The Last Time I Saw Her Read Free Page B

definitely hear her if she screamed.
    “I have to go,” she said. Whether she was right or wrong in what she’d been thinking, she could no longer stand being so close to Michael’s grave, or to this physical replica of him.
    “Hold on a minute,” he said, but she shook her head and turned away, heading for the taxi. Under the circumstances, keeping her spine straight and her gait steady required concentration, so she concentrated. She did not look back at Michael’s grave.
    Hughes fell into step beside her. She didn’t look at him, either.
    “I’d like to go over some things with you,” he said. Thank God his voice didn’t sound a thing like Michael’s honeyed drawl. She could listen to him and not get dizzy. “Do you have some time tonight? Could I maybe take you to dinner?”
    When pigs fly.
Her intestines twisted at the idea of sitting across a table from him. For all kinds of reasons.
    “No.” Her reply was too fast and abrupt to be polite. She couldn’t help it. She felt like her heart was being carved up with a butter knife. She had to get away from him, had to have a chance to clear her head.
    “O-kay.” There was a note in his voice that made her think that he wasn’t used to having women turn him down. No surprise, with such a great-looking guy. She could feel his gaze on her face as he persisted. “What about tomorrow? I can come to your office.”
    She’d reached the taxi and he opened the door for her before she could grasp the handle herself. His hand was long-fingered and square-palmed and overtly masculine—and looked exactly like Michael’s.
    Oh, God,
this was the worst pain she had suffered since the night Michael had disappeared.
    “I’m not going in to work tomorrow.” Sliding into the backseat, she gripped the window frame and pulled the door shut with Hughes’s hand still on the handle.
    He leaned down to look through the window at her. “You really can’t spare an hour or so to meet with me? That means I’ll have to hang around here until Monday. I do have a court order granting me access to those files, so if you’re going back to work then, you’re not going to be able to put me off any longer than that.”
    “I’m not trying to put you off,” she said. The thought of having him hanging around Big Stone Gap all weekend made her shudder inwardly. His resemblance to Michael was killing her and the best explanation she could come up with for it made her skin crawl. On the other hand, if he was the killer whose crimes Michael had been convicted of, what would his purpose be in coming here? Anyway, if he was the real serial killer, the Southern Slasher’s MO was to pick up hot young women in bars, not to take out unsuspecting psychiatrists in graveyards.
    Although not every serial killer stayed true to his MO.
    The thought brought a chill of warning with it.
    “Oh? You’re not?” Hughes asked dryly. She glanced at him, an automatic, unthinking response to being addressed, and felt her heart shred. He was studying her face. She liked to think that it was unreadable, but that probably wasn’t the case. Michael, at least, had been able to read her expressions easily.
    “No,” she said.
    “So set a time and place. I’ll be there.”
    His presence in town would hang over her head like the Sword of Damocles. The way he looked was killing her. Everything else—who he was, why he was there—she could sort out later. Her first priority had to be getting him gone so she could think and breathe—and function—again.
    “I can meet with you in my office tomorrow. At three,” she conceded abruptly. That would give her the rest of the night and the morning to calm down. It would also give her time to get a quick background check run on Rick Hughes, attorney.
    Luckily, she had friends in FBI places.
    “I’ll be there,” he said at the same time as she tapped the back of the seat in front of her.
    “Let’s go,” she said. The sleepy driver yawned in acknowledgment and