To Die For Read Online Free

if you aren’t snapping their heads off (go figure), and I make it a point to be as nice to people as I can—my ex-husband excluded—but all bets are off when I fear for my life.
    Not that I was hysterical or anything. I didn’t charge out the front door and throw myself into the arms of the boys in blue—I wanted to, but they emerged from their patrol car with their hands on their pistol butts, and I suspected they’d shoot at me, too, if I ran at them. I’d had enough of that for one night, so though I turned on the lights and unlocked the front door, I stayed just inside the door, where they could see me but I was protected from any lurking psycho-bitch. Also, the drizzle had turned into rain and I didn’t want to get wet.
    I was calm. I wasn’t jumping up and down and shrieking. Granted, the adrenaline and stress had caught up with me and I was shaking from head to toe, and I really wanted to call Mom, but I toughed it out and didn’t even cry.
    “We have a report of shots being fired at this location, ma’am,” one of the cops said as I stepped back and let them enter. His alert gaze was studying every detail of the empty reception area, probably searching for people with weapons. He looked to be in his late twenties, with a buzz cut and a thick neck that told me he worked out. He wasn’t one of my clients, though, because I knew them all. Maybe I could show him around the facilities while he was here, after they had arrested Nicole’s ass and hauled her off to the psych ward. Hey, never miss an opportunity to expand your client base, right?
    “Just one shot,” I said. I held out my hand. “I’m Blair Mallory, and I own Great Bods.”
    I don’t think many people properly introduce themselves to cops, because both of them looked taken aback. The other cop looked even younger, a baby cop, but he recovered first and actually shook my hand. “Ma’am,” he said politely, then took a little notebook out of his pocket and wrote down my name. “I’m Officer Barstow, and this is Officer Spangler.”
    “Thank you for coming,” I said, giving them my best smile. Yes, I was still shaking, but good manners are good manners.
    They were subtly less wary, since I was obviously not armed. I was wearing a midriff-baring pink halter-top and black yoga pants, so I didn’t even have any pockets where I might hide anything. Office Spangler removed his hand from his pistol. “What’s going on?” he asked.
    “This afternoon I had some trouble with a client, Nicole Goodwin”—her name was dutifully noted in Officer Barstow’s little notebook—“when I refused to renew her membership based on numerous complaints filed by other members. She became violent, knocked things off the desk, called me names, things like that—”
    “Did she strike you?” Spangler asked.
    “No, but she was waiting for me tonight when I locked up. Her car was in the parking lot in back, where the employees park. It was still there when I called nine-one-one, though she’s probably gone by now. I could see her and someone else, I think a man, by her car. I heard a shot and dropped to the ground behind my car, then someone—I think the man—drove off, but Nicole stayed, or at least her car did. I stayed low, got back inside the building, and called nine-one-one.”
    “Are you sure it was a gunshot you heard?”
    “Yes, of course.” Please. This was the south, North Carolina, specifically. Of course I knew how gunshots sounded. I had even shot a .22 rifle myself. Grampie—my grandfather on my mother’s side—used to take me with him squirrel hunting when we visited them in the country. He died from a heart attack when I was ten, and no one ever took me squirrel hunting again. Still, that isn’t a sound you forget, even if a television program weren’t reminding you every few seconds.
    Now, cops don’t go blithely walking up to a car where supposedly an armed psycho-bitch is sitting. After ascertaining that the white Mustang