Absolute Fear. Lisa Jackson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ low-riding sports car, hip-hop music blaring, jetted by, just inches from her front bumper. The three teenaged boys inside yelled obscenities and flipped her off.

      She sucked in a breath, her heart knocking wildly. She’d been so caught up in her own personal paranoia, she’d neither seen the car approaching nor heard it roaring down the road. Had there been an accident, it probably would have been her fault regardless of the other vehicle’s speed.

      “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

      Glancing backward, she saw no one. The man in the doorway had moved. Probably to get into a car and go about his business. It had nothing to do with her. “Get a grip,” she growled to herself as she eased onto the narrow road and squinted against the lowering sun. At a red light near the ramp leading to the freeway, she leaned over the passenger seat and opened the glove box, where she’d stashed her dark glasses.

      A manila envelope that had been crammed into the small compartment fell to the floor. Dozens of scraps of paper, that looked like jaggedly cut clippings and articles, spewed onto the floor mats and between the seats.

      “What the devil?” she whispered as the light turned green.

      The driver of the SUV behind her laid on the horn, and Eve stepped on it, somehow accelerating onto the entrance ramp and merging with southbound traffic.

      But her heart was thudding, her eyes darting from the road ahead to the scattered pieces of paper. She grabbed one off the passenger seat. It had sharp, jagged edges, and Eve realized the article had been clipped with pinking shears. Her heart was thudding as she held the piece of paper against the steering wheel and scanned the headline:

      TWENTY-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY SOLVED.

      WOMAN’S DEATH RULED A HOMICIDE.

      “What?” Driving nearly sixty miles an hour, she didn’t dare read the article as she drove, but several phrases leapt out at her.

      Faith Chastain, murder victim.

      Our Lady of Virtues Mental Hospital.

      Detective Reuben Montoya of the New Orleans Police Department.

      Eve’s confusion and anxiety increased. “My God,” she whispered, dropping the clipping. Montoya was one of the cops who had been integral in Cole’s arrest, and the mental hospital was a place Eve knew all too well. Her father had worked there, been the chief psychiatrist, and she had played on the grounds as a child. Faith Chastain. Why did that poor woman’s name ring a distant bell in her head?

      Her throat turned to sand. She glanced at another article. It, like the first, had been cut with pinking shears.

      SUSPECT IN TWENTY-YEAR-OLD KILLING ACCUSED OF RECENT MURDERS

      “Dear Lord, what…?” Eve eased off the gas as she skimmed the article about a recent serial killer in New Orleans, a sick man who had killed at least half a dozen people.

      She didn’t bother reaching for another. She got the idea. Biting her lower lip, she tried to concentrate on the road stretching out before her.

      Who had left the packet in her car?

      Who would know that she’d grown up at the old mental hospital?

      Why all the interest in Faith Chastain, a woman long dead?

      Her heart was hammering, her lungs tight. If she let herself, she could easily slip into a full-blown anxiety attack. “Hang in there,” she told herself and began counting silently in her head once again. One…Two…Three…

      Whoever had put these articles in her car had done it deliberately…to make a point.

      Why? When?

      WHO?

      All the clippings were about the mystery shrouding Faith Chastain’s death, and they hadn’t been torn or cut carelessly. Whoever had taken the time to cut out the articles had indeed done so with pinking shears. It was as if each of the little printed stories was surrounded by razor-sharp, even teeth.

      Eve’s skin crawled.

      She’d heard about the scandal surrounding the old, abandoned hospital and the more recent murders. The story had been all over the news a few months earlier.

      Before Roy’s death.

      Before a bullet had grazed her skull.

      Who had left the envelope in her locked car? She checked her mirrors, saw no dark, ominous truck trailing after her. How had someone put the envelope in the glove box? She always locked her car….

      Except at the gas station.

      You thought you would just run in for a second.

      You were distracted by the cat. By your headache. By the fact that you needed to pee.

      Even so, she usually hit the remote lock on her key chain. It was automatic, part of her routine, and on this trip security was even more important. She was driving with most of her belongings in her Toyota. Would she have been so careless as to leave the doors unlocked?

      She thought hard. She remembered locking the doors at the restaurant, but…maybe not at the gas station? A chill whispered through her as she remembered the phone call and the raspy voice:

      He’s free.

      What the hell was that all about?

      And the truck she’d thought had been following her, was that somehow also connected…to the old asylum?

      Don’t jump to conclusions.

      “I’m not!” she said aloud, and from the backseat Samson growled.

      Cold sweat broke out on her skin as she glanced in her mirrors again then floored it. She needed to get to New Orleans as fast as humanly possible. Once she was home, inside the house, with the doors locked, the dead bolts thrown, and the chains secured, she would read all of the articles that had been left for her and try to figure out what it all meant.

      She knew this for certain: someone had followed her. The thick envelope hadn’t been in the car this morning when she’d shoved her sunglasses in the compartment that held her registration and maps.

      Panic pulled at the edges of her mind. What else could the guy have left? A homing device? A bomb? A tiny camera?

      Stop it. You’ve seen too many stupid murder movies lately.

      But her breathing was erratic, her pulse jumping.

      He’s free. The message from the anonymous caller was somehow connected to Cole Dennis’s release from prison. Was it also connected to Our Lady of Virtues Hospital? Had her mysterious caller left her the clippings? Was there some message she was meant to understand?

      Or was she making up a plot when there was none? Searching for answers that simply did not exist?

      Reaction sent a shiver through her, and Eve pressed her foot to the accelerator.

      She found the envelope!

      He СКАЧАТЬ