Naughty Neighbor - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,10

it. I posted a reward for news of the pig. I made it easy for the informant to remain anonymous.”

She paused and stared at him with her cookie midway to her mouth. “Why on earth would you go to all that trouble?”

“It didn’t add up to me. My curiosity was aroused.” That plus the fact that he was researching Maislin for his new screenplay and had heard some odd rumors about drug use and mob influence.

Louisa surveyed the man sitting across from her. He looked to be in his late thirties. He obviously had a lot of money and a certain amount of fame, but he had few pretentions. He didn’t drop names, didn’t wear flashy clothes, didn’t buy designer cookies. He made the world’s worst coffee, he wondered about pigs in Congress, and he looked great naked. She didn’t have a clue about his honesty, and she suspected his morals were shaky.

“You seem sort of obsessed by this filler.”

“I’ve written screenplays about the black market arms network, about Wall Street scandals, about open-air drug dealers,” Pete said. “I’ve interviewed murderers, madmen, child molesters. I’ve never before run into the kind of intimidation I’m getting on this pig thing. I started receiving threatening phone calls after I posted the first ad. I ran an ad in the paper, and someone tried to wreck my car. I’ve had my apartment broken into, and I’ve been attacked in bed. Now you’ve been fired.”

“Are you telling me I was fired because of a pig?”

“Can you come up with any better reasons?”

It sounded pretty farfetched. She was known for being gullible, but this strained the limits of credulity. And she definitely didn’t trust Pete. He looked like a man who would tell a woman anything. If he’d told her he was a drug runner, a known felon, a serial bank robber, she’d have believed him in an instant. The pig story was harder to swallow.

On the other hand, even a creative person like a writer would have a hard time coming up with something that bizarre on such short notice. And the bottom line was that it didn’t matter if she believed him or not—she didn’t have anything else. She recalled the shoving match between Maislin and Bishop outside the Hart Building and wondered if it was significant.

“Okay, I’ll go with it for a while,” she said. “What have you found out about the pig that I don’t already know?”

“Not much. I need someone on the inside. Someone like you. You want to join forces?”

“I’m not on the inside anymore. Security reclaimed my badge.”

“You still know people.”

It was true. She knew a lot of people, and she’d had something similar in mind when she’d stormed up the stairs. She intended to get to the bottom of this. Being summarily dismissed by Nolan would put a black mark on her résumé that would be hard to erase. She didn’t intend to be gracious about it.

She also didn’t intend to let Pete get the upper hand in their partnership. She’d seen his type before. He was a bulldozer. If she wasn’t careful, he’d be ordering her around, sending her off to chase down pigs. And even worse, if she wasn’t very careful, she’d find herself in his bed and wondering how she got there. She’d play it cool. Not look too anxious.

“I’ll have to think about it.”

“Honey, you’re unemployed. What have you got to lose?”

She chewed on her lower lip.

Pete pushed back from the table. “Don’t look so worried. I happen to know you already lost that.”

So much for cool, she thought. It was hard to be cool with a man who’d spent the last three weeks listening to her telephone conversations. “Okay, I’ll throw in with you. Just don’t get any wrong ideas.”

He was standing behind her, thinking she’d be on her feet and running down the stairs if he told her about some of his ideas.

He bent forward and whispered in her ear. “We are about to embark on an undercover operation—a pig hunt that could have a significant impact on national security and international relations. We have to trust each other, Lou. We have to work as a team. We have to…share.” He kissed her just below her ear and again at the nape of her neck.

She swiveled in her chair, coming nose-to-nose with him. She narrowed her eyes and poked a forefinger at his chest. “Back off.”

“I can’t,” he said, placing both hands on the table, trapping her. “I’ve developed an intense