Force of Nature by Suzanne Brockmann Read Free Book Online Page B

privacy.”
    And instead of giving the woman his usual speech about how Annie was an essential part of his team, how she’d be taking the notes that she’d type up for him later, Ric gave Annie a dismissing nod.
    So Annie had left.
    Twenty-seven and a half minutes later—not that she’d been counting seconds—he’d buzzed her back into his office.
    Where Lillian was using a rhinestone-studded compact mirror to reapply her bloodred lipstick.
    She smacked her perfect lips together, murmuring “I can’t thank you enough.” She leaned forward in her copious sincerity, which gave her captive audience—Ric, seated behind his desk—a perfect view of that world-class cleavage.
    The woman’s lack of subtlety was audacious, and again Annie almost laughed out loud.
    She coughed instead, covering her mouth with her fist.
    Ric shot her a glance—amazing that he could drag his gaze away from the hypnotic feast of plenty in front of him. He politely rose as Lillian, too, ascended from her seat.
    Her every movement was graceful, fluid, hinting of perfectly choreographed sex.
    “We’ve already discussed payment,” Ric told Annie as he handed her a file marked
Lavelle
in his ridiculously messy handwriting. “And I’ve taken her contact information.”
    She bet he had.
    There was nothing to do then but show the woman to the door.
    But Lillian Lavelle was not to be hurried. Annie felt like a Mack truck next to her as she swayed her way out of Ric’s office.
    Always observant, Ric was paying close attention—no doubt in an attempt to solve the mystery of exactly how Ms. Lavelle could be forty-something years old, yet still have such a freakishly perfect ass.
    As Annie watched, the older woman turned to give Ric one last smile before she left his line of sight.
    She then sped up, thank God, leaving only a trace of her perfume in the outer office as the front door closed behind her. Pierre had lifted his head as she’d passed his dog bed, and he now watched Annie, his brown eyes anxious.
    “It’s all right, puppy boy,” she told him. “The mean lady is gone.”
    With a sigh, he settled back down. All was right in his world.
    Annie lowered the temperature on the window air conditioner, making it kick on, getting the air moving as she took the file to the receptionist’s desk.
    “She was…rather dramatic,” Ric said, and she glanced up to see him in his favorite position—leaning against the door frame, thumbs in the front pockets of his faded jeans, left foot crossed over his right.
    “Was she?” Annie asked, forcing herself to look down at the file folder, scanning the ridiculously sparse notes he’d taken during their twenty-seven-minute interview.
    The case was a relatively easy one. A simple locate-the-whereabouts of Lillian’s deceased daughter’s former roommate, Brenda Quinn. Brenda most likely wasn’t trying to stay hidden. She’d merely dropped out of Lillian’s life, leaving no forwarding address, when Lillian’s daughter, Marcy, had died. According to Ric’s chicken-scratches, the client had made several cursory searches via the Internet, and come up cold.
    She’d given them a photo of two young women on what looked to be the local public beach, out on Siesta Key. They were both in their early twenties, dressed in bathing-suit tops and shorts, hair pulled back into ponytails. Both were pretty—one dark, one fair. They were mugging for the camera, looking over their shoulders, showing off what looked to be matching tattoos—some mystical-looking Chinese characters that probably said
kick me
—on the small of their backs.
    “Which one is Brenda?” Annie asked.
    “On the left,” Ric told her. “The blonde.”
    Annie looked at the photo more closely, trying to see any trace of Lillian in her dark-haired daughter’s face. Maybe a little around the mouth and chin…
    As for the blonde, she had another tattoo on her right arm—three intricately drawn, intertwined calligraphy-style letters—a
G
,