Shiver Read Free Page A

madeup the St. Louis skyline—all were glowing with light and, from this distance, beautiful.
    Across the river in Illinois, where Sam lived, East St. Louis was like that other St. Louis’s really ugly stepsister.
    “There you are,” Sam murmured with satisfaction as her beeper started going off insistently. The car she was looking for was parked at the end of Fortnum, just up from the warehouse district. She spotted the big black Beemer with a satisfied smile. A distant glow from the security lighting on the warehouses was all the light there was. On a nearby corner, the only streetlamp for a couple of blocks wasn’t working. From the look of it, it had been beaten into submission long ago. There were other cars on the street, most of them junkers, none parked too close to her objective. The buildings across the street were brick tenements, condemned and slated for destruction as part of the city’s effort to combat blight. Started before the economy tanked, it probably had seemed like a good idea at the time. But besides moving the tenants out and boarding up the windows, nothing more had been done. And now the buildings were reoccupied, by the local gangs and drug dealers, free of charge. A lot of activity going on over there tonight. Probably something she wanted to keep her eye on, in case the Beemer’s owner was across the street making a buy.
    People, especially men, had a tendency to object if they caught her repoing their cars. Which was why she worked in the middle of the night, and at least part of the reason she kept the gun and tire iron handy.
    Maneuvering the truck to within about nine feet of theBeemer’s front bumper, Sam lowered the winch, shoved the gun into the waistband of her jeans and pulled her work shirt down over it, and got out, casting a quick glance inside the Beemer just to make sure that it was as empty as she’d thought at first glance: it was. All black leather, clean and expensive, with no personal belongings in view. Good. Personal belongings were a bitch: people were always claiming they’d been stolen.
    A gust of warm summer wind sent a tendril of her hair skittering across her mouth. Impatiently Sam pulled it free, tucked it behind her ear. The mass of her hair she’d confined in a low ponytail to keep it out of the way, but it was thick and wavy with a mind of its own, and strands inevitably worked loose. So close by the river, the air smelled a little like dead fish, with a hint of something acrid—probably burning meth or crack. The chug of her truck engine was loud, and so was the clank of the big metal chain as she got it into position. The racket always made her a little nervous—no covering up that sound—and given the activity across the way it could conceivably attract attention.
    Keeping an eagle eye cocked for trouble, Sam got to work. Her truck was a piece of crap, but she’d used it long enough that she knew its quirks inside and out, and could work fast. Grabbing the heavy chain and yanking in order to extend it fully, she hooked it to the BMW, secured the safety straps, and pushed the lever that would haul the BMW up on its back tires.
    That done, she was just checking the straps one last time before getting back into the truck when she noticed that the Beemer’s trunk had popped open. The trunk’s interior lighthadn’t come on, but the lid was up and rocking. Frowning, casting a cautious look at the boarded-up houses where things were really starting to hop, she walked around behind the Beemer to shut the trunk before taking off for the drop yard.
    She was within a foot of the rear bumper, her hand already up in the air reaching for the trunk lid, when she saw that there was a man, bloody and bound and looking like he’d been beaten to within an inch of his life, in the trunk.
    Black hair, cut short; thirtyish, maybe; tall (from the way he was curled in there like a paper clip); solid-looking shoulders and chest; muscular arms pulled tightly behind his