Blood and Bone (33 page)

BOOK: Blood and Bone

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HE LEANED FORWARD and kissed her, and she kissed back, closing her eyes and letting her body fall into his, and they each felt something happen that was both startling and new.

Ramirez felt the cold hardness at the core of her ambition, a hardness that lived like a tumor in her gut, soften and slowly begin to melt. And Kyle felt something stiffen—not just that which was always stiffening from a kiss or a look or a stray thought, but something else, some resolve that had for most of his life been airy as a fog. And her hurry, her worry, her innate brutal competitiveness, it all seemed to float from her. While he wanted to shout, to dance, to do something, anything, to grab hold of life in a way that was far beyond his usual meander to nowhere. She suddenly didn’t have anyplace more important to be, and he suddenly was in a rush to get there. She had no priority other than to feel his lips on hers, his large body pressed against hers, and he wanted to take her to the moon.

“I feel like I’m on a tropical island,” said Ramirez after they slowly pulled apart to catch their breaths.
“You make me want to put on a suit,” said Kyle.
“I liked you in a suit.”
“Except for the tie. Nobody likes the tie.”
“It is a little grim. What would you do in a suit?”
“I don’t know. Something bold.”
“I like the sound of that. You want to go back in with your friends?”
“No. Let’s go someplace.”
“Where?”
“Anyplace. Let’s just get in a car and drive.”
“Okay.” She laughed. “I guess that means my car.”
“I guess it does.”
“Can we kiss again first?”
They kissed again, and then she took his hand and led him down the street to where her car was parked. She led, and he let her lead him, and all the time he felt as if his heart were imprinted with the words of the note he found wrapped around the tape.

“I couldn’t be prouder, boyo. I could be richer, sure, and wouldn’t that be a pretty thing, but I couldn’t be prouder. Partners on the tape? I’ll be waiting.”

He would never fully understand their power, the first five words of the note, never understand why they mattered so, coming from a man who hadn’t said an honest word to him in decades, but they did, beyond measure, and as he held tight to her hand while she pulled him down the street, he felt his feet skip across the cement as if he were flying.

About the Author

New York Times
bestselling author William Lashner is the author of seven suspense novels that have been published in more than a dozen languages throughout the world. A graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, he lives with his family outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

www.williamlashner.com

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ALSO BY WILLIAM LASHNER
A Killer’s Kiss
Marked Man

Falls the Shadow
Past Due
Fatal Flaw
Bitter Truth (Veritas) Hostile Witness

Credits

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

BLOOD AND BONE
. Copyright © 2009 by William Lashner. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader January 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-177001-2

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