Deception (Southern Comfort) by Lisa Clark O'Neill Read Free Book Online Page B

unnecessary attention.  If she’d had any idea that her brother had moved out of the cute duplex he’d been renting and into that dump just so that she could attend classes full time, she’d never have agreed to let him help her with tuition.  But as usual, he’d suffered in silence just because he wanted her to have something better.
    Pushing her key between her fingers and scanning the perimeter for anything hinky, Sam scurried through the creeping mist which had begun to roll in from the nearby waterfront.  The air pressed in on her, heavy and electric, a portent of the rain which was due by morning. Despite the mild temperature her shoulders quivered with an unexpected chill.
    Stopping beside a battered minivan with fast food wrappers piled on the dash, Sam took a second to do another quick survey of her surroundings.  This was the third or fourth time in the past couple of weeks that she’d gotten this itchy feeling between her shoulder blades, as if an unseen presence was boring a hole through her clothes, watching her with feral eyes.
    Sucking in a breath, Sam stepped quickly away from the vehicle, surreptitiously checking beneath it before doing a slow three-sixty, chin held high.  She made sure her body language indicated pretty clearly that she was not going to be easy pickings, although she found no obvious source for her instinctive alarm.  Maybe she was just tired, overreacting to the situation because she still harbored too many questions about what had happened to her brother several months ago.  The police still had no suspect for the shooting which had landed Donnie in the ER, nor any explanation as to why he’d fled prior to surgery and found himself in the path of an oncoming bus. 
    But she’d learned, over the past decade, to pay attention to her intuition. And right now that little voice was telling her that she was not alone in this lot.
    Feeling an unexpected rush of nerves, Sam set her feet into motion, sticking close to the pools of bluish light cast by the flickering security lamps.  The mist had grown thicker, recoiling from her scissoring legs before settling down to obscure the blacktop.  With one ear Sam listened for the telltale scuffle of soles hitting pavement, while the other ear registered the reverberation of her thudding heart.
    Shit.  She hated feeling scared.  But she knew it was simply her body’s instinctive reaction to a potentially threatening situation.  Picking up the pace, Sam broke into a jog toward the back of the lot.  She’d almost reached her car when the cat darted across her path.
    “AAhhhh!”  Grabbing her chest, jumping three feet, Sam collapsed against a nearby pickup. The slick metal felt cool against the bare skin of her trembling arms.  The damn orange tabby had nearly given her a heart attack.  Rolling her eyes heavenward, Sam took a deep breath and smiled ruefully when the interloper brushed against her jean-clad legs.  She glanced down at the ferocious feline, squatting to stroke it as it began to purr.
    “Well, you might be feral, but you’re not exactly what I was expecting.”  The tabby was huge, sleek and muscular with the proud arrogance of a tom.  Obviously he’d been around neighborly people before, or else he knew a sucker when he spotted one, because he rolled over on his back and scooted from side to side, begging for a belly rub. “Ham,” Samantha accused softly when he executed a full back circle, digging his sharp claws into the blacktop to push himself along.  The rumbling from beneath his fur grew so loud that she had to laugh.  If this was the predator she’d been sensing then she needed to dial the paranoia down a notch.  The cat flipped onto his feet in a move so graceful it defied the laws of physics, strolling over to poke its snout into the canvas bag which had dropped at Sam’s feet.
    “Nosy.”  She gathered up the loose change, half-eaten Milky Way, and borrowed library book which had spilled from