Unwanted Company - Barbara Seranella Read Online Free Page A

how he was. And yet the sound of her
voice never failed to raise an expectant thrill in his stomach—a
feeling he used to identify as love. Now he wasn't sure what to call
it.
    By the time he'd hung up the phone, he was five
hundred dollars poorer: She wouldn't be calling if she didn't have
to,  she said. The kid needed orthodontia. What choice did he
have? Be a prick or a sap? He pulled a tin of Altoids from his
pockets and slipped one of the powerful peppermints under his tongue.
    It wasn't that money itself was so important to him,
but there was a limit. Would there ever be an end to the demands? Or
would it be up to him to draw the line?
    The source of his well-documented, perpetual state of
economic crisis could be summed up in three words: Community Fucking
Property.
    Even his own dear mother had asked him if he had to
marry both of them
    What could he say? The stupid truth was that with
each marriage he'd had the expectation that she would be the one. And
wasn't it amazing that he could maintain that level of optimism
despite all? Surely that spoke to something in his character. His
unions always ended the same way. just when his hopes were raised
that he was finally getting a handle on things, becoming the winner
he always believed he could be, the level of effort required to hold
a marriage together would prove too much. He blamed these failures on
the calls that always seemed to come in the middle of the night and
the absences he was forbidden to explain. Such was the price he paid
to serve his country and the agency that employed him. He still loved
his exes, each in her own way, carrying the image of each woman
inside him—wraithlike. Lately, though, the burden of their
disapproving, disappointed, and disenfranchised talking heads was
weighing heavy on him. There was that.
    And then there was the mailing of the two separate
alimony checks that reduced his salary each month to a joke. It
tended to make a guy bitter, living hand to fucking mouth, while all
the sleazy fucks like Victor Draicu, the Romanian diplomatic time
bomb he was baby-sitting for the evening, grew fat. Especially with
everything else he had to cope with—like keeping the world safe
from despots. Years of covert operations in Iron Curtain countries
had given him glimpses of the world few others in America were privy
to. He'd seen firsthand the "threat from the East."
    He snorted derisively. Not that Romania was such a
threat. One forty-watt bulb per room, fuel rationing, power outages,
Securitate agents at every turn. Still, the prevailing wisdom was
that it never hurt to develop sources in the enemy's camp. Turning
Victor Draicu would be child's play, especially with the man's taste
for Western entertainment.
    He'd reached the bottom of the stairs and began
patting his pockets. The feeling that he'd forgotten something nagged
at him.
    " Shit," he said
out loud, remembering that he hadn't left the window open for
Cassandra. He checked his watch, then ran back upstairs to give the
little fleabag easy access to his life.
    * * *

    At exactly five minutes to six, Munch pulled in front
of the apartment building in Culver City that Raleigh Ward had given
as the pickup address. He was already on the sidewalk. She would have
rather seen him emerge from one of the apartments. Just in case. She
took some comfort in the memory that she had reached him by phone
when they had repaired his car, so he couldn't be that much of a
flake. If only she could figure out a diplomatic way to collect all
the money up front instead of having to wait until she was already
out the time and the service.
    He didn't wait for her to get out and open the door
for him, but waved his hand as if to guy, "Don't bother and
climbed into the back with surprising fluidity for his bulk.
    " Where to?" she asked.
    " The Beverly Wilshire. You got a phone in this
thing?"
    " It's a dollar a minute," she told him.
    "Yeah, fine."
    " It's in a compartment in the center armrest,"
she said, "If