Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense Read Free

asked the young man who answered if he had any copies of The Man in the Moon .
    “The computer shows we have three copies. Do you want me to save one for you?”
    “No, that's okay.”
    He hung up and stared at the book. No way for him to tell how long it had been in the earth. A month? A year? Ten years?
    With a groan, Jake rolled onto his side, stretching until his legs trembled. Steve saw no signs of the malevolence he'd felt for a brief moment up by the creek bed. Jake was just Jake, his companion—an animal Steve knew better than he knew most people.
    He must have imagined it, whatever he'd seen.
    He tapped the desk with his fingertips. Okay, what did he really have here? Some little girl, who maybe came from Camp Aratauk or possibly another camp—he remembered Mark telling him that there were so many new places up here he couldn't keep track—this little girl, looking for her book. How it ended up buried in the stream bed near his house, he didn't know. Maybe it got washed downstream after a rain.
    Except there hasn't been any rain since April. And the only camp up there is deserted and has been for a long time .
    He heard a car engine, gravel popping off tires. Headlights washing across the pine wall.
    Julie.
    He picked the book up and slid it into the bookshelf by the window—hidden in plain sight. Barely aware that his heart rate had gone up, that it was imperative to him that Julie not know about the book.
    Not that she would think he was crazy. No. Julie believed in everything: astrology, palm reading, the Ouija board. She loved that stuff so much she had recently opened up a New Age gift shop on Fourth Avenue, where she could surround herself with crystals and Tarot cards.
    He didn't know why he wanted to hide it from her. Didn't know why he suddenly felt secretive, almost ashamed. Perhaps because he was the scientist, the one who always kept his feet solidly rooted to the earth. The anchor for Julie's wildly tacking sailboat.
    He heard a car door slam.
    Wished he'd remembered to call her back, deflect her drive up here.
    Too late now.

 

CHAPTER TWO
    A vague sense of unease followed Steve out of sleep, quickly solidifying into a bad case of guilt.
    He untangled himself from the bed sheets, donned his wire-rimmed glasses, and pulled on his jeans, making sure not to wake Julie. At the doorway, he turned back to look at her. Julie was a beautiful woman—and even more beautiful in sleep. She was petite with shoulder-length, curly, black hair that was always a bit wild, as he imagined a gypsy's hair would be.
    The top half of her body was exposed. Her breasts were perfect globes in the soft light. For so many years, Steve had wanted her and no one else—sex had always been great between them. It still was.
    The rest of the time was the problem. Like a row of numbers that, no matter how hard you tried to make them fit, didn't add up.
    Looking at her, he felt sorrow.
    He would have to tell her.
    She dumped you , remember? The voice in his head, the one that kept the ledger. His own little crack at double-entry bookkeeping. Always seeking balance, always trying to make it turn out right, where he was ahead or at least even.
    She had dumped him, but that didn't change the way he felt about her now. He didn't want to hurt her, but he knew it would never work.
    Steve didn't know when exactly he had stopped loving her—some time before their divorce was official a year and a half ago. That was when he realized he couldn't go back to the way it was. It was Julie who had taken up with someone else, Julie who had filed for divorce. Steve's world was full of accepted theories and unalterable facts, so when she told him it was over, he'd had no choice but to believe her. His brain had figured it out, and now it seemed, the rest of him had followed.
    He walked into the little kitchen, which was as cluttered as everything else. His grandfather had been a historian, none too particular where he laid his books, papers, or