Murder Miscalculated Read Online Free

Gym.”
    I knew that gym. It was down by what remained of the city’s docks. I wondered what kind of undercover identity the normally button-down Cochran had assumed.
    Talbot continued, “Cochran has established a routine of going there every morning for a couple of hours. We can arrange for a private room where you can work with him without anyone knowing what’s going on.”
    “Why is Cochran working for you?” I asked. “Where’s Agent Riley?” Riley was head of the team of agents I’d first tangled with, and then eventually worked with, in my previous occupation. Riley was also the one who had made it possible for me to start with a clean slate.
    “Special Agent Riley is teaching a course back in Quantico, Virginia, for a few months. I’ve been assigned to lead his team in the meantime.”
    No one spoke. I studied Lynn’s face, knowing how much she hated the idea of my getting mixed up in something like this. We had spent the past year working hard to build our new life. While neither of us wanted to see that work endangered, I couldn’t help but feel that I should help Cochran if I could.
    “It would be fun to see Cochran again,” I offered.
    Lynn ignored my comment and got up from the table, an angry look on her face. She shook her head. “If you want to do it, go ahead, just as long as you don’t get involved in anything dangerous. The money’s not worth it.” She leaned over the table and tapped a long finger in front of our visitor.
    “Agent Talbot.”
    “Yes, Ms. Vargas?”
    “I want a letter on Bureau letterhead, signed by you, stating that the work for which you are hiring Greg is legal. No letter, no deal.”
    “You’ll have it.”
    Lynn nodded and went up the stairs to her studio without saying another word. Part of me wanted to go after her and tell her the deal was off, but instead I listened to her footsteps on the stairs and the door slamming as she went into her dance studio.
    It took only a few minutes for Talbot and me to work out the details. I’d meet Cochran at nine in the morning each weekday for the next month and spend an hour working with him. Talbot would arrange for a gym membership in my name. At my insistence he agreed to make it good for a full year and include a separate membership for Lynn. She and I had been talking about joining a gym anyway, and Wycowski’s was a good one, if a bit far from The Book Nook.
    Our business concluded, I walked with Talbot to the front door.
    “Trust me, Mr. Smith,” he said as he left. “You’re making the right decision.”
    I thought about his words as the jingle from the bell above the door faded away and the store became quiet again.
    Junior came back out from behind the counter, and I picked him up and held him in my arms. The late, great Fast Eddie Dupre once told me, “Kid, if someone tells you to trust them more than once in the same conversation, that’s when you shouldn’t.”
    “Did you hear him, Junior?” I asked the cat as I rubbed him between his ears. “He said we should trust him. I think I should trust him about as much as a mouse should trust you.”
    Junior didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

 
     
     
Chapter Four
     
     
    Later that day I headed up the stairs to the second floor. When I arrived on the landing I could hear Lynn in her dance studio one flight above me, giving commands to her early afternoon class of exercising women. “Now rotate, one, two, three.”
    I reached out as I walked down the narrow hallway and let my fingers run along the old wallpaper, feeling the texture and the places where it was peeling. A lingering trace of oily smoke reminded me, as it always does, that Lynn and I still have much work to do repairing and restoring the old building.
    I was looking for a room that would suit my purpose. The second floor was a small warren of rooms, some reachable via the hallway, some found only by wandering through interconnecting doors. Most of the rooms on the second floor saw little