Free Vanessa Gray Bartal - Lacy Steele 07 - Icy Grip of Murder by Vanessa Gray Bartal Page B

Change of scenery,
change of climate, change of altitude or temperature.
Whatever the reason, we need to keep an eye on him because I don’t think he
realizes how fragile he is right now.”
    “Is that what I’m like normally?”
she asked.
    “Yeah, but on you it’s more
endearing. You’re smaller and easier to pick up with you stumble or get stuck
in things. We’d have to call the fire department for him.”
    “Thanks, I feel so much better
now,” she said.
    “Sorry. I guess I’m distracted by
this pesky murder charge,” he said.
    “It’s really going to be okay.
We’re going to get this figured out,” she said.
    “I don’t know. I purposely baited
Jenny by telling the guys she thinks she’s smarter than she is, but what if she
actually is the smarter one? What if this is all part of her master plan?”
    “Maybe, but there are two things
she didn’t count on, two things she couldn’t have planned for,” Lacy said.
    “What’s that?”
    “Me and Jason. With my tenacity and
his cop skills, we’re going to get this settled, once and for all,” Lacy said.
    Just then the bathroom door rattled
and Jason knocked from the inside. “Uh, guys, the door seems to be stuck
somehow. A little help here?”
    “I feel so comforted,” Michael said
and spent the next hour freeing Jason from his bathroom prison.

 
    After they freed Jason, Lacy took
her turn in the bathroom and went to bed. Sleep was elusive, however. Somehow
things felt unsettled with Jason. Since they were constantly with Michael, it
was impossible to talk about anything personal.
    “Are you awake?” Jason whispered
close to her ear. In the next bed, Michael snored softly.
    “Yes,” she whispered.
    “Today was weird,” he said.
    “Yeah.”
    “We’re not ready yet,” he said.
    “No,” she agreed.
    He reached for her hand, twining
their fingers together. They stared up at the ceiling in silence a few beats before he spoke again. “Someday, though, we’ll
get there. And we should also get new knives. Those knives were really sharp.”
    Lacy didn’t reply. Not only did she
not want to ruin the moment, but she realized that his
words were more a statement of intent than a question needing agreement. She
squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. She drifted off to sleep and the world
shattered into chaos.
    She had barely started to
comprehend the fact that the shattering noise was the window when Jason sat up,
turned on the light, and threw her off the bed. She sat up on the floor,
disoriented, and watched as he grabbed Michael and dragged him out of his bed
and to the floor beside Lacy. When they were all on the floor behind the bed,
he pulled the mattress on top of them.
    “Um, what?” Michael said, still
sounding half asleep.
    “Someone busted out the window and
threw in a MacGyver bomb,” Jason explained.
    “Couldn’t we have left the room?”
Michael asked.
    “There’s no predicting when it will
go off. It’s not like they have a timer,” Jason said.
    They were quiet, waiting. Lacy’s
heart thundered and she was sweating, either from being sandwiched between the
two men or buried beneath a mattress.
    “What if it never goes off?”
Michael asked.
    “It has to go off eventually,”
Jason said.
    They were quiet again, so quiet that Lacy could hear the minutes tick on Jason’s watch.
    “We’ve passed the point of awkward
and are now firmly in unable-to-make-eye-contact-tomorrow territory,” Michael
said. He sounded grumpy.
    “It’s not my idea of paradise, either,”
Jason said.
    “Remind me to never vacation with
you two again,” Michael said.
    Jason’s reply was
drowned by the explosion , which wasn’t very loud. And then it sounded as
if it were hailing in the room.
    “Shrapnel,” Jason said, drawing
Lacy closer and wrapping her tightly. When the noise stopped, they dug their
way from beneath the mattress and surveyed the damage. The bottle bomb had left
a black crater on the carpet and pieces of the wallpaper