The Rich and the Dead Read Online Free

later, Lila Day was in the backseat of the midnight-blue Bentley as it sped down the cramped and disintegrating streets of Little Havana. She blinked when opaque black scrims lowered over all the windows. She couldn’t see anything.
    â€œConrad? What’s going on?”
    â€œMr. Hawkins has requested that the location of his residence remain concealed.”
    Of course he had, Lila thought, rolling her eyes. As someone who’d had her fair share of real-life crime, she found it exasperating when people went looking for intrigue.
    â€œI can still see out the front window,” Lila pointed out to the back of the chauffeur’s head.
    â€œTrue, miss,” Conrad said. Then he raised the solid divider between them.
    With the privacy partition all the way up, Lila felt like she was riding in a black box. She didn’t even know what direction they were going. She reached in her pocket for her cell phone, pulling up its GPS tracking to see the Maps app, but she couldn’t get even a faint signal.
    â€œDamn it,” she said, throwing the phone down on the seat. Teddy must have installed a cell phone jammer in his car.
    She leaned back on the dark leather seat and closed her eyes, preparing herself for the worst.

CHAPTER 4
    B Y THE TIME Lila felt the car come to a definitive stop, she’d had at least an hour to work up a cold, almost breathless fury.
    Conrad opened her door from the outside, and Lila stepped out to find herself in a vast and echoing garage that housed at least a dozen high-end cars. She couldn’t help gasping; she’d always had a weakness for luxury cars.
    â€œLila,” Teddy said as he walked across the room to greet her. His voice was low, and Lila found it infuriatingly calm. “Thank you for indulging my desire to meet face-to-face.”
    â€œYou didn’t give me much of a choice,” Lila said sharply, all her anger returning to the surface.
    While Teddy had once been known for his boyish handsomeness, his face was now a collection of furrows and dark shadows. He was still a good-looking man, that was undeniable—his features were as strong as Lila remembered—but there was a strained look about them now, a tightness to his square jaw and full lips that Lila hadn’t seen before. He was pale, and his light brown hair had grown into an unkempt shag that was graying slightly around the temples. His round, heavily lashed brown eyes, once bright and playful, locked carefully on her.
    For a moment, they regarded each other in an uncomfortable silence. “Why don’t we go inside?” Teddy finally asked, walking across the enormous garage toward a large wooden door. Lila followed him, with Conrad trailing behind her. The weight of the gun strapped to her ankle was solid, reassuring.
    â€œQuite a nice collection of cars you have here,” Lila said as they passed a 1961 Ferrari GT and then a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Stirling Moss. She ran her finger along it as she walked by.
    â€œOh, yes. Strange, I hardly drive any of them anymore,” Teddy said distractedly as he climbed the stairs to the main house.
    Money is always wasted on the rich, Lila thought.
    The instant Teddy pushed the door open, Lila had to close her eyes against the blast of sunlight. She followed him into an enormous living room with a twenty-foot ceiling, wooden beams, and an entire glass wall overlooking a breathtaking view of the ocean.
    â€œPlease, sit with me,” Teddy said, gesturing to two chairs covered in a supple leather the color of fresh cream.
    Lila perched cautiously on a chair and looked outside. A perfectly green lawn was sliced in half by an infinity pool that stretched out toward the turquoise ocean.
    â€œI was sad to hear that you lost your job,” Teddy said.
    Lila shrugged. “Well, that makes one of us. I wasn’t too upset about it. Working hotel security isn’t my calling, I guess.”
    â€œNo, not that job. I mean, I