The Rogue Reviewer (Primrose, Minnesota Book 3)
very. According to my housing contract,
the extra keys are locked in a secured vault.”
    “You know this for a fact?”
    “Yes. I’ve locked myself out several times
and once I had to wait three hours for Mrs. Bridgewater to return
from having her hair done. She’s the only person with access.”
    “Wow!” Georgette tapped her nails against her
knee. “You’ve got amazing security. You’re exactly right when you
say this is a difficult crime to plot.”
    “I suck at it,” Marnie mumbled.
    “It takes practice.” Georgette grinned. “He
didn’t come through a window?”
    “Nope. All locked.”
    “Any fingerprints?”
    “I have no idea. The detectives on the case
won’t share information.”
    “Even the one you call Mace ?”
    “Not you too, Georgette,” Dara groaned.
    “Sounds like you need to do a little crime
scene investigation on your own.”
    Dara widened her eyes. “Yes, we do.”
    “We?” Marnie squeaked.
    “We.” She stood from the sofa. “Thank you,
Georgette, you’ve been quite helpful.”
    “You’re welcome.” Georgette stood and led
Marnie and her to the front door. “Let me know what you find out,”
she said as she opened it.
    Dara nudged Marnie out into the dusky
twilight and gave Georgette a grin over her shoulder. “You’ll be
the first person I call.”
     
    After an amazingly quiet, five-minute drive
to her townhouse, Dara pulled into her parking space and glanced at
Marnie.
    “You okay over there?”
    “I’m fine.” Marnie released a hard sigh. “Are
you sure you want to do this?”
    “Of course. Why not?”
    Marnie bent her head and glanced out the
front window of the car. “It’s dark.”
    “So? I have a key. We’ll go inside and turn
on the light.”
    “Inside. Where we found a corpse.”
    Dara paused to swallow her own uncertainty.
Something told her poking around a crime scene was a whole lot more
fun when one wrote it.
    She put on a brave smile for her friend and
opened the driver’s door. “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”
    Marnie mumbled something she couldn’t quite
understand but then again, she knew she probably didn’t want to
know what was said.
    When they finally stood at the front door,
Marnie suddenly had a whole lot to say.
    “Dara, it’s really creepy around here now.
Are you sure you want to move back?”
    She slid her key into the lock and jiggled it
first to one side and then the other. “Who knows?” She frowned and
turned the key again. “Maybe this whole bizarre situation will
inspire a bestseller.”
    Marnie released a heavy sigh. “We were kidding ! Just open the door so we can get the heck out of
here.”
    “I can’t.”
    “What? There’s another corpse blocking the
door?”
    “That’s not funny.”
    “Let me try.” Marnie twisted the key with the
same result. “It’s probably bent from all the tugging. I’ve got
mine.”
    Dara watched her best friend jab the second
key into the lock and fight a similar battle.
    “If I didn’t know better,” she said while
Marnie still struggled, “I’d say someone changed the lock.”
    She froze at Marnie’s quick intake of breath
in the still night and then felt the low, husky voice behind her
before she heard it.
    “Someone did.”
    Very slowly, she turned in the darkness.
Marnie, however, released an obnoxiously-ear piercing scream and
spun around with the key still in her grasp, pointed at the
stranger’s neck like a weapon.
    Only, the stranger wasn’t strange.
    “Dammit, Mace!” Dara lunged forward and beat
both fists against his incredibly hard chest. “You scared us half
to death!”
    His fingers closed around her wrists as he
stopped her attack. She stood silently stunned for several seconds
trying to digest the reality that she beat a cop rather than a
lunatic murderer. His thumbs drew circles on her skin before he
moved his hands to her elbows and set her back from him, apparently
unphased by her assault. Her heart beat ninety to nothing, from
fear or arousal she

Similar Books

Forecast

Janette Turner Hospital

The Lost Continent

Percival Constantine

Divine Madness

Robert Muchamore

The Empress's Tomb

Kirsten Miller

Second Chance

Shaun Dowdall

Held At Bay

John Creasey