In a Heartbeat by Elizabeth Adler Read Free Book Online Page A

seen
Psycho
, but this must surely be the Bates Motel. Instinct told her she should get right back into the truck and drive back the way she had come. Then she spotted the car parked beneath the trees. A nice normal-looking Ford Taurus. Telling herself that guys from
Psycho
didn’t drive nice normal-looking Fords, she staggered through the wind and rain and up the steps.
    Again, she hesitated. She was alone; the house was miles from anywhere; she didn’t know who might live there. It
could
be a Norman Bates. Shivering, she wiped the rain off her face with her hand. If she turned back now, she would drown crossing the bridge. Or a tree could fall on the truck. Or a broken power line. And the wind would probably blow the truck over. . . .
This
was what was meant by being between a rock
and a hard place. . . .
    She pressed a cold finger on the bell.

14
    Mel rang the bell again. Shivering, she pounded on the door. Still no answer. She tried the handle. To her surprise, it opened.
    The house was in total darkness, not even a glimmer of a light.
    “Hello?” Her voice echoed eerily. “Is anyone here?” She waited, then called out again. Her voice sounded thin and trembly in the dense silence. She felt with her hand along the wall for a light switch, found it, clicked it on, blinking in the sudden light.
    In front of her, a staircase led to a galleried area above the hall. There was just one big room, sparsely furnished with battered old stuff. It looked as though no one lived there and she guessed it was probably used as a weekend beach house. On a rough wooden coffee table was a beautiful, slightly sinister-looking bronze of a crouching cat holding a terrified bird in its mouth. And a stone bowl filled with jellybeans.
    Suddenly starving, she grabbed a handful and devoured them, still dripping water onto the bare wood-plank floor, considering what to do. If the owner found her there, she could be thrown into jail for breaking and entering. Except she hadn’t broken in, the door was open. She shrugged resignedly. What the hell, she was a victim of the storm, surely they would forgive her.
    Catching sight of herself in a mirror, she had second thoughts about that. She looked a wreck. The cheap red dye from the Moving On logo on her white T-shirt had run, and she thought now she would probably have the logo embossed permanently on her chest. Her nose was red, the T-shirt clung to her like a second skin, and her sodden work boots squelched as she walked to the wall of windows fronting the ocean.
    A solid sheet of rain obliterated the view, but she could hear the roar of the surf surging over the rocks below. She shivered. Somehow, the violence outside made the silence inside the house even creepier.
    A sudden noise sent her heart lurching. She froze to the spot, hardly able to breathe. Had that been a door slamming? The house shuddered under the impact of a gust of wind and she heard the timbers groan. She told herself it was just the wind. Still, she wished Harriet was with her so they could laugh about all this.
    She stepped cautiously back into the hall, calling hello again, though she would probably have had a heart attack if anybody answered. God, but she was wet. She needed a bathroom to clean up. She saw the door across the hall, opened it, switched on the light.
    The glazed dark eyes of a dead man stared up
at her. His head was a mass of blood, there was
a great red pool of it beneath him, blood and
flesh splattered all around. . . .
    She knew she was screaming, but the sound that came out of her throat was a howl. She wanted to run, but she was rooted to the spot with terror.
    Then the light went out.
    Panic spilled like molten lava into her veins, sending her running.
Right into a man’s arms.
    A gun jammed hard into her ribs. Without pausing to think, she slammed her fist into his belly, heard the air whoosh out of him as he staggered back. Then she was skidding across the floor. She was running, running for her life