Tempted by Trouble by Eric Jerome Dickey Read Free Book Online Page A

soft touch was rejected.
    I said, “Slow down.”
    She nodded, took a few curt breaths, pulled her lips in tighter, and eased off the accelerator.
    There was coldness between us. Coldness and a heated fear.
    As we climbed the hills, apartments gave way to houses. We crossed into the area called the Dons, where all the streets had exotic Spanish names, like Don Zarembo and Don Quixote.
    Sweat drained down my face like a salty river in search of an ocean.
    I looked at my getaway driver. She sweated just as much. It was a brisk morning in L.A. but we sweated like we were in the Bahamas under the midday sun. Her lips remained tight as she drove through an area that had homes with panoramic views, some hanging over hills and supported by metal stilts. It was an older section of the city, and after seeing Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and the beaches, nothing in this zip code impressed me. We passed Mexican lawn keepers. The people who maintained the yards were as south-of-the-border as the street names. The people who cleaned the toilets were probably from Mexico or another part of Central America too. My terrified chauffeur slowed at speed bumps. I looked back down the hill. LAPD had a chopper up high, circling the area we had just left. At least two news choppers were in the area too, circling skies painted with gloom.
    My heartbeat deafened everything.
    Everything ached, but I could drive now, so I had to figure out what to do with her.
    My hostage kept both tense hands clenched on the steering wheel and her eyes straight ahead.
    A ring sparkled on her left hand. I looked in the backseat again, didn’t see a child seat, just more of the same book and some scattered CDs, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have kids.
    Sweat rained across her forehead and upper lip. Her labored breathing told me she was terrified. I’d earned a kidnapping charge. If I had been able to run away from the accident, the two-second glimpse she had of me wouldn’t have mattered. But fate had derailed our operation.
    Sammy was dead.
    Rick had been shot.
    I’d been forced to leave them both behind.
    This wasn’t supposed to happen, not like this.
    No one was supposed to die. I wasn’t supposed to take a hostage to get away. But all had gone to hell and now this woman named Abbey Rose had seen my face.
    She was what stood between me and living the rest of my life behind bars.
    Darkness rose up and told me that in order to remain free, I’d have to kill her.

4
    I opened my hostage’s glove compartment and found tissues.
    It hurt, but I dabbed my bloodied nose and split lip. Abbey Rose twitched whenever I moved. My skin burned. I touched my damaged face with the tips of my fingers and cringed, then reached inside the glove compartment and searched for more tissues.
    I said, “I need you to relax and look normal while you’re driving.”
    She nodded. “I’m doing my best.”
    “Do better.”
    Then I turned, and in pain I reached to the backseat and snatched her purse off the floor. She jumped like her first instinct was to reach and stop me, to claw at me, but I gritted my teeth and shook my head. Her eyes and facial expression told me that she was praying for either LAPD or the L.A. county sheriff to come this way. My prayer was the opposite. Blade at my side, I went through her wallet.
    I fumbled around and removed her driver’s license. The address on the insurance registration card matched the address on her license. She swallowed and shook her head, made a terrified sound when I took her driver’s license and stuffed it inside my coat pocket.
    I said, “Abbey Rose.”
    “Yes.”
    “I know who you are. I know where you live.”
    Lines gathered in her forehead as she pulled her lips in tighter.
    Police helicopters continued circling the area we’d just left.
    I said, “Abbey Rose.”
    She didn’t say anything but her paranoid eyes were glued to the rearview mirror.
    Something was back there. I looked in my side-view mirror and saw law