Guilty as Sin by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online Page B

her lap as an image of Garrett Wright rose in her mind. The image he had given her in the interview room—pale, drawn, delicate: a victim, not a monster.
     
    Although there were people ready to pin the blame for these crimes on anyone, there were a great many people in Deer Lake who would not want to pin the blame on Garrett Wright. People who had trusted him, respected him, looked up to him. The students from Harris. The people who backed the juvenile offenders' program he had helped establish. There would be people who wouldn't want to believe, because, if a man like Garrett Wright could be guilty of something so ugly, then who could they trust?
     
    Who can you trust? The question brought a chill with it. A memory of old cynicism and hard-won wisdom. Trust no one.
     
    She didn't want to believe that anymore. She had done her time on cases of smoke and mirrors, where nothing was as it seemed, where enemies came with smiles and stroked with one hand while the other plunged the knife in deep.
     
    "Long ago and far away," she murmured, magic words to ward off the memories.
     
    She could see Wright against a dark background. Staring at her with eyes that were bottomless black holes, soulless, staring into her, through her. The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile that made ^cr blood run cold. He knew something she didn't. The game plan. The big picture. He looked inside her and laughed at something she couldn't see.
     
    Then his image blurred into another. "I frighten you, Ms. North? You don't strike me as the sort of woman who would be easily frightened." He stepped closer, leaned closer. She tried to back away and found herself held to the spot, unable to move. She could feel the energy around him. Seductive. The word wrapped itself around her like curling fingers of smoke. ". . . assumptions can be very dangerous things . . ."
     
    Ellen jerked awake with a cry that brought Harry's head up. Her heart was pounding, her glasses askew. She pulled them off and set them aside with a trembling hand as she tried to jump-start her brain. A sound. A sound had snapped her to consciousness. A bang or a thump, she wasn't sure.
     
    Holding her breath, she strained to listen. Nothing. But in the back of her mind that dark voice whispered. "If I were after you...I would . . . follow you home, find a way to slip into your house or garage . . . catch you where there would be little chance of witnesses or
    interference. "
     
    The killer-blue eyes stared up at her from the pages of the Newsweek she had dug out of the recycling bin. She picked up the magazme and glared at his image. It was an artsy shot full of shadows. He stared at the camera, looking tough, his hands curled around the bars of a wrought -iron fence. His hair was brown, cropped short with a hint of a cowlick in front. His face was masculine, angular, with a slim, straight nose and a stubborn chin. In contrast his mouth was full, sculpted, almost feminine, far too sexy. The kind of mouth that hinted at dark, sensual, secret talents.
     
    The headline read "Crime Boss" in bold black letters. The caption— "Crime pays big time for Jay Butler Brooks."
     
    Ellen scowled at the photograph. "I should have had you arrested."
     
    Disgusted with herself, she tossed the magazine aside and crawled out from under the covers and the books. Trying to ignore the uneasiness that curled through her midsection, she picked up the half-emptY glass of white wine from the table and padded barefoot across the plusn ivory carpet. Her doors were locked. Her alarm system was on the bed, watching her.
     
    Sipping absently at the wine, she pulled aside the thick swag of ivory lace at the window and looked out at the night. The new snow sparkled like a carpet of white diamonds beneath the light of a crescent moon. Beautiful. Peaceful. No hint of the storm that had slapped Minnesota over the weekend. No evidence of the violence that had put Megan O'Malley in the hospital. No sign of Josh