Dream Weaver (Dream Weaver #1) Read Free

dismay. I wasn’t scared. I was pissed. But I knew he would read it as fear— ust what he wanted.
                  “Your rent-a-cop won’t catch me.” The lion’s throaty warning growl. His voice turned acerbic, his need to induce fear sparked electrically through the phone. “Nah. He’s not even a rent-a-cop. Not even a pathetic mall cop. Just some punk kid they hired to baby-sit the store.”
                  Baby-sit? Either this guy’s full of crap or he’s freakin’ huge. I was betting on full of crap.
                  He chortled at my unease, and I heard something familiar but untouchable in his voice. Like I knew him from somewhere—and that pissed me off even more. “What the hell do you want?” I demanded.
                  “Just you,” he said slowly. He sniggered again with a ghoulish glee and the line went dead.
                  “Damn it!” I slammed the phone down and turned with a start. A customer, a woman with a little boy about five glared at me with righteous indignation. “Oh. I’m so sorry. I just…it was…there was this guy.”
                  She harrumphed and stormed away, towing the boy in her sanctimonious wake. No doubt to complain to my manager.
                  So. Let her.
                  Blake shuffled up to the quad, what we associates at Cash’s Department Store called our customer service desks. “Sorry, Em. No luck.” He looked every bit the defeated athlete, his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets making his shoulders and arms bulge.
                  “It’s all good. He’ll get bored eventually and go away.” I hope.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 2 Haunted
     
                  I was prophetic, if not pathetic. The calls ceased and my stalker fell silent, not so much as a heavy breather. Perhaps he’d moved on to some other prey. Poor girl. Everyone around me breathed easier. But a specter of black ice lingered under the surface, chilled me to my core. Deep down I felt a dark and malevolent storm brewing. I wondered if I’d manage to survive it unscathed or if my entire world would shatter with the velocity of its fury.
     
    *              *              *
     
                  Thanksgiving came and went, as it does always. But this was my first one alone. Invitations piled up from friends wanting to keep the orphan from spending the holiday in a funk. In the end, it was Adrian and Celeste’s invitation I accepted. They were as close to family as I had left.
                  Celeste met me at the door of the Rovnikov’s grand, Tudor-style mansion on Spokane’s South Hill. Adrian, in his self-imposed humility would never have called it a mansion. But the rest of the world didn’t call it a house. Not one of the originals in Spokane history, with six bedrooms, four bathrooms, pool, Jacuzzi and sauna, four car garage transformed from horse stables, and servant and guest quarters.
                  Celeste, Adrian’s Barbie doll wife, was as sweet as she was beautiful. She held the classic beauty of long tumbling blonde hair, thin face, high cheekbones, perfected bod. Inside, I heard the kids arguing amiably in the living room. Emma, Adrian and Celeste’s twelve-year-old daughter, was lovely and compassionate; and Peter was their handsome, rambunctious ten-year-old son.
                  “Kids. Enough,” Celeste scolded despite the friendly tone of the disagreement. “Emari’s here.” And then I was mobbed. Emma and Peter pelted me with questions, and scrabbled for my attention. Each grabbed an arm and jerked me between them like the Thanksgiving wishbone. Finally, we decided on a game of Uno and sat in a tight circle on the living room floor, slapping our colored cards into a pile.
                  I had to give Adrian