Wicked Lies by Lisa Jackson, Nancy Bush Read Free Book Online

His sister. His managing editor at the Portland Ledger. His new editor at the Seaside Breeze. He knew he should give it out more often, but he’d been in a kind of self-imposed exile.
    “Okay, you got me there,” he said. “I don’t know what you can do.”
    She took it as a challenge. “There’s a bunch of us who . . . get together . . . and do stuff.” Her eyes sparkled as brightly as the neon lights winking in the town; she was proud of herself and excited, a sly smile teasing the corners of her mouth.
    “You and your fifteen-year-old friends.”
    “Yeah. Well, and some older ones, too. Like Envy.”
    “Envy?” Harrison repeated.
    “You know what envy means?”
    “Got a pretty good idea.”
    “It’s his initials. Get it? N. V. He says it’s a deadly sin.”
    “Okay,” Harrison said. His phone silently buzzed again.
    “There are seven deadly sins.”
    “Mm-hmm. Like in the movie Seven .”
    “You know that one?” she asked in surprise. “It’s really old.”
    “Morgan Freeman. Brad Pitt. Gwyneth Paltrow.” Really old, Harrison thought with an inner snort, his hand easing toward his phone. But then this kid would have been barely a thought when it was released in the midnineties.
    “We’re not weird, or anything, like in the movie.”
    “You just do stuff.”
    “The seven of us,” she said. “Guess which one I am.”
    “Well, what are your initials? If that’s how it works.”
    “That isn’t just how it works.”
    “So, okay, you don’t look like gluttony. I don’t really see you as wrath. Pride, maybe? Lust?”
    Her own cell phone chirped and as if suddenly realizing she’d said too much to a perfect stranger, she jumped to her feet. She glanced around her shoulder again, looking like she wanted to take off and run, then glanced at a text message on the screen of the phone.
    “I can’t remember the other ones,” he mused, but she suddenly racewalked across the street, as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough.
    As soon as she was out of sight, Harrison dug for his phone. He grabbed it just as it finished vibrating. “Hello? Hello? Damn.”
    Glancing at the number, he didn’t recognize it, but when he called it back, it rang only once before a woman’s voice asked cautiously, “Frost?”
    “Who’s this?”
    “Geena Cho.”
    “Geena?” Harrison’s surprise was tinged with caution as well. Geena worked in dispatch for the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department. He’d met her when she was off work at a local dive, Davy Jones’s Locker, and they’d hit it off, but Harrison was leery of getting involved right away. Every relationship he’d had with a woman flamed too hot before he ever got to know her. Then, as time revealed each other’s foibles, baggage, and basic craziness, the heat was squelched fast. When Geena said she worked for the sheriff’s department, it was enough to cool Harrison’s blood even further. He’d kept her in the “friend” box with an effort, as Geena was angling for something more. She was one of the few he’d given his cell number.
    “We got an escapee from Halo Valley,” she said quietly, and he realized she was talking on her cell and giving him information the sheriff’s department might not want to release just yet. “He injured two men, who were taken to Ocean Park. Half the department’s at Halo Valley.”
    “Who’s the escapee?” He was already on his feet, yanking a reluctant Chico from sniffing a newcomer, a fluffy white bichon who wanted to play. Chico just wanted to hump the female dog, which was embarrassing to the bichon’s owner, so Harrison, needing the whole circus to end, dragged the reluctant Chico away.
    “That guy from a few years ago who terrorized the cult.”
    Harrison remembered the story but not the man’s name. “You got a name?”
    “Hey, not yet,” she said, suddenly reticent, as if she was already second-guessing her decision to call. He couldn’t push her too far.
    “So,” Harrison