Stealing Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

her vote. Besides, she was an interesting lady."

    Cassie sipped her coffee, her gaze on the cup. "So I've been told. There's lots of her stuff packed away; sooner or later I'll have to go through it. Looks like she kept a journal, as well as all her correspondence. Maybe I'll finally get to know her myself. I'm not in a hurry about that though. There's so much else to do."

    Ben had a hunch that she had put off going through her aunt's things not because of being busy elsewhere but simply because she was not yet ready to open herself up, even to the personality and memories of a dead woman. From what the L.A. detective had told him, Cassie had been worse than walking wounded when she had retreated here nearly six months before. Detective Logan believed she had been about a breath away from a complete physical, emotional, and mental breakdown, the result of living through one nightmare too many.

    But Ben accepted her explanation, at least for the moment, and said only, "You're renovating the house?"

    "No, just updating a bit." Her glance flickered toward his face, then fell again. "I like working with my hands. Working with wood."

    "Touching beautiful things because you can't touch people?"

    That brought her gaze to his face, and this time it stayed. There were smudges of exhaustion underneath her pale eyes and he could read nothing in them, yet he still felt the warmth as clearly as though she had reached out and laid her hand upon him. It was an unnerving sensation, yet one he knew he had wanted to feel again.

    "That's too simple," she said.

    "Is it? You avoid physical contact with people. Or is it just me?"

    Cassie shook her head. "It's… uncomfortable for me. I'm a touch telepath. It's very difficult for me to block out someone else's thoughts and emotions when I'm in physical contact with them." Her shoulders lifted and fell.

    "So you just avoid touch."

    She looked back at her cup. "There are things in the human mind that are not meant to be seen or touched, things seldom even acknowledged by our conscious selves. Fantasies, impulses, rages, hatreds, primitive instincts. They're buried deep, usually, and that's where they belong. In the darkest parts of our minds."

    "The parts you can see."

    Again she shrugged. "I've seen enough. Too much. I try not to look."

    "Except when murderers blast their way in?"

    "I tried to shut him out, believe me. I didn't want to know what he was going to do. What he did."

    "But if there was even a chance you might stop him – "

    "I didn't, did I? Stop him. I went to the sheriff. I went to you. I even opened myself up and crawled into his… darkest places. But it didn't stop him. It never stops them."

    "That's not what Detective Logan told me."

    Cassie shook her head. "They're caught eventually. Maybe I can help with that, maybe not. But people still die. And there's not a single goddamned thing I can do to change that." Her voice was soft.

    "So you ran here, is that it? Here, in this isolated house near a small town where you could hope for peace."

    "Don't I have a right to peace? Doesn't everyone?"

    "Yes. But, Cassie, you can't ignore what you see any more than I could ignore it if I saw someone stabbed on a street corner. I would have to do what I could to help. So do you."

    She drew a breath. "I've spent ten years doing what I could to help. I'm tired. I just want to be left alone,"

    "Do you think he'll leave you alone?"

    She was silent.

    "Cassie?"

    "No," she whispered.

    Ben wished she would look at him again, but her gaze seemed welded to her coffee cup. "Then help us. Becky Smith was just twenty, Cassie. A college student who loved kids and wanted to be a teacher. She deserved her life. She deserved her chance. Help us catch the bastard who took that away from her."

    "You don't know what you're asking."

    "I have some idea. I know it'll take a lot out of you. But we need your help. We have to do whatever it takes to get this guy before he gets away. Or