Midnight Vengeance Read Online Free

important to Suzanne’s career.
    The drawings, pastels, gouaches and watercolors up on the walls were Lauren’s. She’d illustrated Suzanne’s brilliant interior designs, that was all. Lauren didn’t want—couldn’t have—her name on the program in any way and had made that abundantly clear, without explaining why. Suzanne had reluctantly accepted. But Suzanne had been adamant—if Lauren’s name couldn’t be on the program at least she’d attend the opening.
    Suzanne was across the room, signaling her to come over, but Lauren didn’t dare. Suzanne had a gleam in her eye and there was no guarantee she wouldn’t let slip who had actually made the illustrations to someone she thought might be important to Lauren’s career. Suzanne was almost visibly vibrating with the need to praise Lauren in public.
    She didn’t understand that Lauren didn’t have a career.
Couldn’t
have a career.
    Bless her. Suzanne meant well but it could cost Lauren her life.
    She shouldn’t be here at all. Being here was insane, a gesture crazy beyond belief. She was still alive at twenty-eight against all the odds because she didn’t
do
things like this. Hadn’t put herself in the public eye in any way in two long, dangerous years. She’d stayed alive for the past two years by being invisible. And her Portland life for the past year was supposed to be all about keeping her head down.
    So
why
was she here?
    Affection, that was why. Her downfall. She had simply been embraced by Suzanne...
    Glorious harp music began playing, notes beamed straight down from heaven.
    ...and Allegra. Both charming, lovely, talented women who hadn’t taken no for an answer when it came to becoming her friends. A stone heart would have crumbled and Lauren’s heart wasn’t made of stone. Oh no.
    Her life would have been immensely easier if it were.
    And it wasn’t just Suzanne and Allegra who had bound her in silken ropes of affection. No, there was also Claire Morrison, their friend and the wife of a homicide cop. She’d horned in too. Friendly and smart like the others, warmhearted and funny. Simply irresistible.
    And Lauren hadn’t resisted much, had she?
    It was unforgiveable. Lauren was alive because she kept her head low; she didn’t make friends; she wasn’t noticed in any way.
    So she shouldn’t be here, at a big social and media event. It was insane, and dangerous.
    A trick to not making an impact, to not being noticed, was to keep moving. She’d arrived deliberately late by taxi, rebuffing offers of all three women to pick her up, and slipped in unnoticed, dressed in a dark, simple gown she could move easily in and ballerina slippers, no heels.
    Because you never knew when you might have to run.
    And that’s when she met his eyes and broke out in a smile because she simply couldn’t help it. Another reason she’d stayed on in Portland way over her new life’s sell-by date.
    Morton Jackman. Jacko.
    He was her star pupil in her weekly drawing classes, though there was little she could teach him beyond the basics. He was a natural. Somehow he was always around, giving a hand in closing up at the community center, offering to drive her to the supermarket when her car broke down, fixing her leaky faucets and cleaning out the grout. Putting in fancy new locks in her doors.
    She had no idea why he stuck around her so much when she clearly made him uneasy. Spooked him, even.
    Though she should be the one spooked. And she had been, the first time they’d met. Suzanne had sent Jacko to pick her up for their first business meeting. He worked for Suzanne’s husband, who ran some kind of fancy security company, though Jacko looked precisely like the kind of guy a security company was designed to protect against.
    He was pierced, tattooed, his head was shaved and his muscles had muscles. He looked like trouble. Your worst nightmare, come to life. And yet...
    Morton “Jacko” Jackman had the soul of a poet, though he’d probably punch in the face