Swept Away Read Online Free Page A

money and jewelry, and Ms. Chaise is believed to be either a witness to a robbery, a victim, or a suspect, and police would like to interview her.”
    She dropped the paper into her lap in shock. Oh, my God, she thought. And then with a wry smile her thought was, nicely done, Nick. Accuse me of a crime and, when the police find me for you, drop the whole thing. But you’ll have me.
    There was one more sentence. “A generous reward has been offered for information leading to the whereabouts of Ms. Chaise. If you have information, please call...”
    She fell back on the bed and thought, Just when I thought I had everything all figured out. Just when I thought I knew what I was doing, knew what I wanted, knew what it would take to get it. Just when I was thinking about my early retirement.
    She rolled over on her stomach. Boy, talk about miscalculations.

two
    The effect of seeing her picture in the paper caused Jennifer to decide she’d better go a little farther afield than a Las Vegas suburb, so she got on a bus. She wasn’t sure where it was bound, so she just rode for a half hour through a stretch of desert and got off in the first little town she came to. She walked for about twenty minutes and, after passing several decent places, found a motel that had clearly seen better days. It was a seedy-looking place between a junkyard and a railroad track; there were only twelve rooms. Nick Noble would never find it. And if he did find it, he would never expect Jennifer to be there.
    She looked at the phone book in room number eight and saw that she was in Boulder City. Good enough, she thought. She’d never even heard of the place. Surely she wouldn’t draw much attention here. She could have stayed at one of the casinos off the Strip; the bus had passed several of them, but they were large and their parking lots crowded. Too many people around, increasing the odds of being recognized as the missing girl in the newspaper.
    She looked at the map the phone book provided. Boulder City, a small town a mere twenty-five miles from Las Vegas, on the edge of Lake Mead on the way to Hoover Dam. This was the last place Nick would expect to find the classy, bejeweled Jennifer Chaise.
    * * *
    She stood in front of the mirror for a while, not recognizing the woman who stared back at her. Wardrobe by army surplus—very unlike the wardrobe she had left behind. Her face, washed clean of makeup, left her looking very plain and pale. Her expensive artificial tan was fast disappearing. The shock of finding herself on the run likely contributed to her wan look. She flushed the colored contact lenses down the toilet and her eyes went from that sexy lavender to an ordinary brown. Her vision, fortunately, was perfect. She clipped her long acrylic nails and felt briefly crippled.
    She had attempted to dye her waist-length golden hair to brown, but had ended up with a rather sickly gray—absolute proof that she’d tried to color it with drugstore supplies. Scissors in hand, she meant to rectify the situation, but a tear gathered in her eye. She’d pampered that sexy mane for how many years? Nick adored her hair; he loved to crunch it up in his fists and bury his face in it. Well, that would never happen again. “And if it does happen,” she said aloud, “it would probably be just one last crunch before he crushes my skull.” But the hand with the scissors trembled. “Oh, suck it up,” she told the reflection. “We’ll save a fortune. And it’s only temporary—until we figure out what to do and where to go.” She stared into her own eyes and, realizing she was talking to a mirror image, said, “Oh, my God, it’s hereditary. We have our mother’s wackiness.”
    And then she lopped it off, close to the scalp. She continued this drastic amputation, tears running down her cheeks, until all she was left with was a short, spiky cap of really strange-colored