Undercover in High Heels Read Online Free Page A

that we could have used to get these guys off the streets for good.”
    I felt myself growing smaller and smaller the more he talked. “Oops.”
    “Oops?” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Oops! Seven people injured, thousand of dollars in property damage, one stolen vehicle, and three weeks’ worth of investigative work down the toilet and all you can say is ‘oops’?”
    If I grew any smaller I’d be looking up at the bottom of my broken heel. “Oops, sorry?”
    He narrowed his eyes and made a growling sound deep in his throat.
    Suddenly I kind of wished Isabel had taken me with her.
    “It would be one thing, ” he said through clenched teeth, “if this were an isolated incident. But this isn’t the first time you’ve butted into a police investigation. What, exactly, do you suggest I tell my superiors?”
    I bit my lip again, eating off any remnants of lip gloss. He was right. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time I’d stuck my nose into his police business. That was actually the way we’d met. He’d been investigating my last boyfriend, a prominent L.A. attorney, forfraud and, subsequently, murder. I’d sort of inadvertently gotten in the middle of that investigation when I’d popped the real murderer’s breast implant and stabbed her in the jugular with a stiletto heel. After that there’d been the incident last fall involving my father, a bunch of drag queens, and the mob, which had ended with me getting kidnapped and Dana blowing a hole through some guy’s chest. So, I could see why this was something of a sore spot with him. Not to mention his superiors.
    “Look, Jack, I’m really, really sorry.”
    He took a deep breath and did some more head shaking. He opened his mouth to say more, but was cut off by the uniformed officer with the cute butt.
    “Hey, Ramirez?”
    “What?” Ramirez called over his shoulder.
    “It’s the captain.” Buns of Steel held up a cell phone. “He wants to speak to you.”
    Ramirez shut his eyes in a two-second meditation. “Shit.” He turned and grabbed the cell phone, then paused, jabbing a finger my way. “You—go home. We’ll talk later.”
    I nodded meekly. Later was good. Later was after he’d had time to calm down and hopefully gotten that whole bulging-vein thing under control.
    After Buns of Steel took my statement (where I relayed the events of the evening as best I could without making it sound like his coworker was dating a loony) and the paramedics checked me out (scrapes and unattractive bruises, but not much more), Dana bundled me into her Saturn and drove me home. She offered to stay the night with me, but from the way she was frothing at the mouth over every guy we passed (including the greasy-haired attendant at the Chevronstation), I figured she needed an SA meeting more than I needed a sleepover.
    Instead, I climbed the steps to my cozy second-story studio alone. Cozy , of course, being real estate slang for dinky . My foldout futon, a drawing table, and three dozen pairs of shoes had the place fuller than Paris Hilton’s BlackBerry. Still, it was near the ocean, relatively quiet, and most important, fell within my cozy budget.
    As a young girl I had dreamed of being a runway model in Paris. But since, as I may have mentioned, I top out at just below Tom Cruise height, genetics worked against that career plan. Instead, I went to the Academy of Art College and got a degree in fashion design—namely, designing shoes. Unfortunately, the job sounds way more glamorous than its paycheck. As an unknown designer, I’d been able to get steady work so far only at Tot Trots children’s shoe designs. And, thanks to my recent brushes with the law, even those jobs were becoming fewer and farther between. Sure, I was still working on the Pretty Pretty Princess patent leathers for Easter, but they’d given both the Superman flip-flops and the summer line of Disney water shoes to someone else. In hopes of someday moving beyond SpongeBob slippers,