Free Dangerous by Diana Palmer Page A

fetch snack food. “That would be nice.”
    “There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts shop around the corner,” she reminded him. “If I were you, I’d hurry.”
    “I’d hurry?” he repeated.
    “Yes, because my job description requires me to type and file and answer phones. Not be a caterer,” she added, still sugary. She hung up.
    “One day, so help me, she’ll drive me to drink and you’ll have to bail me out of some jail where I’ll be surrounded by howling mad drug users,” Jon gritted.
    Kilraven patted him on the shoulder. “Now, now, don’t let your blood pressure override your good sense.”
    “If I had good sense, I’d ask for reassignment to another field office, preferably in the Yukon Territory!” he said loud enough for Ms. Perry to hear him as he opened his office door.
    “Oooh, polar bears live there,” she said merrily. “And they eat people, don’t they?”
    “You wish, Ms. Perry,” he shot back.
    “Temper, temper,” she chided.
    Jon was almost vibrating, he was so angry. Kilraven smothered laughter.

    “I’ll call you,” he told his brother. “And thanks for the information.”
    “Just don’t go off half-cocked and get in trouble with it,” Jon said firmly.
    “You know me,” Kilraven said in mock astonishment. “I never do anything rash!”
    Before Jon could reply, Kilraven walked out the door.

    R ICK M ARQUEZ STILL had his arm in a sling and he was like a man standing on a fire ant hill. “They won’t let me come back to work yet,” he complained to Kilraven. “I can shoot with one hand!”
    “You haven’t had to shoot anybody in years,” Kilraven reminded him.
    “Well, it’s the point of the thing. I could sit at a desk and answer phones, but oh, no, I have to be at 100 percent before they’ll certify me fit for duty!”
    “You can use the free time.”
    “Yeah? For what? Watering Mom’s flowers?”
    Kilraven was studying the dead bushes at the front porch. “They look dead to me.”
    “Not those ones. These ones.” He let Kilraven into the living room, where huge potted plants almost covered every wall.
    Kilraven’s eyebrows lifted. “She grows bananas and coffee in the house?” he exclaimed.
    “Now how do you recognize coffee plants?” Marquez asked with evident suspicion. “Most people who come in here have to ask what they are.”
    “Anybody could recognize a banana plant.”

    “Yes, but not a coffee plant.” Rick’s eyes narrowed. “Been around coffee plants somewhere they don’t grow in pots?”
    Kilraven grinned. “Let’s just say, I’m not a stranger to them, and leave it at that.”
    Rick was thinking that coffee grew in some of the most dangerous places on earth. Kilraven had the look of a man who was familiar with them.
    “I know that expression,” Kilraven said blandly, “but I’ve said all I’m going to.”
    “I know when I’m licked. Coffee?”
    “I’d love some.” He gave Rick a wry glance. “Going to pick the beans fresh?”
    Rick gave the red berries a curious look. “I do have a grinder somewhere.”
    “Yes, but you have to dry coffee beans and roast them before you can use them.”
    “All right, now you’re really making me curious,” Rick told him.
    Kilraven didn’t say a word. He just kept walking.
    They went into the kitchen where Rick made coffee and Kilraven fetched cups. They drank it at Barbara’s kitchen table, covered by a red checkered cloth with matching curtains at the windows. The room was bright and airy and pretty, like Barbara herself.
    “Your mother has good taste,” Kilraven commented. “And she’s a great cook.”
    Rick smiled. “Not a bad mother, either,” he chuckled. “I’d probably be sitting in a cell somewhere if she hadn’t adopted me. I was a tough kid.”

    “So was I,” Kilraven recalled. “Jon and I kept our parents busy when we were boys. Once, we got drunk at a party, started a brawl and ended up in a holding cell.”
    “What did your parents do?”
    “My stepmother