Dangerous Kiss Read Free

stomped back to Harvest’s door, anger building with each step. Dry Creek was the kind of place where people said hi to each other when they passed on the street. They left their cars unlocked at the mall. To outsiders, it was just another railroad town on the flat Nebraska plain, but to the folks who lived here, it was home. Home was supposed to be safe.
    Sure, they had crime, but it was nonviolent stuff. The mayor’s house getting toilet-papered. A meth addict breaking into a house in the middle of the day when no one was home. Kids taking a car for a joyride. Nothing like this. She couldn’t remember the last time there had been a murder in Dry Creek.
    Hank’s backup arrived in a convoy. Every deputy, on duty and off, flooded in while Claire glowered from Harvest’s doorway.
    They swarmed around the Dumpster. Some stood and gawked. Others talked off to the side with Hank. The CSI-type guys laid down numbered cards and snapped photos. Yellow crime scene tape spanned the entrance to the parking lot, resting on top of the bushes and trussing up her Jeep like a macabre Christmas present.
    No way her Jeep was leaving the parking lot anytime soon. Great. How was she supposed to get home now?
    She didn’t want a deputy to give her a lift. She needed a friendly shoulder and a hug. Beth would come pick her up. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to call her best friend at two in the morning, or been on the receiving end of such a call.
    An invisible hand squeezed her brain like a sponge. Desperate for some aspirin to relieve her tension headache, she headed inside to raid Harvest’s first-aid kit.
    Her phone vibrated in her hand. Without even looking at the screen, she realized Beth’s best-friend-sixth-sense must have kicked in. Either that or she was up late listening to the police scanner again. She’d gotten the scanner for Beth last Christmas. The girl had been addicted to it ever since. She could picture her now, curled up with a romance novel showing a bare-chested man on the cover, her ever-constant cup of coffee on the bedside table and the police scanner buzzing in the background. The idea made her smile for the first time in hours.
    “Beth?”
    “Sure, let’s call me Beth,” said an unfamiliar male voice.
    Claire froze, ice-cold fear solidifying in her veins.
    “I can see you right now, so pretend you’re talking with Beth. That way none of the Barney Fifes end up with holes in their heads.”
    The deadly threat, delivered with a light touch, registered with finality. Her headache forgotten, she searched the crowd, looking for the Voice of Doom on the other end of the line. No one looked her way. No one held a phone. She spun on her heels and hurried toward Hank, toward help.
    “Oh, Sugarplum, where are you going? No one can help you,” the man taunted in his nasal tone. “And stop looking for me. People only see me when it’s too late.”
    The phone slipped in her clammy hands, so she tightened her grip. Petrified, she tried to speak but only a choked coughing sound came out.
    “Good girl. Now, I want her phone and flash drive. I want them immediately or you’ll pay like she did.”
    Her body went numb. The phone fell to the ground and bounced off the asphalt. Claire gaped at it for a moment, her mind blank. Acting on instinct, she swooped up her cell.
    Pressing the phone hard to her ear, she feared her shaking hands would drop it again. “Whose phone and flash drive?”
    “Why, the dead girl’s, of course, Ms. Klutz. I had hoped they were in her handbag, but I was wrong. I hate being wrong—it always means more work for me.”
    Desperate, she wished Hank would look at her. With this psycho’s eyes on her, she couldn’t wave her arms for help. She stared at the back of Hank’s head. Muscles tense, she willed him to turn around. No luck.
    “I don’t have them.” A tiny, naive part of her believed her pleading tone would work. He’d rescind his threat and life would go back to