The Death Dealer Read Online Free PDF Page B

solving anything at all.
    Lori Star? Like hell. She might as well have called herself Moonbeam.
    He went ahead and groaned, thinking that voicing his pain might make him feel a little better. It didn’t.
    Hell, no. Because he’d awakened thinking.
    And all he could think about was the fact that a dead man had spoken to him, and then, as if that hadn’t been bad enough, the news had dragged a damned psychic out of the woodwork. She knew, she just knew, that the driver of the car had been after Sam Latham.
    No, they hadn’t dragged her out of anywhere. She’d come forward, claiming to be eager to help the police.
    She couldn’t identify the car, of course. Because it was as if she had been the one driving it. She had been in his would-be head as he—or she—went after Sam Latham’s car. And then she’d finished up with the dramatic revelation someone else would be murdered within days.
    Later newscasts had delved into the truth about the woman, but too late for him. Genevieve had looked at him with her huge blue imploring eyes. And he’d known right then that he was on the case.
    Though he dreaded it. Dreaded it. And he didn’t know why, other than that it had something to do with that freakin’ psychic.
    It had turned out that Lori Star was an aspiring actress, as well as a supposed psychic. No wonder she’d been so good in front of the camera. But there would be those out there convinced that it was no act, that she was right, that the accident had been no accident.
    Even if she was right—and he sure as hell didn’t see how she could be—he was sure that all she had done was look at a few facts and take a lucky guess. She was definitely not a psychic. She just wanted her fifteen minutes of television fame.
    And he was so angry because…
    Because he had known Leslie. And he hadn’t believed in her at first, when she claimed to talk to the dead. But she had been legit.
    And this girl sure as hell wasn’t.
    He opened his eyes. He wasn’t at home, but he already knew that. He was at Genevieve’s. She hadn’t let him take a cab; she’d insisted he stay on her couch. Lacking both the will and the physical coordination to find a cab willing to go to Brooklyn at that hour, he had shrugged and agreed. And fallen asleep. Or passed out. One or the other.
    He’d been doing all right last night, considering what he’d gone through with Leslie and her ability to commune with the dead, until that damned psychic had shown up on television. And then he’d started calling for the beers hard and fast.
    Now, of course, he was ashamed of himself. Only cowards drank because they’d been spooked. And what a fool he’d been, besides. As far as talking to a dead man went, there was surely a logical explanation for what had happened. One, maybe the EMT had simply been wrong and Brookfield hadn’t died on impact. Or maybe, as Freud might have suggested, Joe had created the man’s voice as a tool to tell him to look for survivors in the car. There. That made sense—so long as he didn’t think about the fact that his inner voice had known the girl’s name.
    And the fact that Lori Star was an annoying fraud seeking the spotlight. Well, hell, that made sense, too. She was just trying to get work.
    So here he was, having had way too much to drink, sleeping on Gen’s sofa. It was a nice one, too. Antique, but restuffed and reupholstered. She loved things that were old and had a story. She and Leslie would have been great friends.
    The thought made him wince and shut his eyes.
    When he opened his eyes again, his face lined with tension, she was there.
    Gen, not Leslie.
    Thank God he was seeing the living, at least.
    That caused a moment’s guilt to trickle down his spine. Leslie…I would love to see you. Your face…
    But that wasn’t really true. He didn’t want to see ghosts.
    No problem. This was Gen in front of him, and she didn’t seem to be judging him for his night of imbibing, even if she probably didn’t