Now or Never Read Online Free PDF Page B

her. The outlying areas of the airport were coming into sight. “Maybe. It’s a thought. Let’s find out if there’s a story lurking under the surface that the police are keeping to themselves. A serial killer on the loose? That kind of thing.” She frowned as the phone crackled with static. “I have to go now, Beth. Talk to you from London.”
    “Bon voyage,” Beth called. “Give a good interview.”
    Ten minutes later, Mallory Malone was being VIP’d straight through to the Concorde lounge, where she boarded the flight immediately.
    Fifteen minutes later she was airborne. Refusing a glass of champagne and orange juice, she sipped a cup of tea. The man sitting beside her seemed eager to talk, but she ignored him.
    Thrusting Summer Young from her mind, she took out her papers and went over the questions she would ask in the interview.
    The flight was almost over before she knew it. She went to the bathroom, flicked powder over her nice but slightlybumpy nose,slicked the MAC mocha lipstick over her mouth and brushed her short blond hair. Out of consideration for her fellow passengers, she did not spray Nocturnes onto her pulse points or into the soft hollow between her breasts.
    She stared at herself in the mirror, feeling the aircraft move beneath her feet. Here she was, plain little Mary Mallory Malone, a nobody from a small town in Oregon, flying faster than sound and about to meet one of the richest villains in the world. She smiled. Sometimes she didn’t believe herself.
    A short while later she was wafted through immigration and into a waiting Rolls, on her way to London and the luxurious Lanesborough Hotel, where she would have a large suite, complete with her own butler.
    “Oh, Mary Mallory,” she said to herself, awed. “You’ve come a long way from those all-night buses and the rusting turquoise Chevy with the chrome fins.”

6
    “G OTTA GIVE YOU A for effort, Prof,” Rossetti said six hours later, on their way back to Boston. They were at a roadside café eating either breakfast or lunch—he wasn’t sure which, because by now he had lost track of time.
    “Thanks. It’s not great, but at least we got the framework of a likeness from them.” Harry stared at the photo-fit picture of the killer. Caucasian, narrow face, big mouth with thin lips, broad forehead, a shock of dark hair. And those staring eyes that had burned into his victim’s memory.
    It had taken four hours of intense work to delve from the minds of the two shocked fishermen the vague memory of a man they had glimpsed only for a couple of seconds. At first they had insisted they didn’t recall a thing: it had been too dark, too quick, and he had been gone almost before they registered he was there. But then Harry had gone to work on them, leading them back into the moment before they saw the girl, those vital seconds when their brains had taken an instant flash photo of the killer.
    He had told them what the victim had said about the man’s eyes, and they had choked up when he said they were the last words she spoke. They were decent guys, eager to help. Then Latchwell had gone to work, and now they had a probable description.
    “‘Medium height and build,’” Harry read again, “‘thin-faced, clean-shaven. Prominent eyes with heavybrows. Thick dark hair, the bushy kind that stands on end. Wearing dark clothing. Driving a small dark-colored truck or a wagon.’”
    He said, “It’ll be front page in the
Herald
and the
Globe
, and in the morning tabloids, and maybe the nationals.”
    Rossetti shrugged—he didn’t expect much from the publicity. “We’ll see what it trawls in besides the nuts looking to get in on the act and for a moment of glory. And the little old ladies who are sure he was hiding in their closet last night.”
    He slurped his coffee noisily, and Harry glared at him. “You should quit drinking that stuff. Your stomach must be lined with caffeine.”
    “Think how ugly I’d look if Doc Blake took his