Free The Last Kiss Goodbye by Karen Robards Page A

face.
    She would have been able to go up on tiptoe and kiss him.
    For a second there, looking at the hard curve of his mouth, she wanted to so much that it made her dizzy.
    But, she reminded herself savagely , he is not alive. And if he were, he would still be locked up in that sad little six by eight cell in Wallens Ridge .
    And all you’d know about him is what you would know about any other death row prisoner who was your research subject.
    She took a step back from him.
    “Thank you, Charlie, for saving my life.” She mimicked his mocking comment from earlier, then faltered as she remembered that it wasn’t exactly his life that she had saved. “Or whatever.”
    “Thank you. For saving my whatever. Though I have to say, you’re not looking any too happy about having snatched me off of the highway to hell.”
    “The thing is, I keep asking myself how evil you have to be to find yourself on the highway to hell to begin with.”
    The look he gave her was impossible to interpret. “I’ve got a question for you, buttercup: if you really think I’m so evil, then what the hell are you doing with me?”
    His eyes bored into hers: she couldn’t hold his gaze. With a small grimace she turned away from him, spotted the glass over the candle, and, glad for something to do, carefully lifted it off.
    “Let’s get this straight: I am not with you. At least, not on purpose.” She replaced her toothbrush and toothpaste in the glass and carefully sat it back on the ledge above the sink. Then she placed the candle beside it. In case, she told herself, she ever needed to use it again. Although whether such a thing would work twice she had no idea. “Just because you happen to have barged into my life does not mean that I’m with you.”
    “I think it’s the sex that means that.” His voice was dry.
    She threw him a quick, charged look.
    “I—I—” Stuttering like that was idiotic. She was not the kind of woman who, when confronted with an awkward situation, stuttered. Her chin came up, and she turned to face him. “I’m not with you, okay? No way in hell am I with the ghost of a serial killer.”
    “I’ll give you the ghost, but I’m no serial killer. Come on, Charlie, you know I didn’t kill those women.”
    Surprised to find herself suddenly angry, she glared at him. “I do not know that.”
    “Yes, you do, if for no other reason than because I’m standing here telling you so.”
    A momentary lightness which she identified as hope fluttered inside her. “So I’m supposed to believe you in the face of all evidence?” Then she recalled said evidence and felt hope crash and burn. The case against him was overwhelming. Seven beautiful young women, brutally slashed to death. His DNA had been found on every victim and at every crime scene. Eyewitnesses had identified him. Security cameras had recorded him. He had no alibi for any of the crimes. The list went on and on. Even the fact that she was considering the possibility that he might be telling the truth concerned her. The stock in trade of a charismatic psychopath, which had been her diagnosis of him, was the ability to convince everyone around him that he was charming and likable and trustworthy. It was camouflage, similar to a chameleon’s ability to change its coloring to match its surroundings. She knew that . Unless I’m wrong . Unless the cops and the FBI and the judge and the jury and the evidence and the whole damned legal system is wrong. Listening to that tiny voice of dissent inside her head, Charlie gritted her teeth. If her emotions started trumping her intellect, there would be no place left for her that was safe and true. “In your dreams.”
    His eyes hardened as they slid over her face. “You wouldn’t believe me if I swore it on a stack of Bibles, would you? I know you: when it comes to everything except your damned ghosts, you believe in the infallibility of authority, of evidence, of the man. If some damned court says it’s so then