The Killing Edge Read Online Free Page A

do you know about Rene Gonzalez?”
    “I’ve heard that she’s very exotic looking, perfect for what I want for my catalogue,” he said.
    “She is lovely,” Chloe said, and offered nothing more.
    At the far end of the pool, they found Victoria standing with two men, both of them late twenties or early thirties, dressed in the appropriate Miami-chic attire, handsome jacket, open-neck shirt, no tie, creased slacks, everything with a designer label. One was a sandy-haired man with a short, spiked-and-gelled cut, and the other was darker, his hair a thick fall that slashed across his forehead. They might have been a pair of rockers on their way up.
    “Mr. Smith, you’ve met Victoria, and I’d like you to meet Jared Walker and Brad Angsley. Brad is Victoria’s cousin,” she added, nodding toward the dark-haired man.
    “Nice to meet you,” Luke said. “Call me Jack, please,” he added.
    “Jack’s one of the up-and-coming designers here tonight,” Chloe explained. “He wants to do a catalogue shoot for hisnew line while we’re shooting the swimsuit calendar down in the Keys. And I’ve told him that it’s simply no fun being out on an island if you don’t have a boat. A nice little cabin cruiser. And who but you to hook him up?” she asked Brad.
    “It’s what I do,” Brad told him, smiling with boyish charm.
    Luke was startled when Victoria shivered. “That island—we shouldn’t be going back out to that island.”
    Jared slipped an arm around her shoulders. There was sincere affection in both his eyes and his tone as he said, “Victoria, there’s nothing evil about the island.”
    “It’s where Colleen disappeared,” Chloe said flatly. She was addressing Jared, but she nodded toward Luke. “Mr. Smith—Jack—is a new client for the agency. We should be hyping the shoot, not scaring him off.”
    Brad smiled at Luke. “She’s right. And you’ll love the place. It’s the agency’s own little piece of pristine heaven. Not to mention that it’s three miles from Islamorada, which you must have heard of. It’s the sportfishing capital of the Keys, for sure, maybe the world.”
    “Still, it’s true. It is where Colleen suddenly went missing,” Chloe said. Push-pull. She had said they shouldn’t frighten him, yet here she was focusing on the other woman’s disappearance. Clearly she didn’t want to let the conversation drop, and she kept glancing at him, which definitely struck him as strange.
    “I did hear about that,” Luke said. “Are they sure nothing happened to her? I mean, why would she just disappear?”
    Jared shook his head. “Who knows? Models tend to be emotional and just plain crazy.”
    “Hey!” Victoria elbowed him.
    “Most models. Some models,” Jared said. “Not you, Vickie. You’re totally sane.”
    “But, honestly,” Brad said, lowering his voice, though with the conversations going on around them and the pulsing music playing in the background, it was unlikely anyone could hear them. “Tell me that Jeanne LaRue isn’t a bit on the wacko side.”
    “She’s…blunt, that’s all,” Victoria said.
    Jared snorted. “She’d walk over her own mother in spike heels if it would get her where she wants to go.”
    “But she’s honest about it,” Chloe said. “I like that. What’s that saying? Something about the enemy I can see being less dangerous than the friend I trust?”
    “Yeah, something like that,” Brad agreed. He slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and produced a card for Luke. “While I’m thinking about it. We’ll get you set up for the shoot. Lots of people fly in, but you’re not even talking fifty miles, and a boat gives you a lot more control over your schedule. You know anything about boats?”
    “Actually, I do,” Luke assured him.
    Brad nodded. “Then it will be up to you whether you want a captain to come along or not. Depends what you’ll find more relaxing.”
    “Are you associated with the agency?” Luke asked him.
    Brad