Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle by Pauline Jones (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

it be panic she was experiencing? How could she know? Panic wasn’t on the list of accepted Seymour emotions. That didn’t matter to her adrenalin gland. The hairs on her arms were so straight they could run as conservatives.

She looked at Mickey. “How can you be so sure I’m the target?”

“Your car just exploded all over the neighborhood,” he pointed out with grim relish. “And then there’s the two drive-by shootings—”

“But why? I know I’m annoying—”

“Your—” the Captain cleared the husky out of his voice, then finished, “safety is our first concern. The mother—”

“Mother?” Luci prompted when he stopped.

“Motive. I meant motive.”

“Uh huh.” He looked so horrified, she added with outward calm, “I always mix up mother and motive.” Inside, small tremors of shock quaked through her insides as her mind resisted what her eyes and her heart tried to tell her.

He gave her a far too grateful look. “The motive will become clear when we have the truth. The absolute, honest truth. With no more damn lies and running away.”

He stood up, his fists clenched. Luci stood, too, unable—unable or unwilling—to have him towering over her. “Uh huh. What did you say your name is?”

He tried twice before he got out, “Pryce.”

“Our captain,” Mickey added quickly. “Of detectives.”

It was hilarious. Like a bit in a sitcom, but she wasn’t laughing. She was, she realized, trying not to burst into tears. She hadn’t burst into tears since the day she’d left New Orleans. Crying was another of those un-Seymour things. Her eyes burned with it, but she wasn’t about to cry in front of— “Your captain?”

“Of detectives,” Delaney said hoarsely.

She let out the breath she’d been holding like a lifeline. “I feel safer already.”

Safe. That was a laugh. She was free falling without rope or belay and she hadn’t been rock climbing in a couple of years. If only she could see what was at the bottom of the chasm, she’d know...what?

Pryce looked both dazed and gratified. In a mirrored movement, they brushed hair back from their brows, froze and hastily dropped their hands to their sides. For a long, horrified moment he stared at her while she stared at him. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. She’d always known what to do with her hands. She’d been born knowing what to do with her hands, but now they just hung there twitching.

Pryce frowned at the sight of the elastic bandage wrapped around her wounded wing. “What happened?”

“I found out I can’t fly.” How calm I sound, she thought with distant awe. Amazing. Yet disturbing. I should sound different. It wasn’t natural. Except it was natural for a Seymour, wasn’t it? Maybe I’m having an out-of-Seymour body experience?

“She did a header off an escalator,” Mickey interposed, sounding as far away as her Seymour-ness felt.

“It’s all in the report we’re going to write when we get time,” Delaney added with equal haste.

They both looked at Pryce. Since no one was looking at her, it seemed a good time to just leave. Her thoughts were jostling, bouncing, dodging inside her head, with one single disturbing thought at the center that she refused to deal with until she was alone.

Mickey could tell Pryce didn’t give a damn about the report. As one, they turned to look at what he did care about and saw her walking toward the house. The seductive side-to-side of her hips stole the furtive cool from the shade provided by the trees and left his throat dry with want. Pryce choked, from a different kind of distress. It was left to Delaney to call, “Luci? Where are you going?”

She stopped, the turn of her head done in graceful slow motion. “I need to feel safe from a safe distance.” She stared at them for a long beat, then added, “And you think we’re weird.”

No one moved until she slid the terrace door closed, then they all exhaled as one. Pryce gave him a look that was fierce, even by his usual standards. “You keep her safe.”

Mickey recoiled from the double responsibility of it. “Sir, we don’t—”

“Don’t what? Protect citizens from bodily harm?”

Delaney leapt figuratively into the breech. “We’re homicide—”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Pryce cut in, “but didn’t both your current investigations happen here?” Mickey and Delaney’s shoulders sagged. “So, how will staying here in this house interfere with your investigation?”

“We might,” Mickey muttered, “need to go somewhere else.”

Pryce stepped close, right in his face.

“Anything happens to my daughter, it better happen to you, too.”

Mickey waited until Pryce had stalked off in the opposite direction from Luci before saying, “We are so screwed.”

“Any word on Maxwell?” Dante asked.

“We’ve turned up a couple more wives. This guy’s a regular Casanova with older women, Mr. Dante. And clever in a stupid way. He never lets them get a good picture of him. We’ve had some wedding photos come in—he’s always moved or got something in front of his face.”

“I don’t see where that matters, Max. I met the man. I know what the bastard looks like.”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Dante. This guy’s got one of those anonymous faces—with a bit of chameleon thrown in. His wives—the number we’re turning up is climbing as we speak—can’t even agree on how tall he is.”

“That’s ridiculous! He’s—” Dante stopped as the colorless, handsomely vague face of his aunt’s cheating husband eluded him. “Son-of-a-bitch, Max. You’re right. I have no clue how tall he is.” He turned to Max. “We gonna find him?”

“No doubt about it, sir. We’re trying to turn up someone who did time in stir with him. We’ll get him.”

Where was the third Arthur?

Mickey opened his eyes to unfamiliar surroundings and this inscrutable question bouncing inexplicably around inside his aching head.

It was dark, but a tracing of light penetrated from outside. Enough to clue him that he wasn’t at home in his own functional apartment. Faintly, from outside, he could hear the insistent beat of rock music. Disoriented, it took him a couple of minutes to