The Last Kiss Goodbye Read Online Free PDF Page A

happening to him, but maybe she could make a difference here, tonight, this minute, in the real world, for this endangered girl. And maybe, if he followed her advice, she could help him avoid the ultimate horror, after all. It might be the only thing she was able to do for him. Because the sad truth was, even if he did deserve eternal damnation, she couldn’t bear to think of him suffering it.
    Fool.
    He snorted. “Kinda late for that. Damn it, what the hell are you doing ?”
    As she raced past him she saw that he was little more than a shimmer again now, and her heart sank.
    “What I can.” Instead of running into the hall as he’d clearly expected, she darted around the breakfast bar into the food preparation area, which was basically a narrow galley kitchen that looked across the open counter of the breakfast bar at the table and the back door beyond. The girl was there, in the process of snatching the phone from the kitchen wall. She threw a wide-eyed look over her shoulder at Charlie.
    “Who are you talking to? Oh, no, are you nuts ?” The girl squeezed closer to the wall as though to put as much distance between them as possible. Of course, the girl could neither see nor hear Michael. Looking at things from her point of view, having the person she was counting on for help conduct a frantic, one-sided conversation with an unseen entity must be unnerving. Charlie sympathized, but there were more urgent matters to deal with. Like where the girl’s attacker was now.
    “How close behind you is he?” Casting another lightning glance out the windows—nothing to see but a whole lot of dark, plus silvery streaks as rain ran down the glass—Charlie felt her stomach cramp.
    “Close. I don’t know. It was dark.” As she gasped out the words, the girl looked at Charlie like she was afraid of her now, too.
    “I’m a doctor, okay? You can trust me.” Usually, when she was where anyone could overhear, Charlie was way careful not to talk back to the spirits who afflicted her, but this moment—Michael—was the stress-induced exception. God, he was gone again! Looking desperately around, she wanted to scream his name, but did not. Not only to keep from freaking the girl out, or to save herself from looking, um, nuts, but also because she knew that it would do absolutely no good. Taking a deep breath, she did her best to focus on the girl. “Who’s chasing you? Is it your boyfriend, or—”
    “ No. You don’t get it, do you? He’s a killer. ” The girl kept throwing quick, terrified glances at the door. “Oh, my God, is it 911 here?” Shaking visibly, breathing like she might hyperventilate at any second, she was already frantically stabbing an unsteady finger at the number pad. With her inky black hair streaming water and blood pouring down the right quarter of her face, she looked like something out of a nightmare—or a horror movie. The mere sight of her was enough to send goose bumps racing over Charlie’s skin—and convince her that whatever the details might prove to be, the girl definitely had been the victim of something horrific.
    “Yes.” Shooting more increasingly spooked glances out first the window in the door and then the big window behind the table—as dark as it was outside, with the light on in the kitchen anyone out there could see everything that was going on inside, she realized with a stab of dread—Charlie had an epiphany: there was a better way to get help fast. But first things first. Working hard to maintain the outward appearance of calm, she grabbed a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and thrust them at the girl.
    “Press that against the cut on your forehead , ” she ordered. “Hold it firmly. Do it. ”
    That last was in response to the girl’s hesitation, which manifested itself in a suspicious look from the paper towels to Charlie. As the girl did as she was told, Charlie left her to run for the cell phone in her purse, which she had dropped on the console