Karma Patrol by Kate Miller Read Free Book Online

but he shook his head.
    “Not my story. Mike covered that one.”
    She couldn’t quite hide her triumphant smirk, and Paul grinned.
    “Try not to give him a heart attack when you shove all of that southern charm in his face,” he advised her, gesturing to her décolletage.
    “I make no promises,” she replied, and put a little swing in her hips as she walked away from Paul and over to Mike’s desk.
    Mike Hardesty, who’d been a reporter for the
Bulletin
for nearly thirty years, had an obsessive need to find the facts of every story, a need which was second only to his obsession with beautiful women. When he glanced up and caught sight of Jade, he set aside his paperwork with a grin in favor of watching her walk toward him.
    Jade knew she was attractive by society’s standards. Her mother had raised her to appreciate the value of a polished appearance. Her carefully curled hair and impeccable makeup, paired with a dress that hinted at her ample assets and displayed her slender legs to their best effect, gave her an advantage with both men and women. Men saw her as an object of desire, not as a threat, and women were typically either envious or impressed by her efforts. It was rare for anyone she encountered to recognize her true motives, which was one of the reasons she was so effective at redirecting people onto their intended karmic paths. It also turned getting information from men like Mike Hardesty into child’s play.
    “Hey there, Mike,” she purred as she approached his desk, perching on its edge and leaning forward to place her cleavage at eye level. “I haven’t seen you for a while. Keeping busy?”
    “I always have time for you,” he replied, his gaze fixed on her chest. “What’s going on, Jade? Big assignment?”
    “Not for me, but I heard you have one. The Forty-Eighth Street shooter?”
    Consternation warred with lust in his expression, and consternation won out by a hair. “I can’t talk about that until the story runs. What if you gave away my scoop to another paper?”
    Jade widened her eyes. “Me? Why, Mike, would you really suspect little old me of newspaper treason?”
    She would never sell out the
Bulletin
to another paper, more because she didn’t care enough to do it than because she had any specific loyalty to the
Bulletin
, but that argument was hardly likely to sway Mike.
    “It’s not even really for me,” she said instead, deciding her best bet was to play on his sympathies. “It’s just—I have a lot of friends in Midtown West, you know? By the time I got down there this morning, the bodies were all gone. I just want to make sure it wasn’t anyone I know.”
    Mike’s expression softened, as she’d known it would, and after a glance over his shoulder, he slid a sheet of paper toward her from the stack on his desk.
    “No one finds out you have this, gorgeous,” he told her with a wink, and she returned the wink with a smile.
    “Cross my heart,” she promised, managing to keep herself from looking down at the paper until she was safely away from Mike’s desk and headed out the door of the pressroom.
    The names were neatly typed on the page, with as much detail next to them as Mike and the
Bulletin
’s research interns had been able to find in the scant time between the shooting and the online release of the article covering it. The first was listed as
Emil Stankovic: Serbian
national, employed by the Serbian Embassy/ambassadorial staff. In NY for three weeks. Political ramifications?’
    Jade sighed. Politicians were a chancy proposition. Either they were minor blips on Destiny Division’s radar or they were fiercely guarded, depending on how their lives were destined to turn out. Stankovic might be the reason Destiny Division was involved in the shooting in the first place. Regardless of their destiny status, all politicians tended to be karmic disasters, and he was probably a big part of why her area’s balance had gone haywire.
    The next name on the list was