Out of Mind (coa-2) by Stella Cameron

Author:Stella Cameron [Cameron, Stella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: love_sf
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5164-3
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2010-03-19T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

“What are you doing?” Willow asked, running along the Brandts’ front path toward Ben. “Chloe Brandt is dead in there. Get back in the van. We’re leaving.”

“Dead, how?” Ben looked past her at the house. He should have followed his instincts and “accompanied” her inside, only he expected her to start figuring out if he was around even when she couldn’t see him. That could get ugly.

Willow breathed too hard. She gulped and said, “I think someone killed her. It’s looks like what happened to Billy Baker and Surry Green—no, not exactly like that. But there’s something really weird. I need to get away from here.”

“Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” Ben took her by the elbow and walked her back to the Brandts’ open front door. “Before we got to the end of the block, someone would be telling the police your van was here.”

Willow dug her heels in, and they stood there, staring at each other. “What am I thinking?” she said, blinking rapidly, her green eyes horrified. “This is insane of me. Of course I shouldn’t be leaving, but…”

“But, what?”

“I—They said I had to get out of there. No excuses, though. I shouldn’t have panicked like that.”

Sirens howled, growing closer, and Ben led Willow into the front hall of the house. One of the women he had noticed at the party, underdressed in black now, as she had been in white that night, talked into a phone and tapped the toe of one high-heeled sandal. She looked into Ben’s eyes and kept on looking.

“You called out to me, you know,” he said to Willow under his breath. “Did you know that? That’s good. We’re making progress.”

She slanted him a disbelieving glance. “I just tried to run away from a dead woman who was talking to me ten minutes ago. I’m a heel. You find the strangest times to celebrate little things.”

Ben put an arm around her shoulders, managed not to wince and gave her a solid hug. “You’re the best. You’re also human.” Her hand slipped behind his back, and he knew he would walk on broken glass for more chances to hold her.

“I’m going to get hung up here,” the woman on the phone said. “You don’t need to know why, Carl, and neither do they. Make the calls and tell them we’ll get back as soon as we can.” She closed her phone.

Ben took in the two men present, one with surfer-blond hair and an athletic build, the other elegant, dark and very well dressed, bending over a female corpse wound into a heap of grotesquely twisted limbs. Both men had been at the party he’d crashed to keep tabs on Willow. He went to look down on the woman’s face.

She was a mess, but he was certain he had seen her before. He wasn’t sure where. It could have been at Fortunes. Yes, this woman had known Poppy. They had worked on a charity event together.

“Who are you?” the blond man asked, his voice breaking.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.