Twilight Illusions Read Online Free PDF Page B

shook her head at the bitter irony. Her, running from death. Her, not wanting to die. God, what a joke! Not for the first time, she heard herself cursing fate for its idiotic mistake in choosing Tawny as the victim of this sick killer’s whim. It should have been Shannon. Tawny had a future, a life waiting for her. A career. She’d have made it happen, too. Shannon knew she would have. She had a way of willing things to go the way she wanted. Shannon swore and swept a hand over her damp eyes.
    It shouldn’t have been Tawny. It should have been me. God, why wasn’t it me? At least one of us could have gone on, lived, maybe had a family someday….
    Blinking, she crawled out of the self-pitying puddle she’d stepped into. If she didn’t get herself together, it would be her. And it would end any chance she had of bringing Tawny’s killer down before her time on this planet ran out. If he was coming for her, it would probably be tonight. Tawny had died the same night she’d volunteered as his assistant. And as far as she could tell, the other woman, Rosalie, hadn’t been seen since the night she’d taken her turn in the spotlight. So he would probably come tonight. Probably pretty soon.
    She was tired. Damn, but she was tired.
    Shannon dipped her hand into the fanny pack for the stubby .38 revolver. It had been with her the whole time she’d been at Damien’s. She’d never really been in any danger. She could have dropped to one knee, pulled out the little black handgun and pumped all six rounds into him in under three seconds. Sure, it would’ve been tough to prove self-defense, when she’d broken into his house and he’d been unarmed. So, she’d have done some time.
    Not a hell of a lot, though.
    She took the gun into the bathroom with her, set it on the little sand-colored counter that surrounded the shell-shaped coral basin. Within easy reach. No one was going to sneak up on her. Not even someone who walked as quietly as he did.
    She stripped off her clothes, quickly and not too neatly, tossing them and leaving them where they landed. Then she stepped beneath the hot, pounding spray and just let it soothe her aching muscles. God, it would be good to take a break from all of this. Relax with a good book, or a bowl of popcorn and an old Bogart movie. Jump in the car that often cost her her grocery money and head south until she hit sand and sun, and just bask for a while. But she knew she couldn’t. Not now. She’d set the wheels in motion and she had to see things through to the end. There wasn’t a lot of time. She was all too aware of that.
    Even with Tawny’s death and all its repercussions, all the questions screaming for answers, Shannon still couldn’t stop her mind from wandering where she least wanted it to go.
    Damien Namtar.
    The image of him floated into her brain again, damn him. He was a murder suspect. Not to the police, granted. But in her mind he was. Right now he was the only suspect. So she shouldn’t think about the odd awareness she felt around him, the prickling sensations that encompassed her, the palpable touch of those eyes. “Physical distractions,” she muttered, and tipped her head back to let the hot water drench her hair. She inhaled the moist steam, hoping it would put some sense into her head. He was utterly handsome, in a dark, exotic kind of way. Add to that the fact that his performances were always loaded with sexual innuendo, and it was no wonder her libido was responding this way.
    Or was it? She’d thought herself immune to sexual desire. She’d had little experience; the clumsy, drunken gropings of the man who was supposed to be her guardian, the foster parent she’d been sent to when she was sixteen. She’d had no choice about going to live there. Orphans, abandoned children didn’t have a hell of a lot of choices, and God knows she’d had none to speak of up to