Kiss of Death Read Free Page A

counter. “How about some brisket tacos?”
    “That is so wrong, you know. Brisket does not go in tacos.”
    “Twisted, yet delicious. I say yes.”
    Claire sighed and dumped the chopped onions into a bowl. “Hand me the brisket.” Secretly, she liked brisket tacos; she just liked giving him a hard time more.
    “You know,” Claire said as she got the barbecue out of the bag, “you really ought to talk to Michael.”
    “About what?”
    “What do you think? About what’s going on with him and Eve!”
    “Oh hell no. Guys don’t talk about that crap.”
    “You’re serious.”
    “Really.”
    “What do you talk about?”
    Shane looked at her as if she were insane. “You know. Stuff. We’re not girls. We don’t talk about our feelings. I mean, not to other guys.”
    Claire rolled her eyes and said, “Fine, be emotionally stunted losers; I don’t care.”
    “Good. Thanks. I’ll do that.” The door opened, and Michael shuffled in, rocking the worst bed head Claire had ever seen him with. “Whoa. Dude, you look like crap. You getting enough iron in your diet?”
    “Screw you, and thanks. I just woke up. What’s your excuse?”
    “I work for a living, man. Unlike the nightwalking dead.”
    Michael went straight past them and from the refrigerator took a sports bottle, which he stuck in the microwave for fifteen seconds. Claire was grateful the smell of the onions, brisket, and taco meat covered the smell of what was in the bottle. Well, they all knew what it was, but if she pretended really hard , it didn’t have to be quite as obvious.
    Michael drank from his sports bottle, then wandered over to look at what they were doing. “Cool, tacos. How long?”
    “Depends on whether or not she lets me do the chopping,” Shane said. “Five minutes, maybe?”
    The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it!” Eve yelled, and there was something in her voice that really didn’t sound quite right. More ... desperate than eager, as if she wanted to stop them from getting to it first. Claire glanced over at Shane, and he raised his eyebrows.
    “Uh-oh,” he said. “Either she’s finally dumping you, Mikey, and her new boy’s coming for dinner, or—”
    It was the or , of course. After a short delay, Eve opened the swinging door just wide enough to stick her face inside. She tried for a smile. It almost worked. “Uh—so I invited someone to dinner,”
    “Nice time to tell us,” Shane said.
    “Shut up. You’ve got enough food for the Fifth Armored Division and all of us. We can fill one more plate.” But she was having trouble keeping eye contact, and as Claire watched, Eve bit her lip and looked away completely.
    “Crap,” Michael said. “I’m not going to like this, am I? Who is it?”
    Eve silently opened the door the rest of the way. Behind her, standing with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans jacket, head down, was her brother, Jason Rosser.
    Jason looked—different, Claire thought. For one thing, he usually looked strung out and dirty and violent, and now he looked almost sober, and he was definitely on speaking terms with showers. Still skinny, and she couldn’t say much for the baggy clothes he was wearing, but he looked ... better than she’d ever seen him.
    And even so, something inside her flinched, hard, at the sight of him. Jason was associated with several of her worst, scariest memories, and even if he hadn’t actually hurt her, he hadn’t helped her, either—or any of the girls who’d been hurt, or killed. Jason was a bad, bad kid. He’d been an accomplice to at least three murders and to an attack on Claire.
    And neither Shane nor Michael had forgotten any of that.
    “Get him out of here,” Shane said in a low, dangerous-sounding tone. “Now.”
    “It’s Michael’s house,” Eve said, without looking at any of them directly. “Michael?”
    “Wait a second—it’s our house! I live here, too!” Shane shot back. “You don’t get to drag his low-life ass in here and