Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 138981 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138981 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
She’s still dead, but I can feel her glaring at me like it’s my fault.
Like I’m the one who killed her.
Knowing it’s a dream doesn’t ease my sick fright as I stumble back.
As she twitches.
As that nightmare dress flares around her like a blood-drenched rose.
With an unholy scream, she throws herself at me, her dead fingers reaching for my throat.
I snap awake just as those cold, clammy hands find my neck.
When I open my eyes, I realize the hand around my neck is my own.
God.
I’m panting myself hoarse. My heart feels like a panicked hummingbird, and I’m staring at the ceiling of the suite while my hand grips my throat like I can force my racing pulse back down.
Oh, crap.
Closing my eyes, I slump back into the sweat-soaked sheets, moving my hand down over my chest, trying to get a grip on reality again.
Nightmares shouldn’t surprise me after what happened yesterday afternoon.
The house.
The body.
That girl.
I just didn’t want to show the cops how much the whole thing shook me.
Especially when the older one—the police chief—barely seemed to care, smiling that dopey grin of his like I just called him to deal with kids playing a prank.
Then there’s the other guy.
Lieutenant Joker Limpdick.
I hate smarmy assholes like him.
Too big for his own good.
Too aware how handsome he is with his cocky, one-sided smile broadcasting his ego to everybody else.
His face cut perfectly, all chiseled masculine planes.
His green eyes look like spring, starkness against a suntanned brow and a sweep of night-black hair.
He has this slow, calm way of speaking that’s not quite a Southern drawl. More like he’s taking his sweet time tasting every word in a deep, gravel-tumbling voice.
A voice that keeps calling me Miss New York.
Holy hell.
He’s lucky all I did was flip him off.
You can’t ever show weakness in front of a man like him.
Right now, though, I’m anything but strong.
I’m alone.
I hug my knees to my chest, pressing my palm against my mouth and stifling a whimper.
That poor, poor girl.
Who is she?
Did someone slaughter her, and then leave her there for me to find the moment I rolled into town?
Jesus.
Why?
Common sense says not to stick around and find out.
Usually when you find a dead body, you should get the hell out of Dodge before you wind up being the next victim or The Last Girl in a horror movie—if you’re lucky.
But where would I even go?
Back to the career black hole of New York?
Crawling home in failure with nothing to show for it?
No job, no prospects, and there’s no way in hell any school would hire someone like me without the right connections. Especially not for this kind of pay and the lower cost of living.
Oh, plus there’s Roger.
Before I closed out my lease and turned in my keys, he hadn’t done anything the police considered serious enough to bring him in.
Parking his car at the end of my street, watching me come and go.
Always 'coincidentally' being in the same shops I was at the same time.
Slipping up and liking a few of my Facebook posts when he was supposed to be blocked, and the idiot didn’t have enough sense to give his burner account a name I wouldn’t recognize.
Nothing criminal.
There’s no law against being on public streets or pinging your ex on social media under creepy anonymous accounts. Nothing the police could bust him on.
All too typical.
A tale as old as time.
They can never act until it’s too late and the worst has already happened.
But would Roger escalate? Would he even dream of going this far?
To the point of killing some random girl just to scare me back home?
I shake my head so violently my hair whips my shoulders.
No way.
I don’t want to believe it.
Roger was always more passive-aggressive, the boyish dependent type.
That’s partly what ended us.
He wanted to be codependent, cutting out our other friendships until we only had each other, always in contact. It got to the point where I couldn’t even study because if we weren’t together, he just had to be on the phone with me.
He always swore we could sit there in silence, only to erupt at his dumb games on the TV when I was trying to concentrate.
Sleeping on the phone on the nights he didn’t stay over, too. When I started having neck pain from the headset, he just told me to get a better pillow.
At first it was weird, but flattering.
That little thrill of being the sole focus of someone’s crazy obsession.
Of course, it got really old, really fast.
Then it got controlling.
After that, a little stalking would be right in character.
But murder?
That’s hard to buy, even for a man who angrily rejected therapy and desperately needs it.
Which means I’m walking into someone else’s problems and possibly making them mine.
Or maybe Officer Horsedick was right.
Maybe the girl truly died of natural causes.