Free Stealing Shadows by Kay Hooper Page B

about Becky being followed, she would certainly take notice – and take steps to protect herself – if she suspected the same thing was happening to her.

    So Ben watched her walk away and said nothing.

    Laughing at me. I can hear them. Watching me. Eyes following me. Gotta stop them. Gotta make them pay. My head hurts. I'll show them. My feet hurt. Gotta slow down. Gotta.

    Look at that one. So proud of herself. So sure she's the best. She deserves… she deserves… she deserves… My head hurts so bad. Eyes watching me. I wonder if they know… Blood smells like coins.

     

    FIVE

    FEBRUARY 21, 1999

    When Cassie heard the scream, it was so loud in her head that she dropped the glass she'd been holding and clapped her hands over her ears.

    "No," she whispered helplessly.

    Without her volition her eyes closed, and behind the lids flashed whorls of vivid colors streaked with black. A second scream made her jerk. And hurt her throat.

    "No, please… please don't hurt me…."

    Abruptly Cassie was somewhere else, someone else. She felt the painful constriction of something around her wrists, felt a sharp edge at her back and cold hardness beneath her. She couldn't see, it was all black, but then the bag over her head was jerked off.

    "Please don't hurt me… please, please don't hurt me… please don't– "

    The mask he wore was horrible. The character might have been from some recent slasher movie, the face a human one but terribly distorted, and it made her shock intensify, her terror soar.

    "Please don't hurt me! Oh, God, please don't! I won't tell anyone, I promise! I swear! Just let me go, please!"

    For an eternal instant Cassie was paralyzed, completely trapped in the woman's spiraling emotions. Shock, wild terror, despair, and the cold, cold certainty that she was going to die soon and horribly clawed at her. Through the woman's tear-blurred eyes she saw that eerie mask loom above her, saw the butcher knife in his gloved hand, and her throat hurt with gasping breaths and whimpers and raw screams.

    "You'll never laugh at me again,"he rasped, and his arm lifted, the knife gleaming dully.

    "No! Oh, Jesus – "

    As his arm started downward in a vicious arc, Cassie desperately wrenched herself free of the doomed woman. But she wasn't fast enough to save herself completely. She felt the first hot agony of the knife piercing her breast, and everything went black.

    "Ben."

    "Matt? What is it?"

    "Meet me in town. Ivy Jameson's place."

    Ben switched the phone to his other hand and checked his watch. "Now? It's Sunday afternoon, she'll be – "

    "She's dead, Ben."

    Ben didn't even ask how. Matt's tone told him all he needed to know. "I'm on my way," he said.

    Ten minutes later he parked the Jeep behind Matt's cruiser and one other in the driveway of the Jameson house on Rose Lane just two streets behind Main Street. It was usually a quiet neighborhood, the big old houses sitting peacefully on manicured lawns, the older residents happy to be no more than a short, pleasant afternoon walk from downtown.

    Ben noticed that several of those older residents were on their front porches, staring at him as he got out of his Jeep. Although they were too polite or too frightened to venture closer to Ivy's house, it was obvious that their interest was intense.

    One of Matt's deputies was standing by the front door and opened it for Ben as he came up on the porch. "Judge. Sheriff's inside." He looked a bit green around the gills.

    Ben went into the house. He was familiar with it, as he was most of the homes of the more politically active citizens of Ryan's Bluff; Ivy Jameson's vote had been one of the hardest to get.

    From the spacious entrance hall the staircase rose to the second floor, the formal dining room opened to the right, an equally formal living room to the left, and straight ahead lay the rear of the house and the kitchen. The hardwood floor gleamed, fresh flowers in a lovely crystal vase decorated the