Bed of Bones (A Sloane Monroe Novel, Book Five) Read Online Free

asking about Giovanni? Does he think Giovanni can help in some way? Even if we haven’t spoken much lately, I can still give him a call.”
    “I don’t know how else to say this so I’m just going to say it,” she said. “He was in the theater when the explosion happened.”
    “Who was?”
    “Giovanni.”
    I shook my head. “Impossible. Giovanni’s in New York. He doesn’t come back until—”
    She rested a hand on my shoulder. “No, Sloane. He’s not.”
    “I don’t believe it. He would have called me when he got back into town. We were supposed to talk.”
    “It’s him. Wade verified he was at the theater.”
    “With who?”
    She frowned, then shrugged.
    I attempted to lift my suitcase off the ground and rest it on the edge of the bed. It was empty, but felt like it had been weighted down with a ton of bricks.
    “Here, let me help you,” Maddie said.
    “How bad was the explosion? Any fatalities?”
    “Two so far.”
    I sat back down, my head swirling in sync with the ceiling fan above me. “Is he…umm…I mean…did the chief say whether Giovanni is…umm…”
    Maddie sat next to me, slinging an arm around my neck. “I don’t know, sweetie. Let’s hope not.”

CHAPTER 3
    My mind was wandering again. With Maddie behind the wheel, it wasn’t hard to drift off. She’d said little since we’d left Las Vegas, and usually I couldn’t get her to stop talking. The last time I’d seen Giovanni, we argued, something I regretted now. The two of us had been out to dinner together, and I had prodded him, in a gentle way, for information about his sister. He’d remained tight-lipped, and did what he always did when I said something he didn’t like—he changed the subject. I’d let it slide in the past, but not this time.
    Giovanni’s sister, Daniela, had been kidnapped a few months earlier, and yet somehow, he’d managed to find, rescue, and return her home within a week— without involving the police. As a private investigator, I knew damn well the average person never had much success finding a missing person on his own—that’s why they came to me, or the police, or in some cases, both. But Giovanni wasn’t anything like the average person.
    At the time of Daniela’s kidnapping, a handful of Giovanni’s men went on the rescue mission, but not all of them came back. Yet another topic he wouldn’t discuss. And I’d grown tired of all the secrecy.
    I’d gotten up and tossed my napkin on the table, attempting to storm out in true diva fashion. I thought I would make it to the door unscathed, my point proven, but it was always moments like this when I made the stupidest mistake of all. As I sauntered away from him, nose held high, the heel of my strappy, black shoe caught in between two tiles on the floor where the grout had chipped away, and my heel broke off in the crack. This only furthered my embarrassment. Not only was he looking at me, everyone else was too. One less-than-gracious woman even giggled behind a napkin she’d masked in front of the lower half of her face. I ditched the heel and did exactly what my anxiety suggested: I kicked the other heel off my foot, grabbed the remaining three quarters of my other shoe, and ran, leaving the heel behind. I wasn’t proud of myself for putting on such a ridiculous charade, but I couldn’t keep giving up so much of myself and getting so little in return, no matter how wonderful he treated me.
    For us to work, I needed him to let me in, and even if by some miracle he did, could I really look the other way while he lived a shady lifestyle just because he was good to me? I’d looked the other way when I suspected him of murdering his sister’s former lover. I’d looked the other way when he shot two bullets into Sam Reids’ skull while I was in the next room. In both cases, I allowed myself to believe the deaths were justified. Daniela’s lover had beaten her on more than one occasion and threatened her life. Serial killer Sam Reids