Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination Read Online Free

head, like an animal catching a scent. He turned to Melissa, who was hovering at his elbow and murmured a few words to her, then he continued his dignified progress towards the lobby, the tall, silken-haired Indian model at his side.
    As she sipped her apple martini, Olivia was struggling to think who it was that Ferramo reminded her of: the hooded eyes, the sense of intelligence and power, the languid movements.
    She felt a hand on her arm and jumped.
    “Olivia?” It was the wretched Melissa. “Mr. Ferramo would like you to join him for a small private party he is having in his apartment tomorrow night.”
    p. 17 Olivia could hardly breathe. The small hairs were rising on the back of her neck and her forearms.
    “All right,” she said, brave and resolute, eyes darting this way and that in terror. “I shall be there.”
    Melissa looked at her oddly. “It’s only a party.”
    But Olivia had suddenly realized exactly who Ferramo reminded her of. It was Osama bin Laden.

Chapter 4
     
    p. 18 I f Olivia had not yet brought her overactive imagination to bear, she was at least beginning to recognize the symptoms of a flare-up. As she let herself into her all-white hotel room, she was alive with excitement, mind racing through myriad wild scenarios. She kicked off her sandals, rubbed a blister on her left foot with one hand and reached for the phone to call Barry. Stop, breathe, think, she told herself, replacing the receiver in the nick of time. Don’t be crazy. She sat on her hands and tried to distance herself from her whirling mind.
    But it’s brilliant, the whirling mind continued to tell her. Where better for al-Qaeda to hide than in the center of a hip urban scene? Everyone thought operatives were geeky types: engineers in grungy clothes who lived in grim apartments in Hamburg, or faded thirties terraced houses in faded London suburbs, eating takeaways together, praying in makeshift mosques and faxing their instructions from post offices in Neasden. Al-Qaeda operatives didn’t drink apple martinis in cool hotels wearing Armani. Al-Qaeda operatives didn’t produce movies and have hyperactive PRs to up their profiles. It was the perfect way to forge contacts. It was the perfect cover.
    She jumped up to her laptop and Googled Pierre Ferramo. Hardly anything appeared on the screen. There was an Austrian jeweler in Salzburg who made cheap knockoffs of Fabergé eggs. There was a chain of ladies’ boutiques in the north of England. And Google asked, “Did you mean Ferrari?” But nothing about a film producer p. 19 or a perfumier, or anything that related to the man she’d met. It didn’t add up. Even “Olivia Joules” would throw up a couple of hundred entries. As her hand crept towards the phone again, she told herself to get a grip, thinking back to the conversation with Barry.
    You’re having an overimaginative attack, she told herself. And it’s certifiably non-PC. Just because someone has dark hair, an accent and reminds you of Osama bin Laden, that’s no reason to decide he’s a terrorist.
    She took a hot bath and fell into a fitful sleep, then awoke suddenly half an hour later hearing Ferramo’s voice again in her head, analyzing the accent. It was hopeless trying to sleep with jet lag. She changed position, moved her head this way and that, her thoughts becoming crazier and crazier. Then she sat up, glanced at her watch, picked up the phone and dialed.
    “It’s me,” she whispered urgently into the receiver.
    “Olivia, it’s the middle of the bloody night.” An English girl’s voice—posh, confident.
    “It’s not the middle of the night.”
    “Olivia, eight o’clock on a Saturday morning is, to all intents and purposes, the middle of the night.”
    “Sorry, sorry. But it’s important.”
    “Okay, what? Don’t tell me. You’ve discovered Miami is a giant hologram designed by aliens? You’re getting married to Elton John?”
    “No,” said Olivia, smiling in spite of herself. Kate