Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
“Yes. They probably moved in the same wealthy upper echelons. But they weren’t friends.”
“Ya think?” Burgess mocks me again, but Cuccinelli is now listening to me with Bonds.
“The UNSUB did something to the vic to knock him out or disorient him long enough to get tied up,” I say.
“Like what?” Cuccinelli’s tone is less abrasive now that I’ve got him thinking.
I shrug. “Could be a drug we don’t know about in the whiskey. Or. . . some sort of gas? There was a chemical smell at the scene. I thought it was cleaning products.”
Bonds faces Cuccinelli. “Let’s see if we can get the air tested. Chief is fast-tracking every request for this case. It’s worth a shot.”
Cuccinelli mumbles something but stomps out to do Bonds’ bidding.
Burgess points to the shadowy blur on the screen. “If that’s a person, he’s a big guy.”
“Big and fit,” Bonds says. “And looks like he’s wearing something over his head. Like a helmet or something.”
“Yeah. And he’s wearing body armor,” Burgess says. “Something that adds bulk.”
The brainstorming behind me fades to murmurs as I imagine the crime scene. The dead body is waxy, like a mannequin staged at a desk, and the blood looks black.
When the vision takes me, everything around me falls away.
I’m back in a world with no light and a huge and hovering presence behind me. A dark shape made of shadow takes the form of a man. The UNSUB? I smell whiskey, then that chemical scent that might be traces of knockout gas, and then nothing but a rich, subtle cologne.
I should feel triumphant. I got the first big break on the case. But the moment I set foot in my townhouse, loneliness sets in.
What does it matter that I’m using my abilities to solve the murder of a rich man? There will only be another murder to solve tomorrow and another after that. And my time is running out. I’ve had visions of my death, and since moving to New Rome, I have the sense it’ll be soon.
I thought I’d resigned myself to it, but right now, the bleakness of my life rises up and threatens to rip me in half.
My place still smells like Italian food. The scent mocks me with memories of dinners around the family table.
I haven’t eaten anything since lunch, which consisted of a limp chicken sandwich I scarfed while reviewing every second of the security tapes, but I’m not hungry.
I’m not tired, either. I’m in the zone I enter when hunting a murderer. Wired, alert.
I pace the rooms. I’ll never be able to sleep like this.
There’s a sound, and I freeze. It’s muffled but close. Has my neighbor returned? I put my ear to the wall, and when that gives me nothing, I head outside to scope out their door. The same pieces of junk mail are still sticking out of the mailbox. My senses tell me no one is home.
I’m about to go back into my side of the duplex when an explosion of fluttering sounds has me stick my head around the corner. Someone’s installed a bird feeder outside my kitchen window. Or maybe it’s been there all along, and I’ve never noticed it. It’s topped up with bird seed, and a pair of chickadees are gorging themselves, taking turns with a few drab little sparrows. In the tree beyond, I see a flash of red—a cardinal.
It’s so charming. I sit for a bit and sketch them. The pages fill with birds in flight, birds on a telephone wire, and finally, a tiny bird nestled in the powerful hand of a faceless man.
I force myself to put the book away. All I want to draw is him. More than that, I want to lose myself in a dom who will tie me up and put all my racing thoughts to rest.
But I have to forget him. My scene with him was a one-off. It’s over and done.
Right?
The temperature has dropped, so I change into flannel pajamas, the kind you need to survive a brutal Midwest winter night.
I do my nightly routine and make sure my gun is on my bedside table. I crawl into bed and try to get comfortable, but my pillows are too flat, my sheets too scratchy.
But the real problem is my overactive brain.
Images roll through my head—the murder scene, the scene at the club, the clip of the UNSUB jumping onto the fire escape—until they’re all jumbled, and I fall into the space between sleep and wakefulness.
In a half-dream, I’m the victim tied to the chair, inhaling the killer’s cologne as the bitter traces of the gas fade away. He’s cloaked in darkness, towering over me with a knife in his hand. Instead of slitting my throat, he uses the weapon to slit open my shirt. No touch? he asks, and his voice is dark and lovely. He uses a crop to prod my bra-covered breasts. A pity.