Chasing Tinsel (Miranda Vaughn Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page A

toward the parking garage, shoving each other all the way. Then Pete and one of his coworkers hefted the box onto a cart and wheeled it off to be locked up for the night. Jeff walked back to the door near the cosmetics counter and waved, so I opened the gate a few feet so he could pass through. Then I picked up my purse and coat and ducked underneath, letting Jeff close the grated doors and lock them for the night.  
    “Miranda, I noticed that you sold a large number of the St. John’s gift cards tonight,” Jeff said, through the closed security gate.  
    I smiled. “Yes, I did.”
    “But you didn’t get a single customer to apply for the credit card?” he asked, his brow furrowed.
    I shook my head. “Not one.”  
    “You should work on that tomorrow,” he said.  
    “I’ll do that,” I lied, slipping my coat on. “Have a nice night, Jeff.”  
    I waved and headed toward the main parking garage, which had been the only place I’d been able to find a parking spot when I arrived.  
    The mall was quiet, much more than it had been just a short time earlier when Jeff and Pete had consolidated the gift cards, and it was eerie watching the lights turn off in the stores. The holiday Muzak was turned off, and my footsteps on the tile floor echoed as I passed darkened and locked stores. The lights at the carousel were still on, a bright beacon at the junction of four wide avenues that led to various anchor stores and the cineplex. I started to turn down the hall that would lead to the parking garage where the Golf Ball awaited me but slowed to look at the carousel. A little older and more worn by all the thousands of children who had enjoyed it, but it still brought a smile to my face. The horses were still, and the attendant was long since gone, turning off the calliope music that usually haunted the center of Prospect Point.  
    I turned left and looked behind me as I did, the silence unnerving me and urging me onward. As I looked back toward the carousel, a flicker of movement in the now-stilled mirrors caught my eye.  
    It was the reflection of a man, distorted in the wavy, aged mirrors, but unmistakable. Tall, broad-shouldered, dark hair. Our eyes met and my heart stopped.
    Jake .  
    I whirled around and looked down the hall behind me, but the wide carpeted walkway was empty. I heard a slamming sound and looked to my right at an unmarked door. Had it been the source of the noise?  
    I walked to it quickly, placing my hand on the knob, knowing it would be locked. I looked around again and didn’t see anyone, so I found my employee pass and tried the keypad next to the door. It was the pass that let Drake’s employees use the hallways behind the stores, allowing us to take out the trash without dragging bags through the crowds of customers. I wasn’t sure it would work on this door, but I heard a soft click as the door unlocked. I pulled the door open and looked down the short hallway. Its bare walls were lit with flickering fluorescent lights.  
    I looked back again to the quiet mall, then slipped past the door and walked down the short bare hallway to the corner, where it met with the corridor that ran behind a long stretch of stores. The hall was empty and my footsteps echoed off the concrete walls. It was the stuff of nightmares—a long stretch of unending gray tile and gray walls, lit by green-tinged, humming fluorescent lights, broken only by the regular placement of dark brown doors marked with store names. The doors were all locked, and the employees had long since left.  
    The hall finally ended with an abrupt left turn, following the contour of the mall’s outside walls, and about a hundred feet ahead of that, the hall made a right turn. In the distance, I heard a door slam and hurried toward the corner. The empty hall ended about fifty feet from the corner at a door marked with an exit sign.
    Cautiously, I pushed open the door and found myself in a dark corner of a parking garage. I looked