The Nightmare Game Read Online Free PDF

skin, which marked so easily,
showed no evidence of trauma. What was going on? I had to get out of here. I
refused to be left alone with Rochere again.
    “Can you wait here for me to finish?” I asked him.
“It shouldn’t take long.
    “Take your time, ma’am. I’m in no hurry.”
    “Thank you.” There was no way for him to know just
how truly thankful I was.
    “There’s no need for that,” Rochere replied,
sounding for all the world as if she were someone whose opinion counted to me.
“I close early on Fridays. I will walk you there myself.”
    “No, I’ll take this gentleman up on his offer.” I
told her. I turned to him and said, imploring, “Can you please wait for me?”
    “Sure,” the young man said cheerfully, not budging
an inch. “I don’t mind helpin’ at all.”
    “You don’t know where it is,” said Rochere, almost
grating her teeth.
    “Hey, I grew up in the city,” he replied. “Just
give me the address and I can find just about any place.”
    “Surely, you don’t trust a complete stranger…”
Rochere said to me in a tone of voice that implied he would strangle me the
minute we turned the corner.
    “He looks trustworthy to me,” I snapped back at
her. Having almost been strangled once, I figured the odds of it happening
twice in one day were pretty slim.
    “I suppose some people would trust almost anyone these days,” she admonished me in a voice that
implied I would be rubbish if I were to trust a strange man.
    “I know him as well as I know you,” I said edgily,
“and frankly, I like him a lot better so far than I do you.” The long wait, the
hallucination and feeling ill had taken all the patience I had out of me. “Now,
I’ve been here long enough. Let’s say we get this show on the road and you give
me the key.” I wiped sweat off my forehead, which was hot and clammy. I was
running a fever and I had to lie down soon.
    “You’ll have to wait awhile for her while I get
the paperwork done,” she pointedly told the young man. “I’ll understand if you
prefer not to stick around.”
    “Not a problem,” he said unflappably, “Happy to
wait, happy to help.” He grinned and winked at me with an expression that read
that he wouldn’t want to be left alone with Rochere either.
    “Very well, then,” she looked up at me, with
forced politeness. “You will excuse me for making you wait as long as I did, I
needed to write some information down,” she pointed to her ledger, “while it
was still fresh in my mind. I’m not as young now as I once was and I didn’t
want to forget it.” Her words sounded false and too practiced, as if this was
an act that she’d used too many times before. She looked up at me with a smile
that sat alone on her face, her eyes were cold and hard. She opened a folder
that was lying on her desk and pulled out some papers. “So, you must be
Carolyne Shea,” she said, reading off a sheet of the paper she had just pulled
out of the file.
    “No, I’m Ashley Adams, Carolyne’s friend,” I
corrected her.
    “And where is Miss Shea? The reservation is in her
name.”
    “She couldn’t make it.”
    While Rochere looked at me even more severely than
before, there was a slight smile at one corner of her mouth that made her
expression almost vile.
    “Oh, really? But the reservation is in her name.
There is no Ashley Adams listed on the reservation. I’m sorry, miss, but I can
only rent the property to parties that I have listed on the rental agreement.”
She was practically licking her lips in telling me this news.
    Dammit! I cursed
silently. Why couldn’t I have just stayed in a hotel ?
My skin, now drenched in an icy sweat, was starting to feel waxy, I could feel
my hands shaking and I badly needed to lie down.
    “What’s this then?” the young man, who was now
staring over Rochere’s shoulder, pointed to the paper.
    Rochere, who did not see him walk up behind her,
jumped.
    “Young man! Don’t ever walk up behind me like
that!