The Last Kiss Goodbye Read Online Free PDF

table in the front hall when she’d rushed inside earlier. She knew from experience that here the response to 911 could sometimes be slow, and every instinct she possessed screamed at her that they needed help now.
    “This chick ain’t your problem,” Michael growled from behind her.
    Looking around, Charlie saw the shimmer that was him at the top of the hallway, and drew a ragged breath.
    “Did you do it? Did you pray?” she demanded fiercely.
    “Hell, no.”
    “Where are you going? Don’t leave me!” the girl shrieked after her. The echoing shrillness of it practically curled Charlie’s hair.
    “I’m not leaving you.” Charlie snatched up her purse. “I’m coming right back.” Then, at Michael, she snapped, “Pray, damn it,” and bolted past him.
    “Leave her,” Michael said furiously. “Run the fuck upstairs and lock yourself in your bedroom. You hear me? This whole savior complex you got going on is gonna get you killed.”
    “Savior complex?” Charlie was outraged.
    “Oh, yeah.” The shimmer appeared in front of her, blocking her path.
    “Go away, ” Charlie snapped before she thought. Fumbling around in her purse in an effort to find her phone, a process that was slightly hampered by the fact that she was running and glaring at him at the same time, she dodged around him because that seemed more appropriate than running right through him, which she easily could have done, and immediately took it back. “I mean, stay. Only out of the way.”
    “Damn it, Charlie — ”
    “Who are you talking to?” Sounding terrified, the girl hugged the phone to her ear. Holding the clump of rapidly reddening paper towels clamped to her forehead, she jiggled from foot to foot in nervous agitation as she watched Charlie dart toward her while conducting a running argument with something she couldn’t see.
    “Don’t worry about it,” Charlie snapped, her façade of composure on the verge of coming dangerously unglued. Sliding to a halt feet from the girl, Charlie found her phone at last and snatched it out of her purse.
    “A cell phone? Hell, I thought you were rooting around in there for a gun.” Michael was right behind her. “You do have a gun around here somewhere, right? Now would be the time to grab it.”
    Unable to reply, both because she didn’t want to be caught supposedly talking to herself again and because, in actual fact, she didn’t possess a gun at all and didn’t want to listen to him bitch about it, Charlie ignored that. Shooting increasingly paranoid glances out the windows even as she fumbled to call up her contact list, she listened as the girl gasped into the landline, “I need the police! Now! A man’s chasing me! He has a gun and he wants to kill me!” Then, to Charlie, who had just hit the button to call her across-the-street neighbor Ken Ewell the (armed) sheriff’s deputy, she cried, “They need the address! What’s the address?”
    “A death wish and a savior complex.” Despite the savagery of his tone, Michael’s voice in her ear would have been welcome if what he was saying hadn’t been so maddening. “Looks like the real question is, how many ways can you come up with to get yourself killed before somebody actually wins the prize?”
    Shut up, Charlie almost snarled, but managed to swallow the words in time so that the girl wouldn’t go totally ape. Heart racing, working hard to focus on the here and now and at the same time disregard the furious vibrations Michael was sending her way, she listened to the Ewells’ phone beginning to ring in her ear as she answered the girl in a carefully controlled voice, “23 Laurel Way.”
    “Take it from me, babe, being dead ain’t that fun.”
    A quick glare over her shoulder in the direction of that velvety drawl found Michael in heat vapor mode right behind her.
    Her gut twisted as she realized one more time how tenuous his hold on this world was.
    The girl repeated the address into the phone then moaned to the