Strong, Sleek and Sinful - By Lorie O'Clare Page 0,87

today as if it were yesterday. Her sister was gone, raped and murdered, which raped and murdered their family, too. Nothing was the same after that. Something as trivial as Kylie’s birthday couldn’t be dealt with after losing Karen.

Kylie never told her parents they forgot. Even today, when bridges with her mom and dad finally were being mended, Kylie couldn’t bring it up to them. There wasn’t any point in opening old wounds.

That would suck, she typed, and hesitated, wanting to say just the right thing without sounding too obvious, so he would suggest another meeting. Maybe you could ask your parents if you could get together with a few special friends.

You’re a special friend to me.

Good. I feel the same way about you.

If my parents say it’s okay, you’ll see me on my birthday. He didn’t make it a question.

“Okay,” Kylie said out loud as she typed the one word and clicked “send.”

Good. Plan on seeing me Thursday. Tell your parents you’ll be at a birthday party for a couple hours. And thank you. You’re going to make this birthday one I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

Kylie was sure it would be a day both of them would remember for the rest of their lives. At the same time, she noted that Peter just gave himself a couple-hour time frame, which she bet he did with every girl he snatched. And with a couple-hour run time, it made it damn hard for the law to chase him down. Hard, but not impossible.

“This all ends Thursday,” she vowed to herself. If she could get Peter to capture her, there would be no worries about Dani, or any other girl, meeting him Friday.

Chapter 15

Kylie sat lost in thought but didn’t realize her eyes were closed. Nor did it quite hit her what had brought her back to the present. Twenty minutes had passed since the last entry typed in her chat with Peter. Her thoughts had drifted from Karen to her mother, and her last visit to Dallas and the time she and Kylie had spent together.

Her mom had been friendly, almost loving, when Kylie went down there. There were years of mending for the two of them to go through, and up until the last couple years neither one of them had exerted too much effort to allow the healing process to start between them. But now, with her father sick, something compelled Kylie to return home when she could, even if just for the weekend.

Something her mother said suddenly rang through strong in her thoughts.

“I’m so proud of you.” Her mother said it so casually, as if she told Kylie that every day.

Had her mother ever told her that before?

Something pulled her out of her thoughts. She stared at her monitor, but Peter hadn’t said anything. She swore she heard something. Maybe her mom’s voice in her head came through louder than she thought.

Kylie forced herself to quit daydreaming, or was it night-dreaming since it was now officially after midnight? This time, though, she knew she heard something, and it didn’t come from the TV. It was like a scratching sound, like a dog trying to get its owner’s attention by dragging its claws down the door. Except Kylie didn’t have a dog.

Quickly saving her chat with Peter, she then cleared the box and minimized the Web sites she’d been browsing. Focusing on her monitors, she pushed the button to rewind them ten minutes to see if anyone was outside. A couple minutes of quiet images of her front yard went by before Perry’s Jeep pulled up in front of her house. Then it backed up along the curb until it was out of range for the cameras to pick it up.

“Crap,” she hissed, jumping up and grabbing her phone. Her gun was in its thigh holster, which she’d worn when she investigated the crime scene earlier this evening. “Sheez, woman, you don’t need it against Perry.”

But she did need to make sure he didn’t see this room. She returned her attention to her monitor in time to see Perry sprint across her yard, running fast enough that the cameras barely picked him up. In a matter of seconds, he was gone from the images playing back for her.

“He ran around the side of the house. Son of a bitch.”

Her attention shot to her hallway when the scratching sound repeated itself. Perry knew there were cameras outside and had tried dodging them. Any lesser-quality surveillance equipment probably