Shadow's Edge Read Online Free PDF Page B

gentle tug of his teeth.
    “I want you, I want you, I want—”
    But her whispered chant was cut off by the lips crushing down on hers. The fingers dug into the flesh at her hips. Her hands reached out, pulled the face down harder. She twined her fingers into locks of thick, silken hair.
    She pressed her body up against a hard chest, wanting more, so much more, but suddenly the kiss was over, the hands were gone, and nothing more remained but a low, throaty laugh that drifted into silence as she jerked upward out of bed, waking, and sat trembling and gasping in the dark room.
    It was hours before she fell back to sleep.
    When she opened her eyes in the morning, she was lying on her side, knees drawn up, hands folded beneath her cheek, the bed sheets in disarray around her waist. Sunlight slanted through the slit in the heavy blackout shades and fell into a pool of gold on the beige carpet.
    A lone seagull cried out somewhere in the distance and the sharp tang of hot espresso reached her nose from the neighbor’s kitchen. The alarm clock swam into view, the small bedside table with its reading lamp, framed photo of her mother in a rare smile, her desk with computer and telephone beyond.
    The book she was reading before bed lay open upon the nightstand, though she remembered distinctly closing it before setting it down and turning off the light.
    She frowned and stared at it for a moment before pushing herself up from the pillow to a sitting position. She
had
closed it, she knew—she remembered thinking at the time that she shouldn’t be dog-earing a library book. She picked the book up and looked at it, then decided she’d probably been too tired to remember anything clearly. With ashrug, she set it back down on the nightstand, yawned, and stretched.
    She stumbled out of bed, feeling soft carpet then cool tile beneath her feet as she entered the bathroom. Her reflection in the mirror showed evidence of the night: hair knotted and wild from tossing, red, bleary eyes with puffy lids, deep shadows beneath.
    She made a face in the mirror, turned on the shower, then bent down under the sink to get her brush, thinking she would try to get some of the knots out of her hair while she waited for the water to get hot.
    When she opened the cabinet under the sink, she saw her makeup bag had been moved from its spot in the wire pull-out basket. The lotions and perfumes stored next to it were in slight disarray.
    She stood so quickly she almost banged her head against the countertop.
    She was fastidiously neat. She had to be, the miniscule size of her apartment dictated it. Everything had its place, every space was utilized and arranged for maximum efficiency. Her cosmetics were always in perfect order.
    And now they were not.
    She tried not to panic. This was, after all, practically nothing. She must have forgotten to tidy this area yesterday, she’d been too tired, had felt unwell. Yes, that was it. She’d felt unwell and was mixing things up in her mind. She let the cabinet door swing shut and stepped into the shower.
    After she dressed, Jenna went to make herself a cup of coffee. As she stood in the kitchen spooning coffee grounds into the filter, she noticed that one of her leather-bound photo albums, kept in a bookshelf in the living room, stooda few inches out from the others, as if it had been returned hurriedly to its place but had not been fully pushed back in.
    A serpentine flash of premonition crawled up her spine.
    She went to the front door and checked the lock, but it was latched securely, as were all the windows and the patio door.
    Jenna stood silent in the living room for a long time, staring out toward the navy strip of ocean shimmering beyond the sand, lost in thought as the mug of coffee in her hand grew cold.
    Getting into her locked apartment had been the easy part.
    Leander had merely pushed himself through the hairline crack in the upper corner of her bathroom window, the one she would finally notice when it