Strong, Sleek and Sinful - By Lorie O'Clare Page 0,11

There visions of her older sister, so perfect and popular, until the day she was found naked and beaten, and very dead, tortured Kylie’s dreams.

Kylie stared at the open coffin, watching her older sister for the longest time, willing her to move. She’d been fourteen, her older sister, Karen, seventeen, and that funeral was the day Kylie’s life ended. Their happy family destroyed, changed forever, as dead as her sister.

Her father, who’d never missed a day’s work in his life, suddenly seemed sick all the time. Kylie remembered watching her mother grow old before her eyes, as if time were sped up and in a week she’d aged twenty years. The laughter ended. Their home turned into a shell. Where once there was continual chatter and TVs on in every room and her mother’s radio always buzzing in the kitchen, the moment they returned home from the funeral all that seemed forgotten. The house was quiet, continuous, non-ending silence, like the tomb where Kylie’s sister lay. Kylie didn’t grow up, she passed through time, until she, too, left the shell that once was her family.

Now Kylie kept it on autopilot, determined to make up for her sister dying so unnecessarily. It was more than a full-time job. It was Kylie’s life’s work.

Today she didn’t allow social life, or family, to get in her way. Her family was destroyed with the death of her sister. But if Kylie worked her ass off, other families wouldn’t be destroyed like hers was.

She twisted the sheet around her body, waking up from the painful dreams and staring at the ceiling. Her mom had called before Kylie had left Dallas. She still had the voice-mail message on her phone and needed to return the call soon. Suddenly Mom wanted to be friends, as if so many painful years hadn’t passed between them. She told Kylie living like this wasn’t healthy, pointing out she had never dealt with the sorrow of losing her sister. Kylie could handle her mom believing that about her. It was better than her mom thinking Kylie worked her ass off to prevent loving anyone. Never again would she know the pain and deal with the sorrow and healing process of losing someone she loved.

The noise in the bowling alley was comparable to a dull roar. Kylie managed to ignore it as she sat at a table, nursing a Coke and focusing on her laptop. She glanced up when a group of kids, four boys and three girls, entered the building and headed toward the arcade connected to the bowling alley. They were the same group of kids she’d followed around the mall yesterday.

One of the girls looked Kylie’s way and smirked. Maybe it was a smile. The girl’s long brown straight hair covered part of her face, which looked intentional. She wore a tube top, hip-hugging jeans that showed off her concave tummy, and an oversized plaid shirt that was unbuttoned and flowed behind her like a cape.

The girl next to her grabbed the long-haired girl’s arm, and she looked away from Kylie focusing across the lanes as her friend whispered in her ear. Kylie watched the two girls follow their friends through the opened doors into the arcade.

Another group entered from the doors behind Kylie. A bunch of guys, feeling a good buzz, it appeared from their loud and obnoxious behavior, traipsed past her toward the counter.

“This isn’t the library, shorty,” one of them sneered at her.

“I got something you can study,” his buddy offered, stopping in front of her and letting his gaze travel down her and then back to her face with an open invitation.

Kylie smelled alcohol on them and knew from experience that any comment would be enough to egg them on. She glanced toward the arcade room, no longer seeing the teenagers.

“Don’t tell me you like little boys,” the first one sneered, following her focus toward the other room.

“I don’t,” she said, standing. “Which is why I’m not talking to you.”

She couldn’t help herself. Although barely five feet, five inches, and 135 pounds of lean muscle and little body fat, Kylie lived with being thought younger than she looked. Her physical appearance aided in her line of work, though. She was the perfect bait for any online predator. Unfortunately, there were too many lowlifes who weren’t criminals but would pick up any woman, including her. Kylie didn’t mind using her physical appearance to help lure scum of the earth out from under their rocks. Occasionally she