Seen and Not Heard Read Free Page B

another alternative, one he’d used occasionally. He could waste both Achilles and the Spaniard, take all the drugs and the money, and no one would be the wiser.
    He didn’t do that sort of thing very often. Word would get around, and his reputation would suffer. He’d had to be very careful since that fool Malgreave had arrested him. It had been a close call. Two months in that stinking prison, two months while Malgreave went his slow, deliberate way, trying to pin those murders on him.
    In the end he’d failed, of course. Thirty-five old women had died at that point. And Rocco had only killed seventeen of them.
    He stubbed the cigarette out, shifting in the chair and tilting it back further. It was a good thing he’d been so far ahead of the others. They’d had time to catch up during his enforced retirement. Four more women had died since he’d been arrested, and he hadn’t touched one of them. By now Malgreave had to have given up on him.
    He scratched his groin absently. It should be safe by now. Or safe enough. And he was badly short of cash. He’d take care of Achilles and the Spaniard, and then, when a little time had passed, he’d find an old lady. A sweet old grandmother, living alone. And the very next rainstorm he’d start taking care of his quota. After all, he couldn’t let a bunch of amateurs get ahead of him.
    He smiled, his shark’s smile. It would be a pleasure to set Malgreave to wondering.
    It was happening again. The cold, black, rain-slick night. Brian driving his BMW far too fast, his handsome mouthset, his beautiful hands clenching the leather-covered steering wheel as if he wished it were her neck. He wasn’t yelling, he was saying quiet, bitter, cruel things. She was the one who was yelling.
    He’d promised, how many times had he promised? He would talk to his wife, the separation and divorce would be amicable, and they could finally get married. It had been eighteen months of promises, and Claire had had enough. So, apparently, had Brian.
    There would be no separation, he had finally admitted. Not right now. His wife was pregnant again, and it probably was his.
    That was when she’d starting yelling. And that was when he’d taken his eyes off the road, his hand off the wheel and lashed out at her, his formidable temper breaking its tenuous control.
    She could still hear the sickening thump of a body smacking against the car. She could still see the child’s limp, rain-soaked form lying beside the road. She could still see Brian’s panic as he drove away, ignoring her screams, ignoring her futile attempts to grab the wheel. He’d finally hit her, hard enough to stun her, so that she sank back, huddled in a corner of the leather seat, watching with numb, disbelieving eyes as he sped through the night, away from the child.
    Claire lay in the wide bed, covered in a cold, clammy sweat. She hated waking up in the middle of the night, hated lying there, remembering, with Marc asleep beside her, his sensual face childlike in repose. She reached out to wake him up, to touch his firm, muscled shoulder, then drew her hand back. Marc would have one response to her wakefulness, to her fears. And for once in her life Claire didn’t feel like being made love to.
    An odd way to put it, she thought to herself, inching her body over a bit, away from Marc. He was always so warm, his firm, lithe body radiating heat like a furnace. Even in the coldest weather they didn’t need more than a thin blanket, and in the heat of the summer it would be almost unbearable. Right now Claire would have given anything for acooling breeze. The rain had stopped, but the sounds of Paris at night reached the second-floor windows, muffled noises, reminding her that people had lives beyond the walls of this apartment that were rapidly resembling a prison.
    She looked over at Marc. There hadn’t been much time for talk. First there had been Nicole, horribly sick with some stomach virus. Claire had spent two hours