On Thin Ice Read Free Page B

and gathered sufficient evidence to prosecute, they tried to arrest all the leaders and key members at one time. One little independent skater wasn’t going to grab their attention, even if her product was killing off junkies faster than you could say habeas corpus. “Shit,” Mick muttered in disgust.
    McMahon was looking down at the picture of Sasha Miller on the desk. “Man, she had me fooled,” he admitted. “Pure as the driven snow, I woulda said.” He frowned and scratched at his scalp. “Well, no, that’s not exactly right. You should see this girl skate, Vinicor. Babe’s so hot I’m surprised the ice don’t melt—hell, I didn’t know they could get away with that kind of sexy stuff in a family ice show.”
    Shaking off the memory, he met his agent’s gaze. “But I tell ya honestly, when it came to the scam I coulda sworn she was bein’ straight about not knowing what her partner was up to. His arrest sure as hell seemed to knock her on her pretty little butt.” He swore softly and shook his head again. “Just goes to show ya, I guess. There’s no fool like an old fool.”
    â€œWell, don’t let it get you down,” Mick advised, for once feeling a trace of empathy for a suit. “We all get conned one time or another and a pretty little honey with big baby blues and a patter that makes her appear vulnerable is a better reason than most of the excuses I’ve heard for an agent being rooked.”
    He rubbed his thumb back and forth over Sasha Miller’s picture in the Variety advertisement on the desk, tracing the pretty curl of her lips with the edge of his nail. Then his eyes snapped up and met his supervisor’s dead-on. “I’ll promise you something, though,” he flatly vowed. “If this is the woman responsible for distributing the tainted scag up and down the West Coast, I’ll personally bring you her head. Hand delivered on a platter.”

T WO
    Sasha opened her eyes to a hotel room that looked just like a hundred others she had awakened to in her lifetime, and for the briefest moment she couldn’t remember what city she was in. Um. Blinking sleepily, she rubbed long, narrow fingers over her mouth, trying to raise a little moisture to alleviate the cottony taste on her tongue. Sacramento, wasn’t it? Yes, sure, of course. Sacramento.
    She rolled out of bed, stretched luxuriously, and ambled on into the bathroom. When she emerged a few minutes later she felt much more alert. Climbing into a pair of tights and a leotard, she donned a threadbare pair of sweats and pulled a thick, hooded sweatshirt over her head. Once she had cautiously picked the snarls out of her thick and curly dark hair, she swept it to the top of her head with one fist and secured the high ponytail with a coated rubberband. Its weight caused it to tilt haphazardly to one side the minute she let go. Not particularly interested in making a fashion statement anyway, she ignored its lopsided disarray. Picking up her purse and skate bag, she let herself out of the hotel room.
    On the taxi ride to the arena, Sasha watched the scenery go by and mulled over the confusion of the past few days. Henry Chambers, their business manager, had abruptly left the Follies. Without any prior notice, which was not at all like him, he had simply departed. Rumor had it there was some family emergency, but his unexpected departure had left a great deal of confusion in its wake. The scramble for rooms yesterday had been a regular free-for-all without Henry there with his ubiquitous clipboard in hand, to direct their arrival at a new hotel in a new city with his customary soft-spoken and calming efficiency.
    Fortunately, the powers that be had already found a replacement; a new guy was due to take Henry’s place later this afternoon. The chances of him being half as nice as Henry, who was sort of unassuming and sweet, were pretty slim,