Free Reilly 13 - Dreams of the Dead by Perri O'Shaughnessy

but you.”
    Ronnie kissed her for a long time, but to her surprise and disappointment pulled away before the part where she went nuts, moaned, and forgot about everything except for where he was touching her, and how awesome it felt.
    “Really, now. What did Rossmoor say?”
    “He said for me to take my time.”
    “Easy for him.”
    “He told me he would pay me lost wages.”
    “Dude! Now’s the time for that vacation in Rio, expenses paid, courtesy of a freak who killed his girlfriend.”
    “As if we’d take advantage of him like that.”
    “You think he cares about you?”
    “I do. He cares about his employees.”
    “I’m the one that cares about you.” In a swift change of mood, now that he’d cooled her down, he got hotter. “Put your hand on me, babe. Come on.”
    “We’re talking!”
    “That’s why I said use your hand. Do you think it’s a sex crime? Any signs of—violation?”
    “No!”
    “No?” His fingers, usually so welcome, suddenly felt like bugs crawling along her thigh.
    She batted him away. “Shut up, pervert.”
    “Tell me what you saw one more time.” When she said nothing, he said, “Brenny, I want to understand.”
    “Fair enough.” She sighed. “I was cleaning per usual, but this one room, well, I got a bad feeling.”
    “I don’t get the whole psychic thing. So many shows about it now. Never met one I could trust.”
    She nodded and shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t explain it. I just felt nervous. The door was open a little—but I couldn’t go inside. So I went around the corner of the walkway—you remember how the walkway’s kind of L-shaped?”
    He nodded. “And then?”
    “And then—I hid under the stairs.”
    “What?”
    “That’s right. Ducked away like a kid scared of a bad dad.”
    “Jesus, Brenda. Sometimes I don’t get you. Your father was the nicest guy—”
    “I’d say maybe five minutes passed. Then—a man came out.”
    “What man? Someone you know? What did he look like?”
    “I was hiding, not looking. But I did not, repeat
not
, know this guy. What I saw was standard Tahoe, a man in a parka, jeans, and a baseball cap like every other guy up here. He seemed tall. Athletic.”
    “He could have come after you.” Ronnie looked distressed, and Brenda loved that. She let herself melt a little more into his body.
    “I was really scared he’d spot me, but I think he didn’t because he moved at a regular pace, never paused. But for sure he didn’t want nobody to see him, okay?”
    “Okay.”
    “So I wait until I’m sure he’s gone. And then, I go inside the room. I mean, it’s my job. I can’t exactly say, ‘I did floors one, two, and three, except for Room 102,’ can I?”
    “Someone else would show up in the morning and make you look bad.”
    “Right,” Brenda said. “So I went inside. One side of the bed had been turned down. On the other side was this woman. There was no blood, but she was dead. I realized right away it was Cyndi Backus. Our chief receptionist. She looked awful.”
    “Wow. Was she nude?”
    “There you go again! I don’t want to think about it! No, she was not nude! She was wearing her underwear.”
    Ronnie nibbled her neck. “You’re disgusting,” she said, but not so he’d really think she meant it.
    God, men, smells, sex, incorrigibility. She sat up so that he had to stop what he was doing and she could think. “Honey, the body lay there like someone paid attention to how it looked. I think he must have been sorry for what he did. He had folded her hands and made her look peaceful.”
    Turning the edge of his hand absentmindedly along the curves of her body, Ronnie said nothing.
    “Here’s a weird thought. What if he had got rid of it and I hadn’t known and I went in to change the sheets and just thought they were extra dirty or something—where Cyndi was killed?” Brenda thought back over all the iffy towels on the floors of all the bathrooms, wishing she had worn gloves the whole time.