The Seven-Day Target Read Free Page B

*
    He shifted in the wooden seat. It was uncomfortable as hell. The chair. Libby. The small table that was too short for his knees and wobbled so badly his coffee had already splashed over the side of the mug. All of it felt like a colony of ants marching up his limbs.
    Libby was ancient history as far as he was concerned. Been there, done that, and it hadn’t turned out well. He could still see her face the day she’d told him it was over, tight and unmoving. He’d seen her practicing her opening and closing statements in preparation for trial, and the face was the same. I don’t love you. Her lips had tightened and the pronouncement had upended his world.
    Maybe she was a good actress because he could have sworn she loved him. People who don’t love each other don’t feel the things that he felt when they made love, and people don’t just fall out of love with each other overnight. Except...yes, they do. Because he was pretty sure that he’d fallen out of love with Libby that same night, when he’d realized that it was possible to know someone for nearly twenty years and to have no idea who they were.
    That didn’t mean he wanted to hurt her, though. Telling her that she was the target of a stalker or possibly a serial killer? It ran ice through his veins.
    He rubbed at his face with both hands. “I don’t know where to begin.”
    Damn if he didn’t hate talking to victims. He’d rather get a root canal without anesthesia. Libby wasn’t helping. When she’d stepped out of the car and he’d seen her again, he’d almost forgotten to breathe. She’d always reminded him of a Siberian forest, with silky black hair falling like bare branches against the new-fallen-snow perfection of her skin. Now as her ice-blue eyes watched him with increasing concern, he realized that if he’d hoped that time and distance would mitigate the effect her beauty had always had on him, he was disappointed. Libby was as stunning as ever.
    “You’re making me nervous,” she said, twisting her hands in her lap and peering around the café. “Just tell me.”
    He inhaled deeply. “I saw Dom Vasquez this morning. There was a murder last night.”
    Her hands flew to her face. “Someone I know?”
    “What? No, no, I’m sorry.” He ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head. Damn, he was no good at this at all. “It was a young woman over on Peterborough. Rita something...I forget. She had a record. Prostitution and drug possession.”
    She exhaled. “Oh. I’m sorry to hear about her. I just...I don’t understand.” She turned her gaze to him and he felt his heart squeeze. “The way you were talking, I thought it was someone I knew. I thought we were meeting about something serious.”
    “We are. It’s serious. I just don’t know how to tell you.” If he could only get the words out the right way. He took another deep breath. “I think your life is in danger.”
    She blanched. “What do you mean?”
    “Whoever killed that woman last night left a letter threatening someone else, and beside that letter, he left a picture of you.”
    Libby sat perfectly still for a few moments. Then she whispered, “There must be a mistake. What did the letter say?”
    “I have a copy.” Nick pulled a photocopy from his jacket and handed it to Libby. “He promises to take revenge for some injustice, but he doesn’t say what.”
    As she read the paper, he noticed her fingers trembling. “What is this? Six signs over six days? What does that even mean?”
    “We don’t know. Dom is trying to figure that out now. It’s a priority.”
    He reached over to grasp her hand in a gesture he’d intended to be reassuring, but was instead hopelessly clumsy. Her fingers felt cold, and she didn’t appear to register the contact at all. He watched as she untangled her hand from his, calmly folded the letter and handed it back to him. “I don’t want to see this again.”
    They fell into an eerie silence as she looked past him and