Not Without Risk by Sarah Grimm Read Free Book Online Page B

alarm system. Digging the keys to
     the studio out of the depths of her briefcase, she aimed the wireless remote at the
     front of her building and pressed the arm button.
    Then she saw it. Confusion wrinkled her brow. Her hand crept to her throat while she
     waited for her mind to process what was taped to her door. From her distance, she
     couldn’t say for certain, but it looked an awful lot like a photograph.
    She slid out of the car and skirted the hood. It did little good to assure herself
     that her eyes were just playing tricks on her. Fear settled in even as her legs propelled
     her closer and closer to the door. Her heart made a beeline for her throat. Her vision
     blurred. “It can’t be,” she said aloud.
    She never got the chance to find out.
    The explosion came out of nowhere, disturbing the quiet of the morning. Paige flew
     through the air like a rag doll and bounced off the unforgiving bricks of her building.
     Pain burst through her body, drove the oxygen from her lungs. She struggled to regain
     her breath, to pull the thick, hot air into her starving lungs. Glass rained down
     upon her, hitting her legs, her stomach. Something large and hot crashed into her
     face, just above her left eye. Her vision doubled, tripled.
    Her world spun in circles, then went dark.

Chapter Four
     
    Paige stood before the desk sergeant, lukewarm ice pack pressed against her throbbing
     head. Body aching, in desperate need of a place to sit down, she listened to the man’s
     instructions and silently cursed her bad luck. Her ears rang from the percussion of
     the explosion. Her world had yet to right itself. To top it off, the man behind the
     desk informed her that multiple flights of stairs stood between her and her destination.
     Joy at being alive was swiftly replaced with an intense urge to cry.
    Only a couple hours before, she’d awoken to pulsing red-and-blue lights and thick
     black smoke. She’d opened her eyes to discover a paramedic checking her vitals, and
     a uniformed cop pacing in circles about her. Confusion filled her, intensified by
     the brutal slash of pain that whipped through her when she’d attempted to sit up.
     She’d blinked away blood, then glanced about her.
    Someone had blown up her car. Her cherished 1959 pink Cadillac lay in pieces. Glass
     and debris covered her. She’d wanted to scream, to cry. She’d settled on white-hot
     rage.
    It coursed through her, sustaining her as she reported to the crime scene investigators
     all that she knew. It fueled her on the ride to the hospital, where they’d put five
     stitches in her forehead, slipped her a painkiller, and tried their best to admit
     her for observation. And it would carry her up those flights of stairs to the detectives
     she sought.
    “Anything so I can sit down.”
    She shifted her ice pack over her eye and winced as pain shot through her temple.
     A promise that she had someone at home to wake her every few hours combined with not
     letting on about the extent of her pain got her released from the hospital. She didn’t
     want to stay there. She wanted her own home, her own bed. Before she could have those
     things, she had one last thing to do.
    Which is why she’d given the taxi driver the address to the police precinct instead
     of her home. Why she stood here now, in the last place she ever thought she’d set
     foot in again.
    One step at a time, she worked her way up the stairs. It was slow going, relying on
     the handrail as well as her anger as she turned to the right, then to the left. Ten
     more steps, then another right.
    The noise hit her first, intensifying the ache behind her eyes. She stopped in her
     tracks, centered in the archway of the detective’s division as she waited for the
     pain to ebb.
    The room was full of people, young and old, male and female. They sat behind desks
     squared off against each other and typed on computers. They milled about in groups,
     deep in conversation. Some were like her,