Killing Me Softly Read Online Free PDF Page B

time.”
    Dawn blinked and stared at the phone, but Beth wasgone. She’d disconnected. So Dawn replaced the receiver on its cradle and peeled back her covers. Her birth mother had just called her a coward. She had never once even hinted that she felt that way. Dawn had thought Beth understood why she had to run away, had to stay away, from that place where so much had happened. Where her murderous maniac of a father had died at long last after a string of murders and assaults. From that instant when he’d spoken his dying words to her, told her his so-called gift was hers from then on.
    Gift. Who the hell called insanity a gift?
    Oh, there was more to it than just madness. The dead really did talk to Mordecai. But he couldn’t tell the voices of the dead from the voices of his own in sanity, and in the end, he’d nearly destroyed everyone he’d ever loved. Even her.
    His “gift” was nothing she wanted. Nothing she would ever want.
    She flung back the covers, shuffled into the bathroom and cranked on the shower taps. Shrugging out of her robe and letting it fall to the floor, Dawn stepped into the spray. Then she stood there with her head hanging down, and Bryan’s face front and center in her mind’s eye. He must hate her for walking away without a word five years ago. He must hate her for ignoring every effort he’d made to get her to talk to him, to at least tell him why. He must hate her by now. He ought to hate her. And she couldn’t blame him for it, but God, she didn’t want to see that hatred in his eyes. Not face-to-face, up close and personal. She didn’t think she could take that. It would hurt too much.
    They’d been so in love. It had been new and fresh, and fun. She’d met him when his father had fallen for Beth, and it had felt as if they were meant for each other. So young and inexperienced, that when they finally made love for the first and only time, it had barely lasted five minutes.
    She smiled softly when she thought of that completely unsatisfying, awkward night when they’d lost their virginity to each other. It was the sexiest memory of her entire life.
    Damn, she didn’t want to go home. She really didn’t. But there was no point in arguing about it. She was going. Today. And deep down inside, now that she had no choice in the matter, she couldn’t wait to see Bryan again.

3
    â€œI t wasn’t the three hours of questioning that got to me,” Bryan said to his father. He had one hand braced on the mantel and was staring into the Blackberry Inn’s oversize fireplace as if there were dancing flames to contemplate. Which there were not. It was midsummer and still too warm for a fire, even in Vermont. But staring at the dark, empty hearth kept him from letting his eyes get stuck on one of the countless photos of Dawn, or him and Dawn together, that littered every room of this place.
    She was on her way. Right now. Beth was picking her up at the airport in Burlington, an hour away. She would be here soon. Any minute now, and he could barely believe he was going to see her again for the first time in five years. He was going to see her again, now, in the middle of the biggest mess he’d ever landed in. He was going to see her. And it was going to rip his guts out.
    â€œSo what did?” Josh asked.
    â€œWhat did what?” Bryan glanced at his father, sittingin the big rocker recliner with a cup of coffee and looking less like the relaxed, content innkeeper than he had since he’d first arrived in this town. Not that he ever really fit the stereotype, with his athletic build and good looks. Bryan took after him, and thanked his lucky stars often for his father’s genes.
    But Josh had relaxed a lot since retiring from government work to run the inn alongside his wife. Tonight, though, Bryan could see the lines of tension creasing his brow. He was worried about his only son. This whole thing had his