Private Investigations by Tori Carrington

Author:Tori Carrington
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2002-09-03T04:00:00+00:00

8

NICOLE BENNETT.

Ripley stared directly into face of the very woman she’d been sent to find but who instead had found her, trying to ignore the size and nearness of the gun Nicole held tightly in both hands.

Yet another first in what was adding up to a whole series of them.

“I’ll repeat, just in case you didn’t hear me. Why are you following me?” Nicole took a step back when Joe rounded the corner at full throttle.

Ripley put her arm out to stop him, and he held up his hands and said, “Whoa.”

Ripley wondered how long it would take to get her gun out of her bag. Judging that it had taken her five minutes to get the sucker in there, it would probably take at least that long to get it out. And somehow she didn’t think pointing her black leather bag at Nicole and yelling, “Freeze,” was going to work, either.

“We’re not following you,” Ripley said. She shifted, agitated. “I mean, I am…was looking for you, but I’m not now.”

Nicole Bennett was prettier than the grainy picture Clarise had given her. With long dark, almost black hair, and wide gray eyes, she was strikingly beautiful and very dangerous. The fact that she had a gun pointed at Ripley could very well have a lot to do with the latter description.

“Say that again?” Nicole asked.

Ripley tucked her hair behind her ear. “Look, I’m a P.I. from St. Louis. I was hired to find you by someone concerned for your welfare.”

Nicole’s expression was clearly skeptical, but she nodded. “Go on. I’m listening.”

Ripley nodded. “Your sister. She wanted me to find you, and the things you, um, borrowed from her.”

Nicole narrowed her eyes, but the gun never budged. “Interesting. My sister is in a sanitarium.”

Ripley blinked at her. “Well, then, she was released. Because I met her. She gave me a picture of you, told me you have a habit of lifting things from her house, but that she never pressed charges, and asked me to find you.” She frowned. “Your name is Nicole Bennett, isn’t it? And your sister is Clarise Bennett.”

The other woman was not looking very sociable. “Describe the woman who hired you to find me.”

Joe leaned closer to Ripley. “Remember that fishy feeling I had earlier?”

Ripley elbowed him in the ribs. “She, um, has blond hair. About your height. No, a little taller. Slender. Kind of a Grace Kelly look-alike with an edge.”

The gun dropped to the woman’s side, and she shocked the hell out of Ripley by smiling. “That’s what I thought,” she said. She opened her black trench coat and slid the revolver into the waist of an equally dark pair of slacks, then covered the gun with the hem of her black mock turtleneck. “Did you find the stuff?”

“By stuff, I’m assuming you mean the box you sold to the pawnshop?”

“That’s it.”

“Yes, I retrieved it.” Ripley stared at Joe, warning him not to say the same box was on its way to a holding lot even as they spoke.

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