Bait Read Free Page A

darkness with her to hear—and pounce.
    â€œYou’re on the twentieth floor, for God’s sake. Nobody’s coming in through the window. The door is locked. You’re safer here than you are at home,” she told herself firmly.
    That didn’t help, either. Bravado was useless; logic clearly was, too. She was simply going to have to sweat it out. This time she was not going to give in. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes. The relentless drone of the air-conditioning unit under the window suddenly seemed as loud as an 18-wheeler barreling along beside her bed. The bed itself—a king-size—was huge. Huddled on the side nearest the unreachable-from-the-outside window, she felt increasingly small and vulnerable. Which was ridiculous. She was five feet, seven inches tall; one hundred twenty-five well-toned pounds; a smart, competent, twenty-nine-year-old, soon-to-be-wildly-successful businesswoman, for God’s sake—and yet here she was, heart boogeying like a whole dance floor full of hyperactive teenagers because she’d just turned off the bedside lamp. Maddie silently acknowledged that humiliating fact even as she fought the urge to grab for the switch, click the lamp back on, and put herself out of her misery.
    If she turned on the light, she’d be able to sleep.
    Her eyes popped open before she managed to put a brake on runaway temptation.
    No.
    Turning over so that she was facing the door, Maddie gritted her teeth and mentally groped for pleasant thoughts. She lay on her side, knees tucked almost under her chin, head propped on a pair of too-soft pillows, clutching the blankets tightly around her shoulders as she stared sightlessly into stygian darkness—darkness into which she had deliberately plunged herself. Closing her eyes a second time required real physical effort. Squinching up her face, she squeezed them shut. Moments later, when none materialized, she gave up on pleasant thoughts and instead began counting toward a hundred in her head. At the same time, she worked to control the physical symptoms brought on by the absence of light: ragged breathing, racing pulse, pounding heart, cold sweat.
    By the time she reached fifty, her heart was thundering like an elephant stampede and she was breathing so fast she was practically panting. Even as she kept her eyes clenched tightly, despair filled her. Would she never be free of the specter that had haunted her for the last seven years? Every single time she tried to go to sleep alone in the dark, was she going to suffer a replay of that night? Would her dreams always be haunted by the sound of ...?
    Shrill as a siren, a shriek split the darkness close beside her head.
    Several seconds passed before Maddie realized that what she was hearing was the phone ringing. Peeling herself off the ceiling, taking a deep, steadying breath, she reached for the lamp, fumbled with the switch—oh light, blessed light!—and picked up the receiver.
    â€œHello?” If she’d just suffered a complete and utter nervous breakdown, her voice at least gave no hint of it. Never let them see you sweat: The mantra had been drummed into her at a hard school. Nice to know that it was still automatically operational.
    â€œDid I wake you?”
    Jon. He’d nearly sent her into cardiac arrest.
    â€œActually, I wasn’t asleep.” Maddie hitched herself up against the pillows. As she did so, she wiped her sweaty palms one at a time on the tastefully earth-toned comforter in which she was swaddled.
    â€œMe neither. Hey, maybe we could keep each other company.”
    Maddie could almost see his smile through the phone. Jon Carter was a good-looking guy, blond, blue-eyed, tall and trim, oozing charm through his pores. It was one of the reasons she continued to employ him.
    â€œNot a chance.” Her voice was tart. Of course, the fact that he was still regularly hitting on her despite the change in circumstances that had