Trace of Fever by Lori Foster Read Free Book Online

Thanks to his best friend, Dare Macintosh, they’d made great headway already.
    And now he wanted Murray Coburn.
    Trace left the car, put change in the meter, and went around to Priss’s door. She’d just stepped out when his phone rang. Again, not trusting her to be more than a foot away from him, Trace held her arm while he answered. “Miller.”
    “It just occurred to me,” Murray said. “I should know if she really is my daughter, right?”
    Trace saw how the sunlight shone on Priss’s hair—and yeah, the name Priss suited her, whether she realized it or not. The bright day amplified the red in her long ponytail, showing a dozen different shades of brown and auburn.
    She looked nothing like Murray. A good thing, that. “Up to you.”
    “I need to test her DNA. Discreetly. Helene said it’d be best to get some of her hair, but it has to have a root attached, so get a couple of good ones, pulled out, not cut. Got it?”
    Now that he had the opportunity to slant things however he wanted, Trace pondered the situation. Which would be more advantageous to his plan, if Priss was not Murray’s daughter, or if she was?
    He shrugged. At this point, it was all still up in the air, so he’d just have to play it by ear. “Not a problem.”
    Murray gave a few more instructions on the type of clothes he wanted to see her in. “Talk her up, see what you can find out, okay? But be discreet. I don’t want her to bolt. Not yet.”
    While Trace listened, Priss put up a hand to shield her eyes and looked around. Her nose scrunched up a little and her mouth pursed.
    And damn it, she stirred him.
    Without meaning to, he used his thumb to caress the soft skin of her arm right above her elbow.
    She gave him a quizzical look, then a more pointed look at his hand, her brows lifted.
    Trace released her. “I’ll check in later,” he told Murray, and then closed the phone and stowed it back in his pocket.
    When Priss started toward the designer store, he caught her arm and she went full circle until she faced the opposite way. Trace led her to the equally small phone store a block up.
    “What are we doing?”
    “Getting phones.” He had a hell of a lot of stuff to accomplish tonight. It cramped his brain, trying to ensure that he wouldn’t forget anything.
    “For me?”
    “For myself.”
    “But you have a phone,” she pointed out.
    “Be quiet.” He went in, towing her along, and bought two prepaid phones with a limited number of minutes on them. Since he changed them out often, it was always a good idea to grab them when he could. Of course he paid in cash. On the way out of the store, he asked, “Where are you really staying?”
    “You didn’t buy the hotel?”
    “No.” But luckily, it appeared that Murray had. “I’ll figure out how to keep the cover for you, but I’m glad you listened to me when I told you to keep as much private as you could.”
    “But not from you?”
    “Not from me,” he agreed. He stopped in front of the clothing store. “Murray more or less owns this place. Say nothing inside, got it?”
    “Nothing at all, as in being mute? Or nothing as in nothing important?”
    She couldn’t seriously find any humor in this situation. “It could be bugged, and Twyla is part of his inner circle. Just because she acts old and flighty, don’t let her fool you. She’s sharp as a tack and as cutthroat as they come.” Catching her chin, Trace tipped up her face. “Where are you staying?”
    Priss gave in without hesitation. “I got a place a few blocks away from that hotel. It’s a dive, but they didn’t ask too many questions when I wanted to rent by the week and pay in cash.”
    Smart. And devious. Trace put his hand on the doorknob. “Don’t bitch about the clothes that you try on. Blush all you want—”
    “What makes you think I’ll blush?”
    “If you don’t, we won’t take them.” Her eyes widened a little over that, and Trace almost smiled. “We’re not leaving without a variety