Razor Sharp by Fern Michaels Read Free Book Online Page A

coffee while he skimmed the headlines of the Las Vegas Review-Journal before he got down to serious reading.
    Cosmo picked up a pair of reading glasses off the kitchen counter. It made him nuts that he had to wear the eye-cheaters, but when Elizabeth said he looked like a forbidding, crack-the-whip law professor, he bought a couple dozen pair and had them everywhere. He had three pairs in his briefcase, four or five pairs in the office, and a pair in every room in his house, even in all three bathrooms.
    Glasses in place, Cosmo checked the weather. Cool and dry. He moved on to the horoscope section, read his daily blurb and Elizabeth’s, too. He smiled. Perfect. He’d die before he would admit, even to Elizabeth, that he religiously read his daily horoscope.
    As he sipped coffee, which seemed exceptionally hot that morning, he flipped the pages of the newspapers. Iraq, Afghanistan, National Guard from somewhere going someplace. Like he could do anything about it. A flood in Florida from some kind of tropical storm that dropped twenty inches of rain. Nothing he could do about that either except to stay home and out of Florida. A woman was just getting out of jail even though her missing child hadn’t been found. What kind of mother was she for refusing to tell what she knew, and what kind of authority would let her out of jail to begin with? Some people didn’t deserve to have children. His own parents would have turned the world upside down if he’d gone missing. A crane collapse someplace in New York City. No injuries this time around.
    Cosmo turned the page, looked at the kitchen clock. Seven o’clock. Ten o’clock in Washington, D.C. In six hours Elizabeth would be at his side. He could hardly wait. The big problem was, what was he going to do during the six-hour wait? He replenished his coffee and sat back down. He almost turned the page until he realized he hadn’t yet scanned the page he was on. It was just a small article and he almost missed it. He bolted upright, his coffee forgotten as he read the short piece.
    Local woman, 44-year-old Lily Flowers, crashed her Honda Prelude on the Cajon Pass last evening as she was leaving Las Vegas when the front tire of her car blew out. The air bag did not deploy, and authorities said Ms. Flowers was killed on impact when the Prelude struck a guardrail. The investigating state trooper said a hotel reservation in San Bernardino was found in the woman’s wallet in the console of the car, which leads them to believe San Bernardino was her destination.
    Motorists who stopped to render aid said the woman was not driving at an excessive rate of speed. The trooper said there were no signs of drug usage or alcohol involved. Authorities are currently searching for next of kin. Anyone with information concerning Ms. Flowers is asked to call the sheriff’s office.
    “Son of a bitch!” The words exploded out of Cosmo’s mouth like bullets. Well, now he knew what he was going to be doing for the next six hours, since he knew for a fact that there was no next of kin to notify concerning Lily Flowers’s untimely demise.
    Suddenly Cosmo was like a caged lion as he stormed his way around the kitchen, the floor rumbling and creaking as he stomped about. Accident? Or a crash made to look like an accident?
    Lily Flowers had struck him as a woman who had her stuff together in one sock, or rather one giant handbag. Single-minded, with tunnel vision. Her only objective was to get away to a safe place as soon as possible. Which meant she had to have had a plan in place, which she had indeed verified. Some plan, since she was now dead. She would have had her car checked from top to bottom, down to the tires. He could almost guarantee it. She would have been traveling light, no baggage to speak of to drag her down and certainly nothing in her purse to incriminate her. She probably had a small suitcase or one carry bag. He didn’t know all that much about women, but he assumed that Lily