Read Against the Night for Free Online Page B

little forced. “I’m…aahh…glad you asked me to come here.”
    “Oh, yeah?” Here we go, he thought. He’d known something was off. He had a hunch he was about to find out what it was.
    “The thing is, I heard you were a private investigator.”
    “Of sorts.” He took a drink from the heavy white china mug in front of him, set it back down on the Formica-topped table. “That why you agreed to the dance? You wanted to talk to me about business?”
    Soft color washed into her cheeks. “That was part of it. I really don’t…don’t know exactly what happened in there. I just…I guess I got carried away.”
    Amen to that. “So what did you want to talk to me about?”
    “I…umm…want to hire you.”
    “You in some kind of trouble?”
    Her eyes rounded. “Me? No! Of course not.”
    “Of course not,” he said with a hint of sarcasm she seemed to miss.
    “It’s my sister. Her name is Rachael.”
    “Then it’s Rachael who’s in trouble.”
    “I don’t know. A little over six weeks ago, Rachael disappeared. I talked to the police, of course. Babs says they haven’t tried very hard…you know…because she’s an exotic dancer.”
    He leaned back in his chair, trying not to be disappointed that her real interest came in wanting something from him. “So you want to hire me to find her. Is that it?”
    “Not exactly. I want to hire you to help me find her. I could do some of the work, and that way it wouldn’t cost as much.”
    “Okay, I get it. You want to hire me but you don’t have any money.”
    She sat up straighter in her seat. “Well, I have a little. Some savings from my job back home, but I’ve gone through a lot of it for my plane ticket and phone calls. I could borrow some, maybe a couple thousand. I get the feeling you don’t come cheap.”
    She was right. He charged up to a grand a day, plus expenses. She looked across the booth at him, bit her plump bottom lip, and heat throbbed low in his groin.
    Her fingers tightened around the handle of her coffee mug and the skin over her knuckles turned bone-white. “I thought…you seem to be attracted to me. I thought maybe we could…” She swallowed. “Maybe we could…you know…work something out.”
    A jolt of anger slipped through him. It began to fade when he noticed her face had turned as pale as the hand that gripped the mug. He hadn’t pegged her for a prostitute. He looked at her and he didn’t buy it now.
    Still, he could be wrong.
    He stood up from the pink vinyl bench across from her. She had barely touched her coffee. He tossed down a five and a couple of ones, more than enough for the coffee and a tip, and hauled her to her feet.
    “Let’s get out of here.” Angel didn’t protest when he caught her hand and led her toward the door, didn’t say a word as he guided her out of the coffee shop back to his car. But as she slid into the seat and fumbled to fasten her seat belt, he saw that she was trembling.
    Johnnie fired up the powerful engine, slipped the car into gear and pulled out onto the busy street. It didn’t take long to drive the winding road up the hill above Sunset to the guesthouse on the estate that was his home. He used the remote to open the gate then turned into the long narrow driveway, pulled into the guesthouse garage and parked next to his Harley. Up the drive a little farther, the main house, a big white modern structure, edged out over the hill.
    Angel flashed a look at the motorcycle as he helped her out, but she made no comment, just let him guide her up on the porch, waited while he unlocked the door, then walked past him into the entry. The lights of Los Angeles glittered in front of them through the wall of windows in the living room, a view that never failed to impress.
    She stared in that direction. “It’s beautiful.”
    He tossed his keys into the glass dish on the table in the entry. “I got lucky. I did some work for the lady who owns the estate. She’s older, feels safer having