Bare-Naked Lola (A Lola Cruz Mystery) Read Online Free Page B

Douglas’s family?” Jack asked.
    “Vaguely,” I said, suddenly connecting the acting dots between Michael Douglas and Kevin Bacon. My brother Antonio was the master at the game, but I did pretty well. My mind wandered. Michael Douglas to Glenn Close. Hadn’t she been in some pseudo-romance movie with Christopher Walken? I was positive she had been. I couldn’t name the movie, but I went to see Christopher anyway.
    I kept at it. Self-preservation, I think. It was better than facing whatever Jack was trying to tell me about his ex.
    Jack took my hand and gave it a squeeze. He was saying something about Glenn Close and a gleam she had in her eyes, but I was trying to connect the dots between Christopher Walken and Kevin Bacon.
    Until I realized he’d stopped talking. And was watching me.
    “Six degrees to Kevin Bacon,” I explained, feeling a bit sheepish at being such a chicken.
    “Ahh,” he said, as if playing the game in my mind was a perfectly normal thing to do. “Starting with whom?”
    “Michael Douglas.”
    “And you got to—”

    “Glenn Close, then Christopher Walken.”
    He tapped one finger against the steering wheel, thinking. “Yep, that’ll work. Walken was in True Romance . It’s an early Tarantino flick,” he explained when I raised my eyebrows. “It’s sort of a classic. Brad Pitt was in it.”
    He was?
    “And Pitt was in—”
    “Brad Pitt was in Sleepers !” I said, feeling like I was the big winner on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? .
    “…with Kevin Bacon,” Jack finished.
    We high fived, and then I suddenly registered what Jack had been saying before I got sidetracked. I turned to him. “Glenn Close had a gleam in her eyes?”
    Bless his heart, Jack caught right back up to speed. “She did.”
    “And?”
    “And…” He hesitated, gripping the steering wheel of the parked car before turning to me again. “Lola, I’ve seen that in Sarah’s eyes.”
    I stared at him, shoving my hair out of my face. ¡Dios mío! “Seriously? You’re comparing your ex-girlfriend to a murderer?”
    “Crazy, huh?”
    “The idea, or Sarah?” I said, completely backtracking on my plan to introduce myself to the woman and tell her to back the hell off. Kung fu wouldn’t do squat against crazy.
    But then I had a flashback of Jack knocking on Sergio’s door, coming to my rescue then—even though I hadn’t needed it. I was Xena: Warrior Princess, not a damsel in distress. But he’d come, risking his life for me. Now it was my turn to face Sarah.

    “Don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t have any rabbits.”
    He laughed. “Well, that’s a relief.”
    “It is, actually.” I was dead serious. “If I had a rabbit, and Sarah was off her meds and got all loca on said rabbit, I’d have to open a can of whoop-ass on her.”
    His right eyebrow quirked up. “Whoop-ass, eh?”
    “That’s right. No holding back. Mess with my rabbit”—or with my Jack—“and you’ll pay.” As it was, I was pretty ticked at Brooke for harboring Sarah. I knew she wasn’t really on my side, but was she against me? “That’s how I roll.”
    He barely managed to hold in his laughter as he said, “You harbor cans of whoop-ass. That’s good to know. I might borrow some. I’m going to have a chat with Brooke after—”
    “After Sarah’s gone home?”
    His lips thinned. “Right.”
    I threw open the car door. No more stalling. “You can have all the whoop-ass you want,” I said, marching up the walkway to Brooke’s front door.
    He got out of the Volvo, slammed the driver’s door, and raced after me. I turned and waited. Even in the dark, I could see that his blue eyes had turned smoky gray. I wasn’t sure if he believed everything could really work out for us. If you counted the years since high school, and the interruptions thanks to Sarah, time was not on our side.
    Just as we stepped onto the stoop, the front door was flung open. I stumbled backward a step, registering the radiant face of a