Sizzle by Julie Garwood Read Free Book Online Page A

experience. He didn’t want to tarnish his image. Mr. Merriam only cared about results.
    The third lesson he had learned was still so raw he couldn’t put any kind of spin on it yet, couldn’t even think about it without shuddering.
    Lesson three: learn to swim before you try to kill someone beside a swimming pool.
    Case in point: George Villard.
    Milo still had nightmares about that one. Villard, the man he’d been ordered to kill, was a bodybuilder. He was also a notorious drunk and womanizer. Mr. Merriam hadn’t given Milo any background information on this assignment. His only orders were to get rid of Villard, and do it immediately.
    Milo didn’t have time to research or plan. He made sure there were bullets in his gun and headed out. By the time he found the house in the maze of twists and turns up in the hills, it was after midnight. Villard was in his backyard next to his kidney-shaped pool. Milo hid in the shrubs observing his target, who was teetering on his feet. It was only a matter of minutes before the hulk passed out.
    As drunk as Villard was, Milo figured he wouldn’t put up much of a fight, but he was wrong about that. Milo burst through the bushes and was fumbling to get his gun out of his raincoat pocket when Villard spotted him and his weapon and attacked, getting in one solid punch before tossing Milo into the pool.

    Milo tried to dog paddle to the side and climb out, but his clothes and his panic worked against him. He was going under for the third time when, with one hand, Villard hauled him out and began screaming questions at him.
    “Who sent you? Was it Jo Ann’s husband or Crystal’s? Tell me,” he yelled. His head rolled to the side and his eyes drooped as he slurred the words of his demand. Suddenly jerking his head up, he kicked Milo in the stomach. “Answer me, damn it!” Milo couldn’t speak. Flopping around on the concrete like a dying carp, he was fully occupied with choking on all the water he’d taken in.
    Impatient to get answers, Villard kicked him again. “Was it Lenny? It was, wasn’t it?
    That no-good bastard.” He gave him another vicious kick in his side and snarled, “You’re going to tell me who sent you, and then I’m going to throw you back in the pool and watch you drown.”
    The threat wasn’t much of an incentive to cooperate, Milo thought, though he doubted Villard, in his drunken stupor, realized it. As inebriated as he was, the bodybuilder could still do some damage. Milo wanted to run away, but he was afraid to even move, afraid to reach for his gun—which he wasn’t sure would work since it, too, was probably waterlogged—afraid to provoke the drooling muscleman in any way.
    While Milo desperately tried to think of a plan to save himself, Villard began blinking furiously and squinting down at him, obviously trying to concentrate. He must have remembered what he was doing because he suddenly nodded and smiled, then swung his foot back to kick Milo again, but the vast amount of alcohol he had consumed interfered with his balance. His body swayed; his eyes closed, and still grasping his glass in his hand, he plunged headfirst into the pool. He was too drunk to know he was drowning.
    The death was ruled accidental.
    It was another near disaster for Milo, yes, but as he did with the other hits, he took credit, and in Mr. Merriam’s eyes, he had a perfect record. Three for three. Merriam was so impressed, he gave Milo a bonus for a job well done.
    Two weeks later on a Thursday afternoon Milo was called into Mr. Merriam’s office for a new assignment.
    His boss usually wasn’t one for idle chitchat, but today he wanted to talk.
    “You may have noticed how distracted I’ve been this past couple of weeks.” Milo hadn’t noticed, but he thought maybe he should have, and so he nodded. “Yes, sir, I have,” he lied.

    “I’ve got a situation, and you’re the man for the job. This one is going to be tricky and will require a little more guile. You