The Red Diary Read Online Free Page A

Monroe. Little tits, but a nice body and-"
    "Get to the point."
    Lucky's eyes widened. "The girl is wild, man. I myself," he went on, sounding arrogant, "have been in her pants on more than one occasion, and so have a Lotta guys I know. She'll do pretty much anybody, and ... wherever Carolyn goes, Lauren seems to follow." Lucky winked yet again. "You do the math."
    As Nick tossed his satchel in the passenger seat of his Jeep, then headed toward Elaine's a few miles farther inland, he pondered what Lucky had said about Lauren Ash. He reached down to push the CD PLAY button and ACDC's "Girls Got Rhythm" exploded through the speakers, seeming all too apropos.
    Odd, though-girls like that were usually ... friendlier.
    But he had come knocking on her door when she was probably asleep, and as he'd told Lucky, they hadn't exactly gotten off on the right foot. Hell, he probably hadn't wanted to get off on the right foot. So maybe he just hadn't encountered that side of her. Yet.
    Lucky had gone on to tell him he'd seen Lauren Ash at more than one wild party, usually drinking, and always flirting with the nearest available guy. According to Lucky, she wore skimpy, sexy clothes designed to attract male attention. And now that he thought about it, she hadn't had any qualms about answering the door in something slinky, had she? So maybe Lucky was on the mark,
    A few minutes later, he drove through his old neighborhood, rows of small, identical ranch houses that had seen better days. He pulled the red Wrangler into Elaine's short, narrow driveway, stopping only an inch or two from the bumper of her old Chevy Cavalier in order to get the Jeep far enough off the street. Getting out, he noticed a gutter falling down and realized the paint on the garage door was starting to peel. Damn, he'd have to put them on his list of things to do. Davy's bicycle lay in the overgrown grass near the cracked sidewalk.
    He opened the door of the house where he'd grown up without knocking. "Davy," he said loudly, stepping inside, "you gotta learn to put your bike away, or it'll get rained on and rusty."
    "Hmm-what?" His father flinched in sleep on
    Elaine's sagging couch-Nick might not have noticed him otherwise. Over the years', something inside him had learned not to see his father when he passed out after dinner.
    "Keep sleepin', old man," he muttered below his breath as Davy came rushing into the room, a Tampa Bay Devil Rays cap tilted sideways on his head.
    "Nick!" Davy said, then looked back over his shoulder toward the kitchen. "Hey, Elaine, Nick's here!" At twenty-nine, he stood a couple of inches shorter than
    Nick. wasn't as muscular, and Elaine kept his hair cut nearly as short as Lucky McClaine's, but other than those things, it was almost like looking in a mirror. Well, and Davy was usually smiling, too. Nick didn't smile nearly as much, except maybe when he was around Davy,
    The light in his brother's eyes shone a little warmth
    into his heart when he least expected it. But he should've expected it-that's how it always was when he hadn't seen Davy for a more than a few days. He crushed back ',. the emotion as he reached up to straighten Davy's cap. "Where'd you get this?" "Elaine got it for me last weekend. From a garage sale." He smiled as proudly as if it had come from Saks Fifth Avenue. "Now, Davy," Nick said, flashing a teasing grin, "I taught you better than that. The Devil Rays suck. Where's the Cincinnati Reds hat I got you last Christmas?" Back when the Reds had trained in Plant City, he'd taken Davy over to watch for a day or two each spring.
    ''Tell him your new hat matches your shirt." Elaine said, wiping her hands on a dish towel as she entered the room. Her jeans were worn, her dark, shoulder-length hair dirty-she looked older than her thirty-three years.
    In response, Davy held out the bottom corners of his pullover, striped in horizontal streaks of green and black. "It's new, too," "Garage sale?" Nick asked. He didn't mean anything