Once Craved (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #3) Read Free Page B

voice.
    “Garrett really
wants our help. She was a prostitute. She just disappeared and then her body
turned up in a lake. He wants us to look into it as the work of a serial
killer.”
    The request seemed
odd to Riley. Prostitutes often did disappear without getting killed. Sometimes
they decided to do their work somewhere else. Or just quit.
    “Does he have any
reason to think so?” she asked.
    “I don’t know,
Meredith said. “Maybe he wants to think that in order to get us involved. But
it’s true, as you know, that prostitutes are frequent targets of serials.”
    Riley knew that this
was true. Prostitutes’ lifestyles made them high-risk. They were visible and
accessible, alone with strangers, often drug dependent.
    Meredith continued, “He
called me personally. I promised him I’d send my very best people to Phoenix.
And of course—that includes you.”
    Riley was touched.
Meredith wasn’t making it easy to say no.
    “Please try to
understand, sir,” she said. “I just can’t take on anything new.”
    Riley felt vaguely
dishonest. Can’t or won’t? she asked herself. After she had been
captured and tortured by a serial killer, everyone had insisted she take a
leave from work. She’d tried to do that, but found herself desperately needing
to be back on the job. Now she wondered what that desperation had really been
all about. She had been reckless and self-destructive and had a hell of a time
getting her life under control. When she had finally killed Peterson, her
tormentor, she had thought everything would be fine. But he still haunted her,
and she was having new problems over the resolution of her last case.
    After a pause, she
added, “I need more time off the field. I’m still technically on leave and I’m
really trying to put my life together.”
    A long silence
followed. It didn’t sound as though Meredith was going to argue, much less pull
rank on her. But he wasn’t going to say he was OK with it, either. He wouldn’t
let up the pressure.
    She heard Meredith
heave a long, sad sigh. “Garrett had been estranged from Nancy for years. Now
what happened to her is eating him up inside. I guess there’s a lesson there,
isn’t there? Don’t take anyone in your life for granted. Always reach out.”
    Riley almost dropped
the phone. Meredith’s words hit a nerve that hadn’t been touched for a long
time. Riley had lost contact with her own older sister years ago. They were
estranged and she hadn’t even wondered about Wendy for a long time. She had no
idea what her own sister was doing now.
    After another pause,
Meredith said, “Promise me you’ll think it over.”
    “I will,” Riley
said.
    They ended the call.
    She felt terrible.
Meredith had seen her through some awful times and he’d never shown such
vulnerability toward her before. She hated to let him down. And she’d just
promised him to think it over.
    And no matter how
desperately she wanted to, Riley wasn’t sure she could say no.

Chapter Three
     
    The man sat in his
car in the parking lot, watching the whore as she approached along the street. “Chiffon,”
she called herself. Obviously not her real name. And he was sure there was a
lot more about her that he didn’t know.
    I could make her
tell me, he
thought. But not here. Not today.
    He wouldn’t kill her
here today either. No, not right here so near her regular workplace—the
so-called “Kinetic Custom Gym.” From where he sat, he could see the decrepit
exercise machinery through the storefront windows—three treadmills, a rowing
machine, and a couple of weight machines, none of them working. As far as he
knew, nobody ever came here to actually exercise.
    Not in a socially
acceptable manner anyway, he
thought with a smirk.
    He didn’t come
around to this place much—not since he’d taken that brunette who had worked
here years ago. Of course, he hadn’t killed her here. He’d lured her off to a
motel room for “extra services” and with the promise of a