1 Dog Collar Crime (34 page)
Read 1 Dog Collar Crime Online
Authors: Adrienne Giordano
Lucie’s brain exploded into a flurry of thoughts. Had he seen her on the tape? Was he playing with her? No. If he had proof, she’d be in handcuffs.
“Detective, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
He ran his tongue along his bottom lip while a grin played peek-a-boo. “That’s what I thought. Like I said, if you think of anything, you give me a call.”
Once again, he moved to leave.
Tell him about Neil
.
Get rid of the guilt
.
But she wasn’t sure she could do it. Somehow, it seemed a betrayal of her father’s rules. Then again, what about her own betrayal? Didn’t that count for something? Didn’t she have the right to see her tormentor punished?
O’Brien stopped at the back bumper of his car, and waited for a bus to go around.
“Detective?”
She met him at the curb.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
Lucie inhaled, letting the moist lake air fill her lungs while Josie squatted to poop. Must be a sign from the universe that all was well.
“Ms. Rizzo?”
She smiled. “I can’t help you with the castle incident, but I know someone who can.”
The End
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Dog Collar Crime.
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And now for a sneak peek at
STEALING JUSTICE
A Covert Action Pursuit (CAP) Team Novel
by
USA Today
Bestselling Authors
Adrienne Giordano and Misty Evans
Coming Fall 2013!
Justice “Grey” Greystone was fired from the FBI for insubordination. Now the FBI wants him to use his renegade skills to take down a serial killer who’s above the law. To trap the Lion, he’ll need to send the perfect woman undercover.
Sydney Banfield runs a women’s shelter and bends the law daily to help victims of abuse escape their painful lives. Three of the women she’s recruited for government jobs have become victims of the Lion. If Syd has her way, the vicious killer will never touch another woman again.
Grey and Sydney set a trap—with Sydney as the sexy bait—but the Lion adds a complex twist to his homicidal agenda. With Sydney’s life on the line, Grey must race against the clock to catch a killer who’s as unstoppable as he is evil.
Excerpt:
People let their guard down when they thought no one was watching.
Justice Greystone—Grey for short—stared through his Burris spotting scope, magnifying his subject’s swaying body as she danced in the privacy of her office.
Sydney Banfield danced with youthful abandon and didn’t realize she was being watched through the floor-to-ceiling window of the former church building. She’d swept her long hair, still wet from her morning shower, into a high ponytail, the ends brushing her shoulders as she moved to music he couldn’t hear.
He didn’t need to. Her hips telegraphed every beat.
Sydney’s office at the Saint Agnes Fresh Start shelter for women in lower D.C. was the size of a broom closet but that didn’t stop her from spinning and grinding to the song like a contestant on
Dancing With The Stars
. The girl had moves…moves no one at St. Agnes would ever see since she only danced in private.
A damn shame, if you asked him.
“St. Agnes, the saint of chastity.” Grey snorted and recalled his mother’s fascination with all the female saints. “The founder of Fresh Start must have had one serious dose of wishful thinking to name it after her.”
As Grey continued to watch, Sydney spun, wiggled and hopped around her desk, grabbing a drab army green stapler and using it as a microphone. She pirouetted a couple of times, coming to a breathless stop in front of the window. Her cheeks were flushed and a smile lifted the corners of her mouth as her chest heaved from the exercise.
Killer, that smile. Another thing no one inside or out of Fresh Start saw much.
Through the scope, Grey ignored the way Sydney’s cleavage yelled
look at me
over the top of her black tank. Instead, he zoomed in on her face, that smile. Smooth skin, a smattering of freckles, tendrils of hair teasing her neck where they’d escaped the ponytail.
So young.
Not so innocent.
She was twenty-five, but could have passed for eighteen. Young, pretty, smart…the all-American poster girl for the other women who populated the charity. Sydney sent the unspoken message that even if life screwed you over, you could still make something out of yourself.
Hell, different place, different sitch, he would’ve hit her up for a date. Two screw-ups taking on the world…or at least each other. Great for a short-term fling. Not so much for a real relationship.
And a real relationship was out of the question. At least for him. Women loved an FBI agent. What they didn’t love was a former agent who’d been fired for insubordination.
But if he did this off-the-books job for the Bureau, and did it right, he might just get his badge back. All he wanted—his entire future—rested on the shoulders of the woman in the Burris scope’s sight.
Romantic suspense books available by Adrienne Giordano
The Private Protectors series
Negotiating Point
(novella)
Justifiable Cause series
The Chase
(novella)
Acknowledgments
To my dear friends, John, Mara and Josh Leach and Cindy and Kevin Palmer, thank you for allowing me to use your beloved (and hilarious) dogs as characters. Otis, Josie and Fannie made this book a joy to write.
A huge thank you to Dianna Love for her continuous generosity and support. You’re the best! Thank you also to my critique partners, Kelsey Browning, Theresa Stevens, Tracey Devlyn and L J Charles for your constant patience while doing revisions. Frankie and Lucie have finally made their debut and you were all a part of it. Thanks also to Amy Atwell for the early critiques and fantastic title suggestion. Milton Grasle, thank you once again for helping me brainstorm an action scene. Margie Lawson, your input on this story helped me get it ready for publication and I’m grateful for all you’ve taught me. Thank you also to Tricia Leigh Wood, Courtney Kaul, Heather Long, Nikki Duncan and Peg Colyar for all the laughs and great suggestions. Gina Bernal, thank you for always making the editing process a joy. To Judy Beatty, thank you for turning copy edits around so quickly!
I also owe a huge thanks to Kim Killion who somehow crawled inside my brain and gave me the exact cover I wanted.
Finally, to my husband and son for always making me laugh and giving me a daily reminder of what a wonderful gift love is. And, of course, I must thank Buddy the Wheaten “Terrorist” Terrier, who gives me unconditional love and a stream of great material to use in my stories.
About the Author
USA Today
bestselling author Adrienne Giordano writes romantic suspense and mystery. She is a Jersey girl at heart, but now lives in the Midwest with her workaholic husband, sports obsessed son and Buddy the Wheaten Terrorist (Terrier). She is a co-founder of Romance University blog and Lady Jane’s Salon-Naperville, a reading series dedicated to romantic fiction.
For more information on Adrienne’s books, please visit
www.AdrienneGiordano.com
or download the Adrienne Giordano app. Adrienne can also be found on Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/AdrienneGiordanoAuthor
and Twitter at
http://twitter.com/AdriennGiordano
. For information on Adrienne’s street team,
Dangerous Darlings
, go to
http://www.facebook.com/groups/dangerousdarlings
.
Dog Collar Crime
Copyright
©
2013 by Adrienne Giordano
ISBN: 978-0-9888939-2-4
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The reverse engineering, uploading, and/or distributing of this eBook via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
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