Predator by Patricia Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page A

the drawer loudly clangs shut at the bottom of the thick, gray, steel door.
         “Hope nobody spit on your food,” Uncle Remus says through the mesh. “Enjoy your breakfast,” he says.
         The wide plank floor is cold beneath Lucy’s bare feet as she returns to the bedroom. Stevie is asleep under the covers, and Lucy sets two coffees on the bedside table and slides her hand under the mattress, feeling for the pistol’s magazines. She may have been reckless last night, but not so reckless that she would leave her pistol loaded with a stranger in the house.
         “Stevie?” she says. “Come on. Wake up. Hey!”
         Stevie opens her eyes and stares at Lucy standing by the bed inserting a magazine into the pistol.
         “What a sight,” Stevie says, yawning.
         “I’ve got to go.” Lucy hands her a coffee.
         Stevie stares at the gun. “You must trust me, leaving it right there on the table all night.”
         “Why wouldn’t I trust you?”
         “I guess you lawyers have to worry about all those people whose lives you’ve ruined,” Stevie says. “You never know about people these days.”
         Lucy told her she is a Boston attorney. Stevie probably thinks a lot of things that aren’t true.
         “How did you know I like my coffee black?”
         “I didn’t,” Lucy says. “There’s no milk or cream in the house. I’ve really got to go.”
         “I think you should stay. Bet I can make it worth your while. We never finished, now did we? Got me so liquored up and stoned, I never got your clothes off. That’s a first.”
         “Seems like a lot of things were your first.”
         “You didn’t take your clothes off,” Stevie reminds her, sipping coffee. “That’s a first, all right.”
         “You weren’t exactly with it.”
         “I was with it enough to try. It’s not too late to try again.”
         She sits up and settles into the pillows, and the covers slip below her breasts, and her nipples are erect in the chilled air. She knows exactly what she has and what to do with it, and Lucy doesn’t believe what happened last night was a first, that any of it was.
         “God, my head hurts,” Stevie says, watching Lucy look at her. “I thought you told me good tequila wouldn’t do that.”
         “You mixed it with vodka.”
         Stevie plumps the pillows behind her and the covers settle low around her hips. She pushes her dark-blond hair out of her eyes, and she is quite something to look at in the morning light, but Lucy wants nothing more with her and is put off by the red hand prints again.
         “Remember I asked you about those last night?” Lucy says, looking at them.
         “You asked me a lot of things last night.”
         “I asked you where you got them done.”
         “Why don’t you climb back in.” Stevie pats the bed, and her eyes seem to burn Lucy’s skin.
         “It must have hurt getting them. Unless they’re fake and I happen to think they are.”
         “I can clean them off with nail polish remover or baby oil. I’m sure you don’t have nail polish remover or baby oil.”
         “What’s the point?” Lucy stares at the hand prints.
         “It wasn’t my idea.”
         “Then whose?”
         “Someone annoying. She does it to me and I have to clean them off.”
         Lucy frowns, staring at her. “You let someone paint them on you. Well, kind of kinky,” and she feels a pinch of jealousy as she imagines someone painting Stevie’s naked body. “You don’t have to tell me who,” Lucy says as if it’s unimportant.
         “Much better to be the one who does it to someone else,” Stevie says, and Lucy feels jealous again. “Come here,” Stevie says in her soothing voice, patting the bed again.
         “We need to head out of here. I’ve got things to do,” Lucy replies, carrying