Free On Thin Ice by Susan Andersen Page B

relinquished their grip but lingered to stroke the table next to where her hand rested. “I’m not on the make, Sasha,” he assured her. “I just want someone to flirt with for a few minutes.” When she stiffened slightly, he held up his hands, palms out in entreaty, and hastily added, “Or if you don’t feel much like flirting, I’d still like someone to talk to.”
    Sasha sagged back in her seat. “All right.” She was wired up and unlikely to fall asleep any time soon, anyway. Why go up to her room when she’d only end up tossing and turning for the next several hours? She straightened and gave Mick a slight smile. “You must think I’m crazy,” she murmured as she tossed her coat off her shoulders. Mick signaled the waitress and Sasha gave her order. When they were alone again Sasha turned back to Mick.
    â€œI did something tonight I’m not very proud of,” she admitted, “and it’s left me feeling a little raw. I’m sorry, though, if I’ve taken it out on you.”
    Again she caught him by surprise . . . and left him confused. He didn’t understand this. He had her pigeonholed as a conscienceless bitch. She might look soft as a satin boudoir pillow, but she had to be cold as death and harder than diamonds to deal poison the way she’d been doing without batting an eye. He’d be mighty interested in learning how the old man she’d met tonight fit into all this. He must be some piece of work to have this little operator running scared. Mick forced his voice to be low and empathetic when he said, “Don’t worry about me; I’ve got a hide like a rhinoceros. You want to talk about it?”
    Sasha swallowed an involuntary snort of laughter. “God, no. I’ve already made up my mind I’m not ever going to get sucked into a situation like tonight’s again. All I want to do now is forget it ever happened.”
    Mick obliged her by changing the topic, but he was about as disconcerted as it was possible to get. What the hell was going on here? She wasn’t acting at all the way he’d expected and it left him consumed with curiosity. He wanted nothing more than to learn all her secrets. He would learn all her secrets; he planned to seduce them out of her one by one.
    Maybe not tonight.
    But soon. Perhaps tomorrow, because by then he should have the leverage he needed to start prying them out of her.
    Just as soon as he got the information he’d requested on J. R. Garland.
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    It didn’t turn out to be quite that simple. In point of fact, the information he received merely added to the confusion. Jesus, what a screwed-up case this was shaping up to be.
    Garland was a damned talent scout. Period. He had no arrest record and there was absolutely nothing that connected him to the drug world. So why had Sasha Miller sat there and allowed him to put his hands all over her, to pat and stroke her like some damn pet Pekinese? Garland wasn’t a drug czar to whom she had to toady up, and clearly she hadn’t allowed it for its entertainment value.
    Or, hell, maybe that’s exactly what she’d done. What did he know about the way she got her kicks, when it came right down to it?
    He needed to know more about her in order to figure out what made her tick. So far she hadn’t done one damn thing that fit into any mold he was accustomed to seeing. So he sought information in the good old time-honored street hump way.
    He broke into her room again.
    Except for the one communication from Garland, she hadn’t received or made a single telephone call since he’d first placed a tap on her phone in Sacramento. So today he ignored the phone—he’d done his work there already—and went straight to the closet.
    Her luggage, stacked on the shelf above the hangers, was empty. Mick checked for false bottoms, but the dimensions were the same inside and out on all the