Lizzie Lynn Lee Read Online Free Page A

leaving her place any time soon.
    “No.” Alex reached into his suit inner pocket and extracted a piece of paper. He pushed it across the counter.
    Cat looked at it. It was a cashier’s cheque for one hundred thousand dollars, payable to her. She frowned. “What is this?”
    “That one is from me personally. To drop your investigation into my brother.”
    She whistled. “Bribe money?”
    A light shrug. “If you prefer to call it that.”
    She was stunned. “You don’t like me, do you?”
    Alex’s light eyes settled on hers. “I’m not entitled to an opinion. I barely know you.”
    “Why are you doing this?”
    “Damage control. My brother has an image he has to maintain. It’s already hard as it is, with the media assassinating his character for cheap thrills. We don’t need people like you complicating things.”
    “Hunh.” Cat scratched her chin in an unladylike fashion. She pushed the cheque back towards Alex. “I don’t want your money. Take it back.”
    “You’re declining both offers?”
    “I’m committed to my client.”
    “Is there any way I could convince you?”
    “Nah.”
    “You’re a stubborn woman.”
    “And you’re an annoying man. You think everything can be bought with money.”
    “In this day and age, yes.”
    “Well, not me.”
    Alex took the cheque back and pocketed it. “I’ll be watching you.”
    “I’m trembling with fear.”
    “Thank you for the coffee. I’ll show myself to the door.”
    Cat watched him leave her apartment with a pout. Invitation to dinner. Bribe money. This case couldn’t get any weirder. Jon would have been proud of her for not taking Alex’s cheque. Integrity was the first credo he’d drilled into her skull when she had started working for him. Earn her pay in the traditional, honest way. Deliver the results to the clients.
    Her belly knotted unpleasantly. What if she couldn’t solve this case?
    If Jon was around, he would know what to do.
    Cat bit her lower lip and reminded herself that she couldn’t depend on her brother any more, the way she always had. They had been orphaned when she’d been in middle school, and Jon, who had been a sophomore in high school, had stepped up to the plate as big brother and parent to her. He’d supported them by working various odd jobs. Jon had gone to the police academy when she’d got a scholarship to a local college. They’d remained close even after she’d moved from their house to start a new job. When it hadn’t worked out, Jon had taken her back home and offered her a job as his secretary in the investigation agency he had started. Without him, Cat felt so lost and lonely.
    She shook herself out of the self-pity. She had bigger problems to face and a case to solve. Time to move on with her investigation.
     
    * * * *
     
    Cat stood in the cramped waiting room, shifting from foot to foot while waiting for the receptionist to finish with her rambling on the phone. There was no place for her to sit. All the chairs were occupied by scantily dressed young women waiting for an audition. The women ranged from barely legal to college age. Most of them were blonde, but only a couple looked genuine rather than some product of a beauty salon’s bleaching and colouring. Their faces were slathered in heavy makeup and their skin was Jersey tanned. They were all pretty, sexy, and fake as hell. Cat was the only one who wasn’t dressed like a skank. She was clad in a two-piece beige summer suit and low heels, and her hair was pulled into a tight bun. She was here to interview Oliver Duval, while the girls were auditioning for a hooker character in a low-budget indie movie. Oliver Duval, the fourth person who had been with Cameron Rossi shortly before his demise, was the owner of Hastings—a seedy casting and talent agency that catered to B-movie and indie filmmakers. Duval, who’d entered the country at the same time as Gabriel Larousse and his brothers, had ditched his South African identity and become