Honey and Smoke by Deborah Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

step, attentive and curious. Betty stroked the cat’s brindle head distractedly and hurried past. She was an orderly person, not given to cravings for adventure—except, she thought with disgust, where men were concerned. But she wouldn’t spend any more years of her life on that craving. Even if Max Templeton had invaded her life and house and, apparently, had appointed himself her protector.
    As she ran to the phone and stood listening intensely for any sound from the cellar, it occurred to her that her musician had never offered to protect her from anything more dangerous than bad vibes at a Grateful Dead concert.
    The silence was a rough cloak that rubbed her nerves raw. She stood it as long as she could and then, her mouth acid with fear, she tiptoed through the kitchen and out the back door. Betty opened the screened door on the back porch and looked to the left, where one half of the cellar door stood open.
    She returned to the kitchen, searched through one of her cardboard boxes, and pulled a carving knife from its wooden safety sheath. Like any serious cook, she kept her knives honed to a razor edge. With the carving knife clasped in her hand like a small sword, she headed back outdoors and went to the cellar. The pumping of her blood roared in her ears as she waited at the top of the steps.
    “Max?” she called down softly. She called again and listened for a full minute, but there was no answer. What was he doing? Why hadn’t he turned the lights on?
    Call the sheriff
, her typical, reasonable inner voice told her.
    That won’t do Max much good if he’s already in trouble
, a new, fiercer voice countered.
    She descended into the dark cellar one heart-stopping step at a time. Its cold, clammy blackness made hershiver. At the base of the narrow stairs she braced her feet apart and held the knife in front of herself with both hands as she tried to interpret shapes in the dark.
    Samurai Betty
, she thought, poking the air experimentally.
    Her blood froze when a tiny trickle of dirt cascaded from the red-clay wall behind her. She started to pivot, but a heavy forearm circled her neck, and a hand grabbed both of her hands in a twisting grip that made her drop the knife.
    “Oh, Max, you cretin,” she said with relief and annoyance. “Stop it.”
    “Shut up.”
    It wasn’t Max’s voice.
    Instant terror pumped adrenaline into her muscles. She brought her elbows back and jabbed her captor’s ribs. Her heels beat a drumroll on his legs. The overhead light came on. Max loomed over both her and the stranger, his face composed in the deadly grimace of a wolf focusing on its prey.
    He jammed the barrel of his gun into the face behind Betty. “One. Two—”
    “All right, man, all right!”
    Suddenly she was free. Max latched a hand onto her shoulder and jerked her out of the way, and after she bounced off the opposite clay wall, she swung around and looked at the scene numbly.
    Max had pinned a brawny young man against the other wall. The man’s jeans and denim jacket were covered in dirt and bits of leaves, and his sneakers were filthy. Either he’d been running through the woods, or he’d just come out of hibernation, Betty observed wryly.
    He looked cross-eyed at the automatic pistol that was under his nose. He kept his hands plastered against the cellar wall behind him.
    “Where are your two friends?” Max asked softly.
    “I don’t know. I swear. We got separated. Don’t shoot me.”
    “Then don’t even breathe wrong.”
    “I’m not breathing at all.”
    Betty found her voice. “I have some rope.”
    “Good.” Max smiled coldly, his eyes never leaving the other man’s. “Let’s hang him.”
    She didn’t believe what she said next. But Max provoked her to a giddy desire for mischief. “No, don’t do that. I’ll just go get the Dobermans.”
    The captive gasped. “No, lady. Please. I wasn’t gonna hurt you! I was just trying to get past you and up the steps.”
    Max snuggled the gun