Dreaming Death (Krewe of Hunters #32) - Heather Graham Page 0,99

a hearth.

She was wide awake, but she was suddenly experiencing the dream. Fog seemed to fill the parlor area, dense and rich.

It wasn’t real, she told herself. It was the way her dream-visions came, because they weren’t clear. But she felt as if she was experiencing her dream; she was on the outside looking in, now, removed from the action, but seeing far too much.

Not the killer in the flesh there before her. But near. She could feel his mind, as if she were on a phone, or somehow hearing what played in the gray mass of his thoughts.

He was ecstatic.

She still couldn’t see his face—but she could feel his mind!

Yes, for him...the time had come.

Stacey stood very still, trying to remember details of her dream and compare them to the present.

This didn’t seem right. There was the hearth; there was the mist. But in her dream, the room had been smaller.

Yet, the killer was there. Somewhere, in or around the house. She could sense him. Feel him.

They were all in danger. She had to move quickly and quietly. She didn’t even dare another phone call.

She hurried on, carefully, back to Mrs. Kendrick’s smaller parlor, but paused outside the door and carefully looked in.

Neither Jean Channing nor Anita Kendrick was there. No, she was wrong. Anita Kendrick was there.

Lying on the floor.

Still desperately trying for silence, Stacey strode swiftly to her, then knelt down.

The woman had a pulse. Weak, but there. She needed medical help. Fast.

Stacey went for her phone: she needed help fast, too.

But she heard something—near. A strangled gasp, as if someone was trying to cry out but could not.

Stacey drew her gun, looking carefully out into the larger room, surveying it in whole, before walking through.

Someone else had come into the house. They hadn’t come through the big parlor; she would have seen them.

There was a back door, of course. Whoever had come in must have slipped through the back. Maybe he’d even done so while Keenan was still there. Maybe this exit had been planned.

And even though she lay on the floor now, Anita Kendrick might have been in on it, might have known.

She might have wanted a new heart that badly.

The promise of life was a sweet one.

Whoever had come in, whoever now had Jean Channing, might have just arrived, too.

And now, they had to have moved to the back of the house. To the dining room and kitchen or office or bedrooms, whatever lay to the left side of the house.

Stacey stood very still, and she heard the desperate, strangled gasping sound again. She couldn’t use her phone; she’d be heard.

She had her Glock, and she was a crack shot.

Take him down, fast, and then get help for Anita Kendrick.

Carefully, not making a sound, she started to move through the small parlor—to the door that lay beyond.

Which was it? What had happened?

Was Anita Kendrick a liar, the best of the actors they’d yet seen? Did she want a heart so badly that she’d make up an encounter to lure law enforcement so that the killer could manage his deed? Kill her—or kill Jean. Or both.

Only one of them could be the killer’s Mary Kelly.

It would be her: Mary Kelly had been the youngest victim. She was the youngest one here.

Her movement was silent and careful. Her weapon was ready.

The door swung open and she took aim.

But she stood dead-still, waiting.

Because the killer was there, holding Jean before them, the business end of a scalpel against her throat.

And Jean was about to die.

* * *

Keenan’s phone rang before he had driven more than a few blocks.

The caller ID showed it was Jackson, and he answered it quickly.

“You’ll be able to get Mrs. Sandra Smith, but not her husband. Sandra is shopping—she does that a lot. But our people following the two of them lost Smith. He was with his wife not an hour ago, going in and out of stores. She went into a dressing room, he went to see what she was trying on, and he apparently disappeared from there.

“Wait, they lost Colin Smith?”

“Yes, and don’t start swearing. It happens. The agents couldn’t go into a dressing room. She’s at that shop she likes so much. There must be a delivery door beyond the dressing rooms. Smith is gone. His wife is still there, though. The agents could see her as we talked.”

“All right, but, Jackson, I’m not going to go in and take her. Have them bring her in—and make sure she’s held