Dream of Danger (A Brown and De Luca Novella) by MAGGIE SHAYNE Read Free Book Online

ESP. It was just the result of having been blind for twenty years, and having to learn to rely on my other senses.
    This felt very similar. I knew Amy was in trouble just as sure as I’d known her boyfriend Mel was a lying sack of shit the first time I’d set eyes on him. And I also knew she was in the direction we were now heading. Now, maybe that was a little harder for me to explain. Maybe being blind for twenty years shouldn’t turn me into a human Amy detector. Maybe it made no sense at all. But it was happening, and I didn’t have time to try to make sense out of it right now. It had a logical explanation. Everything did. I’d figure it out in time.
    Right now all that mattered was finding Amy before those two assholes in the pickup murdered her and dumped her in a swamp somewhere.
    “Hey.” Mason put a hand over mine where they were folded in my lap. “You okay?”
    “Yeah, why?”
    “You’re trembling.”
    “I do not tremble. I’m shivering. Turn up the fucking heat, why don’t you?”
    He complied, even though he and I both knew I was shaking from fear, not cold. I could talk a big game, and he would always let me. It was one of the things I loved about him. Liked about him, I mean. His phone rang. He picked it up fast and hit the speaker button. “Detective Brown,” he said.
    “Trooper Simpson,” the other guy replied. “Your MP bought gas here at 9:36 p.m. last night. Security footage shows that pickup was here at the same time. Two men in it, just like in the photo. There was no interaction between them. Ms. Montrose left alone. The pickup pulled out a minute and a half behind her.”
    Mason looked at me. I looked back. “Anything else?” he asked.
    “Yeah. One guy got out of the truck briefly. Walked out of camera range. But neither of them ever went into the store Cto m">
    “They were following her,” I said.
    “Looks that way, ma’am.” Then, to Mason, “We’ll keep you posted, Detective. You’ll do the same?”
    “Absolutely. Thanks for the info.” Mason disconnected.
    “What the hell is going on?” I wasn’t really asking him. I was asking...I don’t know. Fate. The universe. God.
    “I don’t know. But it’s looking now as if this was premeditated. Which means it was probably someone she knew.”
    “Mel. She probably threatened to tell his wife about them, like you theorized. He probably got some friend to help him shut her up. Or hired a pair of thugs to—”
    “You still feel like we’re going the right way?”
    I nodded and realized that he was trying to distract me from where my dark thoughts were heading. I also realized that it was getting superhot in Mason’s car. And that I was still shivering.

Chapter Seven
     
    While we drove, Mason talked to his boss, Chief Subrinsky, a man I’d grown to respect, even though he was everything I usually hated. A rule book—quoting, frequently shouting, type-A personality who wouldn’t know a Zen moment from a Zumba class. But he was all about the job. Doing it right. Doing it well. Doing it honestly. And since the job was protecting and serving the public, he was a damn hard guy to hate. Even if he did yell too much.
    The chief was presumably filling Mason in, and I didn’t even bother asking why Mason didn’t put him on speaker. He was protecting me. Making sure no shocking information got blurted out without sufficient preparation. Like that they’d found Amy’s body or something.
    And since that wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to hear blurted out, I didn’t give him a hard time about acting as my personal defense system. It was kind of touching, which was kind of weird, because if any other male had played the I’ll-protect-the-delicate-female card, I’d have coldcocked him.
    When he hung up, Mason relayed the gist of the conversation to me. “They’ve searched her apartment, and they’ve got a digital forensics expert going over her laptop. So far there’s nothing that seems like it might relate. They