Afraid to Die Read Free

talking about his job. He’d bored her to tears. Terry Longstrom was a psychologist who worked with juveniles who’d been arrested, and he’d taken her on a couple of dates, but for all of his good points, she just didn’t find him attractive, and as shallow as that sounded, she couldn’t pretend to be interested in him. The worst of the lot though was Grover Pankretz, who had once worked in the local DNA lab before his job was eliminated when the company had downsized. A brilliant man but a little too possessive from the get-go. He’d wanted to get serious by the second date. So she’d ended that before it really began. Fortunately all of the men interested in her had moved on, either away from the area or onto new relationships. Terry and Grover, she’d heard, had married.
    The truth was simple: She just wasn’t ready to date seriously. . . as evidenced by her ridiculous fantasy for an older, unavailable man like Dan Grayson, who just happened to be her boss. Typical.
    â€œFace it,” she told herself, “you really don’t want a man in your life.”
    She finished with her morning routine and drove to the sheriff ’s office on Boxer Bluff. Traffic was snarled in the usual places and backed up where a single car had slid sideways just before the railroad tracks. All the while the snow kept falling and her wipers worked double-time to slap the flakes away.
    God, she hated this time of year.
    It seemed that here, in Grizzly Falls, the Christmas season brought its own share of disaster with it. Despite the holiday wreaths on the doors, the trees decorated and glowing festively in the windows, and the twenty-four-seven deluge of Christmas carols from the local radio stations, trouble lurked in the shadows of all the radiant joy. Not only did domestic violence cases escalate during the holiday season, but, in the past few years, some homicidal maniacs had terrorized the locals.
    Not exactly a season of peace and joy.
    The road was slick in spots, but her ten-year-old Subaru gripped the road and churned up the frozen, icy streets without any trouble. The Outback was another change in her life, though of course she knew that all the new cars and town houses wouldn’t fill the hole inside her. The pets were a step in the right direction, she thought as she pulled into the parking lot of the station. She’d inherited the cat on a case last year, as its owner had been the victim of a vicious murder and she’d felt a connection to the animal, but the puppy had been an intentional, if irrational decision.
    What had she been thinking?
    Obviously not about pee on the carpet, chewed furniture or vet bills; nope, she’d seen something warm and cuddly, with bright eyes, a wet nose and a tail that wouldn’t stop wagging when she’d visited the shelter.
    â€œStupid,” she told herself as she drove toward the station, but she couldn’t help but smile. She’d thought Roscoe would be some kind of protection, keep burglars at bay.
    Yeah? Then why did you feel as if someone had been in your house last week, huh? Remember that premonition that something you couldn’t describe had been changed at the town house? Where was Roscoe the guard dog then?
    Of course, it had probably been nothing, just her case of nerves after interviewing Neil Freeman, yet another sicko who had let his eyes run all over her while she questioned him about his dead mother. Turned out the mother died of natural causes ... but his demeanor, his salacious turning of every answer into something sexual and the way he touched the tip of his tongue to his lips as he stared at her had really gotten to her. Which was probably just his intention. Twisted creep!
    She told herself again that Freeman had not been in her house and that Roscoe would have let her know it if he had.
    And how would he do that? Face it, Alvarez, you’re becoming one of those kinds of pet owners. Inwardly, she