween cookies. The first time she saw Ben walking toward the apartment with me she had said disdainfully, “Like mother, like daughter, I suppose. Try not to get knocked up. You’ll only regret it.”
    Ben had draped an arm across my shoulder and leered at me with mock interest.
    “I dunno, I think we would make great parents. I’m thinking Victory Cabbage if it’s a girl, but I’m open to other suggestions.” He had grinned down at me, waiting for my speechlessness to give way to laughter, as if he’d known that arguing with him over ridiculous baby names would soon drive away Mrs. Sampson’s vicious words. Transform it into one big joke.
    The memory hit my stomach so painfully that it cramped. Ben could find a way to make me smile through just about anything. Without him, without
Audrey
, I wouldn’t have enjoyed a single day at our public high school. Starting over at a new high school without them? It felt as unthinkable as chopping off my own limb to survive. Part of me couldn’t believe that the situation could really be this dire. That Sebastian’s offer could truly be my best option. Even if I transferred to Emptor Academy, I’d still be the only student eating lunch by herself. It wouldn’t exactly be hard for an assassin to pick me out of the crowd.
    I was so royally screwed.
    My phone chirped at me to signal that I had incoming texts.
    Ben:
You okay?
    Audrey:
What’s going on? Did they take the Slate? CALL ME!
    I fought the urge to reexamine the Slate that had landed me in this mess. The last thing I wanted was for Detective O’Brian to have any more questionable video footage of me. I didn’t know what to believe, but staring at a battery-dead tablet wasn’t going to solve anything. And after being informed that someone was out to kill me, texting anything about the Slate seemed like a particularly bad idea. So instead I sent a quick message back and tried not to flinch every time the door to the precinct opened.
    Em:
Fine here. Fill you in later.
    I should’ve been prepared to see my mom striding toward me, but somehow I wasn’t. Maybe it was the panic glazing her brown eyes that had me rattled. She looked sweaty and scared and absolutely panic-stricken. An unwanted