Free Kill Shot by J. D. Faver Page B

stripper, then?” She grinned at him.
    “Not her either.”
    “Be still my heart.” She placed both hands over her ample bosom and rolled her eyes. “You mean there’s a chance for me?”
    “You’re the only woman I know who isn’t crazy,” he snapped.
    Aida chortled. “Then there’s no hope for us, Oz. Men and women aren’t supposed to understand each other. It’s against the law.”
    He had to grin in spite of his churlish mood. “What law is that?”
    “The law of attraction, silly boy. We’re attracted to our opposites; the things that are strange and complicated attract us. We try to unravel the riddle, solve the puzzle, but we can’t because if we do we’ll get bored and move on.”
    “Not me,” he said. “I want to understand the woman I love. I don’t need complicated.”
    Aida emitted a short mirthless snort. “Wrong, you just think you want uncomplicated. I suspect that this girl Micki, has you wrapped around her little finger and you don’t have a clue how you got there.”
    He shrugged. “You could be right.”
    “Come on, Oz. Give the girl her due. The electricity between the two of you could start a fire.”
    He cringed. “It already did, and it burned me to the ground.” He tried to keep his voice level but, to his annoyance, it broke.
    “My deepest sympathies.” She cast him a compassionate glance and returned to the magnifying glass. “Hey, look at this.”
    Oz looked over her shoulder and she passed the magnifying glass to him.
    “Hello,” he said. “I know this face.”
    #
    When she heard Oz turn his key in the lock, Micki stood up and slung her purse over her shoulder.
    “I’m glad you made it back alive,” he said.
    “I didn’t go. I waited for you.”
    He eyed her coolly. “Why? I thought I was too judgmental.”
    “Well,” she said with a grin. “You are. Everything’s black or white with you. There are no shades of gray. No nuance, but...”
    “But...”
    “I didn’t want to take the chance that you might be right because there would be no living with you if I got myself killed.”
    He reached to massage the back of his neck, rotating his head from side to side. “I’m sure there’s some kind of twisted feminine logic in there.” He gave her a brief hug. “I’m glad you waited for me.”
    “Let’s go. Arnold will be at my apartment soon.”
    “Yes, Miss Scarlet.” He tweaked her hair as she preceded him out the door.
    On the drive over, Oz appeared to be in a much better mood. The banter between the two of them was light and he seemed to have forgotten their earlier confrontation.
    Micki made a mental note to try not to irritate him for at least a day.
    At the apartment, he shook Arnold’s hand and strolled around looking like a casual observer. She thought he was playing down the image of the uniformed cop checking out the crime scene. Of course, he’d driven around the block twice before parking and had practically smuggled Micki out of the car under his arm but, for Oz, he was being cool.
    Micki smiled her approval. She gave Arnold the list of missing and damaged items.
    “The thief, he did this?” Arnold gestured to the bruises on her face.
    She nodded.
    “My God, Micki. What’s going on with you?”
    She shrugged. Arnold Meyers had been her parent’s insurance agent ever since she could remember. When her dad had brought home the used Honda on her sixteenth birthday, it had been insured by Arnold Meyers. Somehow she felt as though she was letting him down by filing not one, but two claims in two days.
    “And the computer hard drive is at the police station?” he asked.
    “It’s toast,” Oz offered. “The lab guys tried to recover the data but they said it will never function as a computer.”
    Arnold gathered information on the replacement cost of her equipment and left, shaking his head. Micki felt a twinge of guilt. Things like this didn’t happen to Arnold’s clients.
    Micki locked the door behind him and turned to find Oz