Last Look Read Free Page A

six years. She loved this apartment. It had taken her days to find it when she first moved to Florida, freshly divorced and living alone for the first time in her life, focused solely on her career. The apartment was perfect: a big airy bedroom and bathroom, large living room with a small dining area at one end, and a nice eat-in kitchen. A balcony with a view of the lake, and some gorgeous sunsets. Good parking, convenient location, decent rent. Pool, gym, and spa, though she never used those amenities.
    No, damn it, she wasn’t giving up her perfect apartment just because the man she’d recently shared it with had turned out to be a perfect asshole.
    Sooner or later, the last trace of him would fade and she’d be comfortable here again.
    She wondered wryly if the psychic in that little stucco house down on Lakeview had any experience with exorcisms.
    She was only half kidding.
    She drained the bottle and set it next to the two others on the table and leaned over the rail, debating whether or not to go in for another. She’d needed a good buzz the night before—and the one before that—to get to sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw that moment when he walked in with her dog, Maddy, clinging to his arm, and everything had gone white before her eyes.
    The rest of the night was a blur, which was probably just as well.
    The front pocket of her jeans began to ring. She pulled out her phone and checked the caller ID. She was more than a little surprised to see a Virginia number displayed.
    This was a call she should probably take.
    “Collins.”
    “Dorsey, Steven Decker.”
    The SAC she’d worked for after graduating from the academy.
    “Hey.” She brightened, happy in spite of herself to hear his voice. He’d been a great boss, fair and smart and always accessible. She’d missed him. It had been what, two years since they’d last been in touch? “It’s good to hear your voice.”
    “Yours, too. Listen, Dorsey, I wish this call was strictly social, I’d love to catch up, but there’s something that’s come to my attention that I think you need to know.”
    “Make it good news, please.”
    “Wish I could, but I’m afraid there’s no way to clean this up.” His voice was sober, serious.
    Not a good sign.
    “What?” She frowned and lowered herself onto one of the chairs, a bad feeling snaking its way around her insides.
    “I just caught a report that was coming in from HQ. Case in Georgia I thought you should know about.”
    “Go on,” she said cautiously. It wasn’t like him to hedge.
    “The body of a woman was found a couple of weeks ago. The ME’s best guess is she’d been dead less than eight hours.”
    “Cause of death?”
    “From the preliminary report, looks like multiple stab wounds to the torso, exsanguination.”
    “Sexual assault?”
    “Not sure.”
    “O-kay…” She dragged out the word.
And I need to know this because…?
    It wasn’t as if she had no corpses of her own to deal with. Georgia wasn’t her territory, so what was Decker’s point?
    Decker sighed. “The woman had no identification on her, so the locals faxed her description to other agencies in the surrounding area hoping someone would be able to match her to a missing persons report.”
    “No TV, no newspaper reports?”
    “Nothing. The body was found on Shelter Island, which is about as big as your thumb, and is just an inch south of the line separating South Carolina and Georgia. No local paper. Nearest city is Savannah.” He cleared his throat. “The police in Deptford—Georgia, right over the border—had been sitting on a report that appeared to be a match. Seems a woman had come in to the station a few weeks back, said her roommate had been missing since the night before. Said they always kept in touch with each other throughout the night—both of them are working girls—so when the girl didn’t return by morning, the roommate knew something was wrong. I got the feeling the Deptford cops