Free To Die For by Linda Howard Page A

starts everything over. Go home.”
    “I am. I’m pretty beat, myself. You redecorated, huh? What was wrong with the way things looked before?”
    I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure you’re so interested in interior decorating.
Go home.
Leave. But make sure you have someone bring my car to me first thing in the morning, okay? I can’t be stuck here without it.”
    “I’ll take care of it.” He reached out and cupped my face, his thumb lightly tracing my lips. I drew back, glaring at him, and he laughed. “I wasn’t going to kiss you. Not yet, anyway. There might not be anyone around to see at this time of night—or morning, rather—but since your clothes tend to come off when I kiss you, we’d better wait until we’re more private and have both had some sleep.”
    He made it sound as if I started stripping whenever he touched me. I gave him a poisonously sweet smile. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you cram—”
    “Uh-uh,” he cautioned, putting a finger over my lips. “You don’t want to let that sassy mouth get you in trouble. Just go inside, lock the door behind you, and go to bed. I’ll see you later.”
    Never let it be said that I don’t recognize good advice when I hear it. I always
recognize
it; actually following it is a different category. In this instance, however, I did the wise thing and slipped inside, and locked the door just as he’d directed. Yeah, he might think I was actually following his orders, but it just so happened his orders coincided with my survival instinct.
    I turned on my kitchen light and stood at the door waiting until his car pulled away before I turned off the outside lights. Then I stood in the middle of my familiar, cozy kitchen and let everything that had happened that night crash in on me.
    There was a sense of unreality to everything, as if I had disconnected from the universe. My surroundings were my own, yet they seemed somehow alien, as if they belonged to someone else. I was both exhausted and jittery, which is not a good combination.
    First thing, I turned on all the lights on the ground floor and checked all the windows, which were securely locked. Likewise with the doors. The dining alcove had double French doors leading onto my covered patio, where I keep strands of little white lights outlining the posts and roof edge, and entwined through the young Bradford pear trees. I turn the lights on almost every night that I’m home, because I love how they look, but tonight I felt vulnerable with all that glass and I pulled the heavy curtains closed over the French doors.
    After setting the security system, I did what I had been wanting to do for
hours.
I called Mom.
    Dad answered, of course. The telephone was on his side of the bed because Mom didn’t like answering it. “Hello.” His voice was a sleepy mumble.
    “Dad, it’s Blair. There was a murder at the gym tonight, and I wanted to let you know I’m all right.”
    “A—
what
? Did you say murder?” He sounded much more awake now.
    “One of the members was killed in the back parking lot”—I heard Mom in the background saying fiercely,
“Give me the phone!”
and I knew his possession of the phone was numbered in seconds—“a little after nine, and I— Hi, Mom.”
    “Blair. Are you all right?”
    “I’m fine. I wouldn’t have called, but I was afraid someone else would, and I wanted you to know that I’m okay.”
    “Thank God you did,” she said, and we both shuddered at what she might have done if she’d thought any of her children had been hurt. “Who was killed?”
    “Nicole Goodwin.”
    “The copycat?”
    “That’s her.” I might have complained about Nicole a time or two to my family. “She was parked in the back parking lot, waiting for me—we had a slight altercation this afternoon—”
    “Do the police think you did it?”
    “No, no,” I soothed, though for a while I had definitely been Suspect Number One. Mom didn’t need to know that, though. “I had just