The End of Never Read Free Page A

dangling limply from her trembling hand, which was wrapped around her friend’s neck. “It’s your fault we’re here.”
    Maxine ripped the blonde girl’s arm from around her neck and planted her hands on her hips. “I’m not the one who fell off the bar, Tonya.”
    â€œYou dared me,” Tonya shouted back.
    Tonya threw the first punch, as the auburn-haired woman in the pantsuit sidestepped the fight sequence.
    â€œWait!” she shouted at the taxi driver. “I need a ride.” Her bangs were curling in tiny, damp ringlets across her forehead.
    The Russian driver studied her lithe figure and nodded his head in approval as the woman slid through the open passenger door and into the back seat.
    â€œVare to, Madame?” he asked, meeting her tired eyes in the rearview mirror.
    â€œCoffee,” she sighed and removed her suit jacket.
    â€œYah,” he said, nodding. He floored the accelerator. A breeze sailed through his open window, causing his toupee to flap like a bird’s nest over his glistening scalp. “You are a doctor?” the driver inquired, his black eyes scrutinizing her pale arms, short chestnut hair, and long neck through the rearview mirror.
    â€œNo,” she explained. “I’m a scientist.”
    â€œAh,” he said, nodding his head as he glimpsed her blouse over his shoulder.
    â€œAny coffee shop will do,” the woman told him. She nuzzled her jacket against her chest. “Is that one just up there?” she asked, pointing past his nose to a café on the corner ahead of them.
    â€œYah,” the driver agreed and eased to the curb. She rummaged through her purse for a ten-dollar bill. “Keep the change,” she said as she slipped the man the bill, her body cringing as his palm lingered atop her manicured fingers.
    She felt his eyes search her as she escaped from the stifling cab to the sidewalk in front of a tattoo parlor. Across the street, the frothy whitecaps of low, lazy waves grazed the surface of the Atlantic Ocean before they broke on the sandy shoreline. Angela Peyton closed her eyes and greedily sucked in the briny ocean air.
    At the curb, a loud honk echoed from the cab, the driver waiting impatiently for his break in traffic. “Sucka,” the Russian shouted as he cut in front of a black Porsche, his voice as harsh as his pale, pockmarked skin.
    Angela relaxed her tense shoulders as the cab’s taillights disappeared in the morning traffic. Coffee , she thought to herself as the scent of the bold, brewing lifesaver wafted toward her nose from the café entrance. The aroma lifted her to her tiptoes and pulled her past the imposing poster of a flying dragon behind the glass of the tattoo parlor’s front window.
    Inside the café, a towering cup of their thickest dark roast wobbled in her hands as she plucked the morning edition of the Miami Herald from a stack on the floor by the cash register. Students posing in flip-flops and sunglasses crowded the cramped tables with shiny laptops, the click of their fingers over the keyboards rattling her ears. Heading outside, she plopped into a metal bistro chair and swallowed her liquid breakfast as sleek convertibles that would cost her at least a year’s salary raced past the sidewalk.
    The morning sun soaked her pale skin. How did I end up here? she wondered, basking in the tropical rays, knowing that a long day stuck in the quarantine ward awaited her after breakfast. As an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she felt the many years she had spent in the bowels of laboratories were now mounting on her tired shoulders. The CDC had never before placed her in charge of an investigation. She had only tagged along as an assistant before this case. As she started to panic over the responsibility, a single face washed over her thoughts: her seventeen-year-old daughter, Alexandra.
    Her Blackberry smart phone buzzed