Prey of Desire Read Online Free PDF Page A

She'd been crying.
    Behind
her, a Chevy pick-up carrying an angry boyfriend skidded out of the parking lot
and onto the street. Its tires screeched as he sped away. Through teary eyes,
she watched him leave.
    Out the
corner of her eye, she noticed the big semi truck pull around and park. Brakes
squealed as steam released above the tires. It blocked her view of the
storefront and engulfed her in deep shadows. Standing at the phone booth, the
crying teenager fished a quarter out of her pocket and deposited it into the
coin slot. She dialed. The phone rang.
    That's
when she noticed it: A sticky, reddish-brown gunk on the pay phone, more
reddish-brown splatters on the plexi -glass. She
touched the glass, removing a spec of crust.
    The
receiver to her ear, she listened to it ring again. Her father answered.
    “Brianna,
is that you?”  came his overjoyed voice through
the phone. “ Happy New Year, baby... Are you okay?”
    “Daddy.” She
looked around. There was a puddle of the reddish-brown stuff at her feet, and a
trail winding through the pavement in the parking lot.
    “Daddy.” Her
voice trembled. “I think something's happened.”

 
     
    * * * * *
* *

 
     
    Kim and
Mallory made it home after two that morning. Zeus was waiting for them and Kim
could see his head staring impatiently out the front bay window in Mallory’s
townhome as they pulled up. Mallory was still begging for details about Kim’s
time with the Congressman as Zeus greeted them with leaps and bounds, wagging
his stubby tail. Mallory screamed at him for jumping on her. Kim hugged him and
walked him next door to their home.  
    Once the
Doberman was fed, walked and laying securely at her feet, she collapsed in her
grand-father's old recliner and wrapped herself in the hand-stitched quilt her
grandmother had made.
    Burrowed into
the quilt as if she could stave off the cold dread stealing over her, she
waited for Ross. To pass the time she found an old scrapbook and thumbed
through the pages. Between its covers were all the love letters he had ever
written to her.
    She
lifted one handwritten poem from the book. A poem she'd read for the gazillionth time. Sighing, she read it once again.

 
    “Oh, Love
rips the heart in pieces,
    When
distance fills the empty creases
    Of time
    And days
become long stretches
    Of pain
and wretches
    Of
torment
    When our love ceases.

 
    “So take
what little comfort and solace
    To atone
    In
knowing that you are not alone,
    For every
tear that you have shed
    My own
heart has wept and bled.”

 
    Ross
wrote that, and it made Kim smile.
    Turning,
she read the note she'd received at the New Year's Eve Party again. “ If you
forget me, there's something I want you to know” Her eyes tearing, she
placed it on a blank page. It was now three weeks, five days and 23 hours.
    “Oh, Ross,”
she said quietly, impatiently. Where was he? Would he call? Or would he just
show up at her door step? She imagined the door bursting open and Ross
stepping inside. He would come to her, pick her up in his arms, then carry her upstairs to their bed.
    Over the
last three weeks, she had considered time and again just dropping by his job at
Eddy’s Garage downtown. But she didn’t want to make the first move. She didn’t
want to look desperate. So she waited. Kim knew sooner or later, Ross would
contact her.    
    By
two-thirty, she found the remote and turned on the television. She flipped
aimlessly from channel to channel until finding an “I Love Lucy ” rerun.
    Shifting
comfortably in the recliner, she laughed. Lucy read a murder mystery and now
she thought Ricky was trying to do her in. She'd seen this episode a hundred
times, and it made her miss being a little girl who would climb in her Grampa’s lap when he was trying to read the newspaper. With
no other option, he would turn on reruns of “I Love Lucy” and she would curl up
beside him, and they would laugh and laugh.
    Zeus
lifted his head, cocking it to one side,