Alice Close Your Eyes. Averil Dean
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Название: Alice Close Your Eyes

Автор: Averil Dean

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Триллеры

Серия:

isbn: 9781472073952

isbn:

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      With haunting prose and deft psychological insight, Averil Dean spins a chilling story that explores the dark corners of obsession—love, pain and revenge.

      Ten years ago, someone ruined Alice Croft’s life. Now, she has a chance to right that wrong—and she thinks she’s found the perfect man to carry out her plan.

      After watching him for weeks, she breaks into Jack Calabrese’s house to collect the evidence that will confirm her hopes. When Jack comes home unexpectedly, Alice hides in the closet, fearing for her life. But upon finding her, Jack is strangely calm, solicitous…and intrigued.

      That night is the start of a dark and intense attraction, and soon Alice finds herself drawn into a labyrinth of terrifying surrender to a man who is more dangerous than she could have ever imagined. As their relationship spirals toward a breaking point, Alice starts to see just how deep Jack’s secrets run—and how deadly they could be.

      “Crisply written, wickedly suspenseful….[Alice Close Your Eyes] reads like a dark, sensual nightmare, and it is the reader who won’t want to close her eyes until all of the book’s tantalizing secrets are finally revealed. Don’t miss it.”

      —David Bell, author of Never Come Back and Cemetery Girl

      Alice Close

      Your Eyes

      Averil Dean

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      For my mother.

      Every spirit builds itself a house.

      —Ralph Waldo Emerson

      Contents

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Acknowledgments

       Reader’s Guide

       Questions for Discussion

       Q&A with Averil Dean

      CHAPTER ONE

      I am inside Jack’s house.

      Rain trickles down the windowpanes and a spring thunderstorm rumbles almost inaudibly in the distance as I drift through the blue window light, in and out of the shadows, tracing the objects in the living room with my gloved fingertips. A queen conch shell reclines on the sideboard, its frilled pale pink lip deepening to a slick rose interior as the shell curves in on itself. I pick it up, hold it to my ear. A phantom ocean soughs inside the empty calcium walls. I imagine the bowl filling with surf, overflowing, disappearing under the sand.

      The furniture is low and modern, with square brown side chairs and a kidney-shaped coffee table in front of the fireplace. The living room is arranged around a rag-leather area rug, and at one end of the sofa is a floor lamp made from a piece of gnarled, tiger-striped mesquite, stained and rubbed to a satin finish the color of a cinnamon stick. On the wall next to the fireplace hangs a graphic, ceiling-high painting of a raven on its perch.

      I circle the room, opening drawers and doors, careful to leave things as I find them. I search the kitchen cabinets and the top shelf of the coat closet, the blanket chest by the door and the bookshelves against the wall, until I find what I came for: a simple wooden box, the contents of which are of no value to anyone but me and the guy who collected them.

      A brass clock sits in the center of the mantel, clicking like an old lady’s tongue as I tuck the box under my arm.

      Hurry. I hesitate, my eyes on the back door. Hurry.

      I cross the room and start down the hallway. To my right, a door is ajar. I give it a gentle push and step through the doorway. The home owner—Jack, I think, loving this, Jack Calabrese—has turned over the second bedroom to his hobby, ships in bottles. The room is lined with shelves bearing elaborate models in heavy glass bottles of different sizes and shapes, and under the window, a worktable is strewn with tiny pieces of wood and lengths of string. It looks like СКАЧАТЬ