Sex, Lies, and Online Dating Read Online Free

she was picking me apart, looking for flaws.”
    “Maybe she was picking you for her next victim,” Anita suggested.
    He’d thought of that too. “Yeah, maybe.” As hardluvnman, he’d been on seven online, five chat room, and three personal ad dates in the past two weeks. Kurt, aka hounddog, had been on about the same number while Quinn had sat in the Econoline, listening to every word. The two detectives’ active caseloads had been shifted around so they could devote most of their time to this case.
    Lucy had been Quinn’s second coffee date that evening, and he was exhausted from trying to remember which lines to feed which woman. “I’ll see you two tomorrow,” he said as he zipped up his jacket. By morning, the Lucy Rothschild tape would be analyzed just like all the others. There was no point in standing around, freezing his ass off and talking it to death.
    He moved to the silver Jeep parked a few slots from the van and opened the door.
    “Hey, McIntyre,” Kurt called out to him as he fired up the Econoline.
    Quinn looked over the roof of the Jeep. “Yeah?”
    “Is that Lucy woman as hot in person as she is in her photos?”
    “She’s better looking in person.” Which didn’t eliminate the possibility that she could be a killer, but it did bring up some interesting questions. Like why would a woman who looked like Lucy and made the kind of money she did seek men online?
    “That ought to make your job easier.”
    Getting distracted by a pair of blue eyes and soft red lips did not make his job easier. No, it would be easier if Breathless turned out to be his first date of the night, Maureen. But even as he thought it, he recoiled. “See ya in the morning,” Quinn said as he got in the Jeep and shut the door.
    Maureen Dempsey, aka bignsassy, was one of the stupidest females he’d ever met. She’d rattled on about her scrapbooks and doll collection as if he’d truly given a shit. She’d kept calling him “Quint” and had topped it off by telling him that she’d read “somewhere” that aliens had landed in the Sawtooth Wilderness Area just outside of Sun Valley and were impersonating humans. Thinking she’d surely been joking, he’d made a joke and managed a laugh. She’d been serious, and he’d felt his IQ drop ten points just sitting across from her. But the truly funny thing was, Maureen worked for the state at the Idaho Industrial Commission.
    He fired up the Jeep and headed out of the parking lot. A cold blast of air hit his chest from the vents. The heat hadn’t kicked on yet, so he turned off the vents. His fingers fiddled with the radio, then he turned it off, too. Within two minutes of meeting Maureen, Quinn had pretty much mentally crossed her off the suspect list. It didn’t matter to him that she held a regular job. Plenty of stupid people worked for the government, but a woman who was capable of killing three men without leaving a trace of herself behind wouldn’t honestly believe space aliens were living in northern Idaho. Quinn tended to agree with the FBI profiler’s report that Breathless was highly organized and had above average intelligence. Quinn just didn’t believe Maureen’s stupidity was an act. No one was that good an actress.
    According to the criminal profile, Breathless was between the ages of thirty-two and forty-eight. Because of the lack of physical evidence, the profiler believed she had knowledge of forensics and police procedure. She had an interest in criminal investigations and believed she was smarter than the police. She wouldn’t be caught by conventional methods and could probably pass a polygraph and withstand an interrogation without breaking down.
    After reading the report, everyone in the department agreed that the best way to catch a predator like Breathless was with bait. Man bait. While Quinn could see the wisdom of the plan, he didn’t like it. He had a bad feeling he was going to have to take things really far before they had enough