Free Shocking Pink by Erica Spindler Page A

lowered the binoculars. The girls looked at each other. “Two cars?” they said in unison.
    “It’s a woman,” Raven said. “I saw her. She checked her reflection in the lighted visor mirror while she waited for the garage door to open.”
    Andie sat back hard. “Holy shit.”
    “It’s a romance,” Julie whispered. “A love affair.” She sighed. “That’s so cool.”
    Raven frowned at her. “Then why the scarves? Why the music late at night? Why meet in an empty house?”
    The three girls looked at each other. “What now?” Andie asked.
    “We go down there,” Raven answered. “We get some answers.”
    “And just how do you propose we do that?”
    “We peek in the windows.” Raven grinned. “How else?”
    “No way.” Andie looked at Julie who was already shimmying out of the tree. “You guys are crazy. No way am I going down there to peek in those windows.”
    Five minutes later, Andie followed Raven and Julie around the back of the mystery couple’s house. As they approached the first window, they ducked down to avoid being seen. When they reached it, they cautiously eased up to peer over the ledge.
    The room appeared to be empty.
    They crouched down and went to the next window, then the next, each time with the same results. Andie was beginning to believe the whole thing was going to be a bust, when Raven motioned frantically from the window just ahead.
    Andie went, though she couldn’t believe she was doing this. Her heart was pounding so fast and hard she felt faint. She continued anyway.
    She peered over the windowsill. The room was dark save for the glow from a single, flickering candle. It took Andie’s eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness; when they did, she saw the man. He sat in the lone chair in the room, his back to the window.
    It was him, she knew. The man from the other night.
    Then she saw the woman. She stood several feet in front of the man, arms at her side, still as a statue. She wore a conservative suit—knee-length skirt and short jacket. Her white blouse was high-necked and buttoned all the way up. Her shoes were low-heeled, her hair styled in a conservative bob.
    She fit the image of banker or accountant or president of the PTA. Except for one thing.
    She was blindfolded.
    With a black silk scarf.
    One of the ones they had seen the other night, Andie realized, a lump lodging in her throat. Maybe the one she and Raven had touched, the one they had run through their fingers.
    A funny sensation settled in the pit of her gut, queasy and uncertain. She looked at Raven and Julie. They met her eyes. The expression in theirs told her that they’d recognized the scarf, too. That they felt the same about it as she.
    Moments passed. Andie didn’t breathe; the woman didn’t move. Then the music started, the same stuff they had heard twice before. With it, the woman began to sway, as if in time to the music, though her movements seemed halting to Andie. Almost uncertain. Or frightened. She brought her hands to the lapels of her jacket. Slowly, she slipped the garment off her shoulders. It dropped to the floor.
    She tugged her blouse from under the skirt’s waistband, then moved her hands to the collar of her blouse, to the row of tiny buttons that ran from throat to hem. She struggled with them; Andie imagined that her fingers shook. One by one each button slipped through the hole; the delicate fabric parted.
    She was stripping. Being forced to strip.
    With the realization, Andie’s mouth turned to ash, her heart began to thrum. She wanted to jump up and shout—pound on the window to frighten the woman out of the trance she appeared to be in or to frighten away her captor. She told herself to look away or duck down.
    She did none of those. Instead, she continued to stare, paralyzed by shock and disbelief as the woman removed one piece of clothing after another.
    Stripped down to bra, panties and half slip, she stopped. In the feeble, flickering light of the one candle, shadows