Silver Basilisk - Zoe Chant Page 0,17

heels and look as if he’d been tailing her, but he didn’t want to wait so long he might miss her reading. So he rushed the last few numbers, then left his car, his heart pounding.

At last, at last . . . He reminded himself of the disastrous meeting the morning before, and tried to squash down the hope blooming inside him.

Take a breath, he scolded himself as he let himself into the bakery. The front was empty, the display cases bare. Light shone beneath a door at the back. A man’s voice reached him.

“ . . . the girl-assassin cozied her luscious breasts against Stryker’s rock-hard abs. Then she pressed her face into his manly chest hair and moaned, “Oh, Weelhelm, Weelhelm, if you weel give mee just wan naight of pleezhoor, I can face the firing squad smiling for not keeling you . . .”

Rigo backed up a step, looking around the darkened shop in horror. Was he in for a night of that?

But Godiva was in there.

He forced himself to recover that step. To get his chance at last to see her, arrive at some understanding, he would face any torture.

From the sound of it, he was in for the third degree.

“Stryker crushed her mouth with brutal strength, and she moaned in surrender. He would give her the tongue-lashing of her life before unlimbering his fourteen-inch . . .”

This time it was his basilisk that gave a soundless blurp of disgust.

Rigo stiffened his knees, sending a thought at the usually-silent basilisk, My mate is in there. Think of it this way. This is no worse than cleaning up after a sick horse.

He pushed the door open. A circle of faces turned his way, then Joey smiled and gestured toward an empty seat next to him.

The reader, a paunchy man wearing a fedora, sent Rigo a sour look. Rigo crossed the room as quietly as he could, as the man harrumphed loudly and rattled his pages.

Rigo murmured, “Sorry for the interruption,” and took the seat Joey indicated.

The reader harrumphed again, then resumed reading.

Rigo forced his attention on the words, though he could feel Godiva’s presence on the other side of the room. He tried a smile her way, to be met with a nuclear-powered laser glare.

Well, he hadn’t expected this to be easy.

Chapter 5

GODIVA

The unctuous skunk had dared to show up here!

Jen and Nikos, sitting across from Godiva, had to be innocent of any conspiracy. Godiva knew that Nikos had had something or other to do somewhere else until that afternoon, and Jen had gone with him. Godiva sidled scowls at the other two of the Gang of Four, who sat at either side of her, their spouses on their other sides. All four were politely listening to Bill Champlain’s preposterous claptrap.

Which turncoat had blabbed about the writers’ group to The Enemy?

Godiva’s gaze traveled past Doris and stopped at Joey Hu. AHAH! Of course he was the traitor. Kindly, well-meaning Joey, who wanted everybody to get along. Ordinarily Godiva was all for people getting along, but that meant they had to be people first, not slimy, slithering serpents masquerading as men.

Joey sat there looking the very picture of innocence. All right, you, Godiva thought at him. Just you wait. Next book, you’re going to be the villain, and after your nefarious deeds you will croak by an especially spectacular and messy method.

Godiva sighed, mentally running through possible plot twists and motivations for murder most foul, but none of them were truly Joey. No one would buy a murder mystery in which the villain niced the victims to death. Okay, so Joey wouldn’t be a villain, but she would get him somehow, she promised herself.

And at least while thinking about it she’d been successful in missing most of Bill’s story . . . until Bill shattered her ruminations by raising his voice.

“ . . . it’s the POTUS, Wilhelm! He wants to talk to YOU!”

Stryker assessed the deployment of the Secret Service men with a second’s glance. He could probably take out half, more if he didn’t have to dodge bullets from the snipers on the roof.

“Tell him I run alone,” Stryker grated.

On second thought, if he didn’t deal with this international crisis about to turn into all-out war, who would? He was the only one who had tangled with all the major players and survived to tell the tale.

Besides, as a good American, he owed it to his country . . .

Godiva sneaked a peek at Rigo to