The Law of Desire by Gwyneth Bolton Read Free Book Online Page B

so distrustful of me.” She tried to pull away, but he easily guided her into the backseat of the car and shut the door. She didn’t even bother to try to open it because she’d seen enough movies and heard enough stories from her brother and his boys to know that back doors of police cars didn’t open from the inside.
    She sat and listened while he called in the details and requested officers to remain on the lookout for the white van. The entire time she listened to him speaking on the radio she tried to figure out what she was going to say. She couldn’t tell him the truth and she wasn’t sure she could just look him in the face and tell an outright lie.
    Minerva nibbled her lips. The truth was, although she had some idea that her brother’s killers were after her, she didn’t know who they were. And even though she could assume they wanted her because they thought she knew something about the murder, she had no way of knowing anything with certainty.
    “I think you’re wasting your time,” she said. “I saw the same thing you saw—men in masks. I didn’t even have time to try to get the plates.” She swallowed to calm herself. “As soon as they pulled up all crazy, I took off running.”
    “They didn’t have any plates on the van. And I don’t think I’m wasting my time by trying to get you to tell me the truth. Something’s up with you. And I plan on finding out what it is. Folks don’t roll up trying to snatch someone in broad daylight in the ’hood for no reason.”
    “And you know this because you have a handbook of 101 reasons to attempt a kidnapping in the ’hood or would that be the 101 reasons why people don’t snatch folks in the middle of the day in the ’hood? Or could it be because you are king of all the reasons why people would do anything at all?”
    “That smart-ass mouth is really going to get you in trouble one day. I suggest you think about that long and hard before we get to the trailer.”
    It didn’t take them long to get to the trailer in the heart of the ’hood. She couldn’t help but roll her eyes.
    The Paterson Police Department seemed to be walking a thin line between policing and police state, in her opinion. Sure, it wasn’t the equivalent of the constantly flying helicopters, or ghetto birds, as they affectionately called them in South Central. But mini-police huts in the ’hood seemed just a bit over the top. Whatever happened to just driving through and heading on back downtown? It wasn’t like their presence really inhibited crime. All it did was ensure that she could never get away from the annoying detective.
    She followed him into the trailer, happy that she wasn’t in handcuffs or anything. She had had that experience once in her life and she never wanted to go through that again.
    “Hey, Hightower. What ya got for me?” A fat man with a mustache full of food eyed her up and down as he spoke. He had a stringy and greasy flap of hair pulled from one side of his big head to the other, trying to cover up a rather large bald spot.
    “Not a thing, Johnson. I’m just going to question Ms. Samuels here about an attempted kidnapping.”
    “There was an attempted kidnapping? Who almost got snatched?”
    “Ms. Samuels.”
    “Really.” The fat man looked her up and down.
    She frowned because his survey clearly had a leering quality to it. The man gave her the creeps.
    “We can talk back here, Ms. Samuels.”
    Minerva followed Lawrence to the back of the trailer to a relatively small room with a large desk. There were two chairs in the room, one comfortable cushioned chair behind the desk and one hard wooden one. As she took the wooden seat in front of the desk she prepared herself to lie. There was no way she could tell him the truth. That wasn’t even an option, especially if someone had sent people after her when she hadn’t even spoken to the cops yet.
    He took his seat behind the desk and eyed her warily. “So who were those people and why were