Free Careful What You Kiss For by Jane Lynne Daniels Page B

part of her wardrobe was remarkably similar to the clothes she owned in her old life, minus the business suits. A size smaller, but in the same jewel tones she loved. She even favored the same designers, though in this life she’d substituted knockoffs for the real thing. Pretty decent knockoffs, at that.
    She’d also found a few familiar things in a box tucked in the back of the closet, which had caused her heart to speed up with simultaneous relief and foreboding. An old picture of her and Max. Ripped in half and taped back together, more than once. Just as it always had been. A photo album from her childhood. The teddy bear she’d slept with every night until her first day of junior high, despite her mother’s disapproval.
    And on the dresser, she’d found her iPod, loaded with all the songs she loved, from country to hip-hop. She’d leaned against the wall and hugged all four treasured items to her chest until she felt brave enough to begin searching again.
    In the nightstand, she’d found several novels, including one she’d been reading in her old life. A chill had run through her when she’d found a bookmark tucked into the same page of the same book she’d left off reading a few nights ago, before the visit to Madame Claire.
    In a dresser drawer, there were several crumpled to-do lists, in various stages of completion, but the notes were so cryptic, they didn’t give her much insight into the tasks. Carefully, she’d smoothed the papers and stacked them in a pile.
    Another drawer had yielded a more disturbing discovery — a small gun, with her initials engraved on the side. She’d stared at it for several minutes, relieved that this had been the one drawer she hadn’t dumped upside down before going through the contents. She didn’t know how to use a gun and wouldn’t have been able to tell if it was loaded. She’d never had to know before.
    Worst of all, beneath several pairs of jeans, she’d found an envelope in her own handwriting that had been addressed and sent to her mother, but stamped “return to sender.” The postmark was two years old. Had to have been important for Tensley to write a letter, instead of an e-mail.
    She couldn’t bring herself to open the envelope. Not yet. At this point, some things were better left unread. If she could figure out how to get back to her normal life, she’d never even have to know.
    Please . She didn’t want to know.
    Piles surrounded her. A leather whip poked out from beneath a heap of underwear and mittens. A box of condoms rested on top of flannel pajamas, with a pair of black leather spiked heel boots standing guard.
    The whole room looked like the victim of a maniacal, unfocused burglar. Tensley couldn’t bring herself to clean it up. Instead, she uncrossed her legs, pushed herself up off the floor and left, closing the bedroom door behind her.
    In the midst of her investigative tornado, she’d realized that one person was missing in all of this. The person who had started it all and now had a hell of a lot of to answer for.
    This kind of thing was so not in the best friend handbook.
    Tensley found a crisp white sheet of paper and a pencil. At the top she wrote, “To Do” in careful, precise letters. Then she drew a box and next to it wrote, “Find Kate.”
    After a minute, she drew a line through “Find” and wrote “Kill,” pushing the pencil so hard, it broke through the paper. But then she reconsidered, putting a line through “Kill” and erasing the one through “Find.”
    She would give her best friend a chance to explain. Two minutes, max.
    After that, all bets were off.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    It was a pretty bad sign, Tensley decided, when you didn’t recognize the ICE number stored in your own cell phone. Her emergency contact should be someone she at least knew.
    She’d scrolled through the list once, twice, and then three times. None of the names, and there weren’t a lot of them, were familiar.
    But most importantly for right