Ice Cold by Cherry Adair Read Free Book Online Page B

amiss.
    TRUST NO ONE. THINGS NOT AS THEY APPEAR. WAIT FOR WORD .
    “Who the hell is Gretchen Malik?”
    Whose word? What wasn’t what it appeared? The bombing of the bank? Catherine’s arrest? “The local girl you picked up at the café.” Honey stared sightlessly out the window as they crossed town at a snail’s pace. They should’ve taken the Company car. Maybe a helicopter.
    This wasn’t the time for Navarro to suddenly become chatty. THINGS NOT AS THEY APPEAR. She hid her expression behind dark glasses and maintained a calm demeanor. Her heart raced, and yes, she was more than a little freaked out.
    Great. Now the cab was stuck behind the bus on the narrow street. Honey resisted tapping her toe, or better yet, getting out and walking to Kurtz Straße. Nielson had given her the address while she’d waited at the café, she’d set the GPS on her comm back while sipping tea she didn’t want, while waiting for a man she didn’t want to be with.
    “That was you.”
    What? Oh, he was still shaking the disguise tree. “No, that was Gretchen .” Getting that message, across secure channels, out of the blue, was like hearing a voice from the grave.
    “So you don’t like bats?” Amusement laced Navarro’s words.
    Honey’s back teeth scraped together. Why did Navarro even give a damn? They had an assignment to concentrate on. That’s where he ought to be putting his brainpower. “It was a temporary tattoo. Tell me about Bäcker.” She finally gave him her full attention.
    “Erik Bäcker has run our tech lab here in Germany for the last twenty years,” he said obediently. “Convenient of the bomber to bomb the bank in Dresden where the lab is located. Who’s Thomas Burleigh? An old boyfriend?”
    “ Gretchen ’s boyfriend, they’ve been dating for a month, but he’s two-timing her with Valerie. I don’t believe in coincidence,” Honey finished; sick of talking about a fictional character she’d made up to prove a point. Navarro was like a terrier with a bone. Her thoughts were on Savage, so she was only half listening to him, ergo only half irritated that he refused to drop it.
    Okay, no need to overdramatize this. The snow flurries increased, the gloom descending over the city streets like a threadbare, gray mohair blanket. The bus moved a few feet. Hurrah.
    Savage couldn’t have texted her from a maximum-security prison. There were two possible conclusions: Either Savage wasn’t in a maximum-security prison, or someone else was using Savage’s personal, secure , e-mail account. Either way, why contact her ?
    “No shit,” Navarro muttered darkly, presumably in response to her statement that she didn’t believe in coincidences. “Hang on a sec…you create an entire life for your character disguises, like an alias, when you only play them for a nanosecond?”
    “If I want them to be believable, yes, of course.”
    “You have a very…interesting mind, Winston.”
    “Bäcker?” Keeping up a conversation with him required a map for all the detours.
    “He owns a small appliance repair shop on Kurtz Straße. A front for the most up-to-date, state-of-the-art, high-security Forensics Explosive Lab in Western Europe. He deals with all types of incidents involving explosives. In fact, he developed a system to sift through the debris from the site for further examination. Now it’s used by the police and Interpol when they have a bombing.”
    “What do you mean ‘sift through’?” she asked, momentarily distracted from her distraction.
    “Slavin will have already sent debris by the truckload to the facility. Before it’s dried on huge racks, sensors will pick up evaporating chemicals from the debris, for analysis, see if there’s a chemical signature. Once dried, the debris is sifted and separated into different grades, then the rubble fragments pass through to a forensic examining room where technicians scour it by hand.”
    Fascinated in spite of a brain filled with other issues, Honey