Wicked Craving Read Online Free PDF

moment, and soaked in the healing peace of it all. But today, in this place, the peace had been broken. Even the sea’s essential tranquility couldn’t counteract the sense that something nearby was terribly wrong.
    â€œShe’s down there,” he said, pointing to a set of stone stairs that started at the cliff’s edge and descended to the beach.
    Savannah headed down the steps, taking her time, because they were fairly steep, and there was no handrail. Dirk followed close behind.
    She could feel him tensing, but she knew better than to say anything. Dirk had a pronounced fear of heights. Even a stepladder presented a challenge to his phobic psyche. These stairs had to be a nightmare for him.
    â€œThis cliff’s gotta be seventy feet high,” he said, sounding slightly breathless.
    She thought it was probably more like forty or fifty, but she could understand why it seemed a lot higher to him. And she was relieved for him when they finally reached the bottom and stepped onto the sand.
    She looked to her left and braced herself, as she always did at times like these. The Grim Reaper’s handiwork was seldom pretty and always unsettling, even when the passing was the result of natural causes. But a death under unnatural circumstances was the most unsettling of all. And something told her that Mrs. Wellman probably didn’t suffer a stroke or heart attack and tumble down the cliff.
    Instinctively Savannah knew that, at the very least, this was a tragic accident. Maybe worse.
    But, looking northward, she saw nothing but the beach, more cliffs, and more luxury homes stretching into the misty distance.
    â€œOver here,” Dirk said, heading toward the right and a rocky area, where the sea washed among the stones and receded, leaving tide pools filled with anemones and seaweed.
    Savannah took a moment to reach down and roll up the hems of her linen slacks. Her loafers would be soaked, but her pants didn’t have to be.
    She also paused to note the tracks in the sand where she stood. One set of prints, made by bare feet, led from the water’s edge toward the rocks. Another matching set headed from the rocks back to the beach. She wasn’t surprised to see that the return prints were deeper and not as cleanly defined. It looked like their maker had been running.
    The other two sets, stretching from the stairs to the stones, she would recognize anywhere. They were Dirk’s running sneakers.
    He did more sneaking than running in them, but they had a distinctive tread that she had seen many times at crime scenes throughout the years.
    â€œI see you’ve been down here a couple of times, already,” she said as she caught up to him.
    â€œYeah.” He glanced back at the sand, at his prints. “If I ever commit any sort of felony, I’ll have to buy some new shoes, or you’ll nail me.”
    He stretched out his hand to her, to help her balance as she stepped onto the rocks.
    â€œNaw,” she said, grabbing his hand. “I’d give you a pass.”
    â€œYou would not.”
    â€œThat would depend on whether you cut me in on the deal or not.”
    â€œInteresting that you assume it’d have to do with money. What if it was a crime of passion?”
    â€œOh, please. What…ripping off a donut shop?”
    He looked genuinely sad. “Don’t talk about food.” He pointed toward a particularly large rock. “She’s over there. Behind that one.”
    They walked in that direction, and Savannah could smell the body before she saw it.
    While decomposition might be a perfectly natural and altogether necessary function of nature, Savannah didn’t have to even pretend to like it. And it was the memory of the stench, rather than the visuals, that haunted her when she thought back over the bodies she had viewed.
    She couldn’t help being just a bit relieved when she saw that Dirk had covered the corpse with a yellow tarp. It was