Hot Target by Suzanne Brockmann Read Free Book Online Page B

guy not only was shorter and younger, but he was also gayer than Robin had expected.
    Ever since he’d gone blond to play Hal Lord in
American Hero,
he’d been hit on by gay men more times than he could count. It had been a little nerve-racking at first, but he’d learned to remove any potential mystery as quickly as possible.
    “Not gay,” Robin said now. He thought of sweet little Patty up in Jane’s office, who’d given him that shy smile when he’d emerged from the meeting. He knew without a doubt that he’d be welcome should he come a-calling at her apartment later this evening. Yes, he knew he’d promised his sister that he’d be good, but Patty was
so
cute. . . . “Don’t waste your energy.”
    Jules laughed again. He appeared to be genuinely amused. “You’re making some pretty large assumptions, aren’t you?”
    “Assume everything,” Robin told him cheerfully. “That’s my motto. It keeps me out of trouble.”
    “I would think it might get you into it,” Jules countered.
    “And still you flirt with me, you devil. What part of ‘Not gay,’ did you not understand? Drive through, will you, so I can try to close this behind you.”
    Jules Cassidy, FBI, was still laughing—and he was pretty damn adorable when he laughed. Harve and Guillermo and Gary the Grip and even Ricco, who was in a long-term relationship, were going to swoon when they met him. He got back into the Sable and drove through the gate. He stopped just on the other side, though.
    Robin gave up on the idea of closing the gate after his fifth try.
    “I hate that motherfucking thing,” he said, adding as he realized Jules had rolled his window down, “There, does that convince you? A very heterosexual use of the manly verb
to motherfuck,
positioned in my sentence as a salty adverb.”
    “Salty adjective,” Jules corrected him. “If it were an adverb it would be motherfuckingly.”
    “Whatever. My sister’s the writer in the family,” Robin told him. “Which is why she’s the one getting the death threats—which she’s not taking at all seriously. Tell me the truth, Jules Cassidy, FBI. Do we really have something to worry about here?”
    The FBI agent got real serious, real fast, morphing from happy, flirty gay boy into completely grown-up hard-ass with a nearly palpable sense of purpose and a determination that matched his set of giant steel balls. Holy macaroni, Mrs. Smersh. Wherever did you get the idea that Jules Cassidy couldn’t act?
    “Yes,” Jules told him. “You do. Have you ever heard of the Freedom Network?”
     
    It was very clear to Cosmo that J. Mercedes Chadwick couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
    “You’re telling me,” she repeated, making sure that she got it right, “that there are thousands of people—tens of thousands?—who consider Chester Lord—a little-known Alabama district court judge who’s been dead since 1959—their personal hero?”
    FBI agent Jules Cassidy nodded. “Yes, ma’am. They call themselves the Freedom Network. Chester Lord wrote a number of books and—”
    She was incredulous, her lip-glossed mouth hanging open. “And these are people who don’t even live in Alabama . . . ?”
    “The majority are in Idaho.”
    “This is a man who was überconservative even for his time,” she pointed out. “There are rumors that Judge Lord looked the other way and allowed lynchings—”
    “I believe they refer to him as honest and old-fashioned,” Jules told her. “And his son Hal was a hero in the war—you surely know more about that part of it than I do. But I can tell you one thing—apparently these people are very protective of the memories of both father and son, and they’re not at all happy at the idea of you outing Hal in your movie.”
    Mercedes’ assistant Patty had put a copy of the
American Hero
script onto the table in front of them, along with the warning that they could not take it out of this building.
    Like . . . what? They were going to sell it