Dare Me Again Read Online Free PDF Page A

the door to stop the incessant ringing, she didn’t bother to look through the peephole and yanked it open. “Okay, okay! I’m here.”
    She opened her door to find her husband’s best friend, Jack, and his girlfriend, Stevie, standing there. To say she was surprised was an understatement. Her eyes widened as she took in Stevie’s appearance. Stevie Cavanaugh was one tough cookie, but standing there with her long dark hair unbound, dressed in a pair of skinny jeans, black leather riding boots and a fitted white gauze poet shirt, she looked like a cover model. “Stevie, you look amazing.” Gone from her pretty face was the stress of her job as a homicide detective, and also gone was what Kat, who was curvy, thought had been a too-thin body. Stevie had put on a few strategic pounds. Pounds that nicely filled in her curves.
    Kat smiled and stood back, opening the door wider. “Jack, I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but it looks like having an FBI agent boyfriend does a body good.”
    Jack laughed, pulled her across the threshold into his embrace, and planted a kiss right on her lips as Stevie strode past her into the apartment.
    “I keep telling Stevie she looks like a million bucks,” Jack said, holding Kat firmly in his embrace as Stevie continued through the foyer into the hallway, looking pretty nosy.
    “Um, what’s going on?” Kat asked.
    “How long have you have been here?” Jack asked.
    “In the building about twenty minutes, in the apartment maybe five or so. Why?”
    “Pregnancy agrees with you, Doc,” Stevie said over her shoulder as she drew her weapon from the holster nestled at the small of her back. “You look stunning.” As the detective did the stealth cop thing, Jack moved Kat farther into the outside hallway, then gently moved her out of the doorway.
    “Do you two always stop by a friend’s house with your guns drawn, nosing around?” Kat asked.
    “Sit tight, Doc. We just need to clear your place,” Jack said.
    “Of what?”
    When Jack didn’t immediately answer, Kat got riled. “Simon sent you to check up on me, didn’t he?”
    Jack pursed his lips, but didn’t answer.
    “This is Simon totally overreacting and to what, I don’t know!” Kat said, feeling like she was a prisoner in her own life. Really, how many times over the years had she come into her apartment in the middle of the night and was completely safe? She lived in Pac Heights, one of the safest neighborhoods in the city, for Pete’s sake.
    Crossing her arms over her chest, Kat waited for Detective Cavanaugh to “clear” her apartment.
Total
absurdity.
    Stevie strode from the back of her apartment to the foyer at the same time she holstered her gun.
    Given the dread she’d felt standing by the door earlier, Kat sighed with relief. See, it had just been her imagination all along. “Okay, now you can call Simon and tell him he had nothing to—”
    “How long did you say you’ve been here?” Stevie interrupted.
    Kat frowned. “Five maybe ten minutes.”
    “Did you go into your bedroom at all?”
    “No, I was about to when you rang the doorbell.”
    Stevie gave Jack a look that said, “Houston we have a problem.”
    “What?” Kat asked.
    Stevie inclined her head toward the back of the apartment. As Jack moved past her to see for himself, Kat moved with him.
    “Stay here, Doc,” said Stevie, gently but firmly.
    Icy fingers of dread scraped along her spine, making her shiver.
    When Jack returned a minute later, he had the same look on his face as Stevie. Kat swept past them both, strode down the hall and into the bedroom, and stopped short at the threshold. Her knees shook and had Jack not come up behind her and slid his arm around her waist for support, she would have collapsed.
    Her bedroom was trashed. Cancel that, her
bed
was trashed. The headboard cracked in half, pillows torn to shreds, the sheets pulled off and slashed, and—her cheeks flamed. Her panties were ripped into pieces, littering