Solid as Steele. Rebecca York

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СКАЧАТЬ curled through her body.

      His hands stroked up and down her ribs, gliding upward to find the sides of her breasts, making her nipples tighten. She wanted to beg for more. She’d forgotten where they were. Forgotten why she shouldn’t allow this man such liberties.

      She tangled her hands in his thick, dark hair, loving the slightly rough texture. For months she’d wanted to touch him there, and now she had the freedom to do it. Sensations she hadn’t experienced for too long bombarded her body and overwhelmed her mind.

      Wanting more of him, she eased back a little so that she could pull open the front of his leather jacket and press her hands against his broad chest.

      “Yes,” he murmured, his mouth still on hers.

      She rubbed her hands against him, feeling hair crinkle through his shirt. It would be dark and thick and textured like the hair on his head.

      Through the fabric, she found a flat nipple, feeling it stiffen at her touch. Her other hand found the placket of his shirt. When she slipped two fingers inside, he dragged in a sharp breath.

      Her own nipples had tightened painfully, and she pictured herself dragging his hand to her breasts. Before she could do it, the sound of a car horn intruded into the fog of her brain.

      Jerking away from Mack, she looked wildly around and saw a pickup truck pulling into the driveway just ahead of them. An old guy behind the wheel was glaring at them like they’d been filming a porn movie in the street.

      Mack cursed under his breath and started the engine. The car bucked as he pulled away from the curb.

      Jamie flopped back into her seat, fumbling with the seat belt, her face hot.

      “Sorry,” he muttered as he put distance between themselves and the homeowner.

      She made some kind of sound that could have been agreement or condemnation. It would be easy to accuse him of taking advantage of her, but she knew that it wasn’t true. She’d been a willing participant in what they’d been doing, and she wasn’t even sure how far they would have gone if they hadn’t been interrupted.

      She might have admitted as much, but his next words sent her mind spinning off in an entirely different direction.

      “There are some things you didn’t tell me about Lynn Vaughn’s murder,” he said as he put distance between themselves and the guy who’d so rudely knocked them out of whatever fantasy they’d been sharing.

      “Oh great. You can’t deal with kissing me, so you’re switching back to Lynn Vaughn?” she said, hearing the grating sound of her own voice.

      “Can you?” he asked.

      He had a point. She’d ended up in his arms with very little provocation, and she’d started touching him in ways that were totally inappropriate. She had no excuse for that, other than her own emotional instability.

      She sighed. “Okay, we can get back to business. What do you want to know?”

      “You told me that you’d have dreams about bad things happening to people you knew, and they’d turn out to be true.”

      “Yes.”

      “Are you saying that you knew Lynn Vaughn?”

      The question had edged into territory she didn’t want to explore with him. “Why do we have to keep talking about this?”

      “Because I’m going to have to call the police if we don’t.”

      Chapter Four

      The threat had the effect Mack must have been striving for. “I didn’t say it, but I did know her. She and I went to high school together.”

      “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

      “It wasn’t relevant.”

      He looked at her, then turned back to the road. “It could be. Any detail could be.”

      When she said nothing, he asked, “Were you close?”

      She sighed. “We weren’t best buddies, but we knew each other. I know that when she graduated, she went to the University of Maryland in Baltimore. She became an emergency room nurse.”

      “Did you keep in touch with her?”

      “No. I kind of avoided Gaptown. I think you can figure out why.”

      “Yeah. But why do you think Lynn reached out to you? Did she know about your dreams?”

      “I didn’t advertise it. Nobody knew. Except Mom.”

      “Would she tell anyone?”

      “She kept it between us, because she didn’t want people to know there was something weird about her daughter.”

      A FEW MILES AWAY, Fred Hyde was touring the funhouse making sure everything was ready for the evening’s entertainment. He’d had a very satisfying time selecting the exhibits. He’d used some of the same ones as for his last guest. Others were new, and he’d taken down the funhouse mirrors. Those were too much of a cliché. Now he was trying to decide if he was going to use a witch’s face or a demon for the pop-up display on the first floor.

      The witch had worked very well. But it might be amusing to give the green-and-purple-faced demon a try.

      Still pondering the choice, he went back through his music selections, most of which he’d pulled from the soundtracks of slasher movies, although he also liked that spooky “Night on Bald Mountain.” He’d mixed and matched the tracks, and he hummed along as he listened to some of the cuts, then decided on the disc that started with the Night of the Living Dead and continued on to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

      After he’d satisfied himself with the preparations, he went downstairs to look at the woman who was sleeping in the cell he’d constructed in the basement. He’d built the walls of cinder block, and the door was reinforced, so there was no chance of escape.

      The woman on the narrow bunk inside was lying on her back, her blond hair fallen across her cheek. As he stood over her, he suppressed the urge to brush it back.

      Better not touch her until he was wearing his gloves and his Locard suit. Well, it wasn’t anything official. That’s what he called it. Locard was the French forensic scientist who’d first pointed out that when two objects touched, each would leave traces of themselves on the other. But that wasn’t going to happen with his suit made out of neoprene.

      He took a step back, still staring at the sleeping woman. He’d drugged her, and she wasn’t going to wake up for several hours. Plenty of time for him to go out to dinner, then put on his outfit. He’d be wearing it when he let her out of the cell, and then the games would begin. Of course, there might be fibers from the cape. But that didn’t matter. He’d bought it at a vintage clothing store in Boston, so nobody was going to connect it with murders in western Maryland.

      After making sure the door to the cell and also all the doors to the house were locked, he climbed into his SUV and drove to an area down by the Potomac River where there were some shops, artists’ studios СКАЧАТЬ