Killer Dreams by Iris Johansen Read Free Book Online Page A

“I didn’t think you’d want to go back into your bedroom right away.”
    “Thanks.” She took the blouse and went past him and Royd as she left the kitchen. Royd was leaning on the doorjamb and she was careful not to touch him. But she could still feel his tension, sense the passion of emotion that was electrifying him. She didn’t want to deal with that passion until she could get herself together. Let Jock handle him. Let Jock get him out of her house.
    She washed up, changed her blouse, and ran a comb through her hair. Then she took a moment to try to block out the thought of that body in her bedroom. It didn’t work. It shouldn’t work. She had to deal with what had happened and she had to deal with Matt Royd. So stop whining and face it.
    Jock and Royd were sitting at the kitchen table when she entered the room. Royd looked as comfortable as a tiger forced to balance on a stool. Tiger. Yes, that description was very apt.
    “I poured your coffee.” Jock gestured to the chair beside him. “Sit down. We have to talk to Royd.”
    She shook her head.
    “Sit down,” Jock repeated. “You have enough trouble on your plate. You don’t need Royd to come down on you.”
    She hesitated and then slowly sat down. “Did you recognize the man in the bedroom?”
    He shook his head. “And neither did Royd. But we may hear soon. He used his phone to take a photo of him and sent it to his man at Sanborne’s facility.”
    She stiffened. “His man?”
    “He hired a man to go undercover and get information from Sanborne’s files. He works with the video monitors in the security center at the plant.”
    “Why did he do that?”
    “He doesn’t like Sanborne,” Jock said. “I’d say on the same scale that you don’t.”
    “Why?” Her gaze searched Jock’s face as she recalled everything Royd had said to her in those moments in her bedroom. And then Jock had said they’d gone to the same school. She felt sickness churn through her. “Another one? Like you, Jock?”
    Jock nodded. “A little different circumstances but the result was much the same.”
    “Oh, God.”
    “We’re not talking about me,” Royd said. “I’m not hearing anything that convinces me she’s not in Sanborne’s pocket, Jock.”
    Jock was silent a moment. “Two years ago her father shot her mother, tried to kill her son, and ended up shooting Sophie before he killed himself. No apparent reason. The attack came out of the blue.”
    Royd’s cool glance shifted to Sophie. “One of your experiments that backfired?”
    “No.” Her stomach twisted. “God, no.”
    “Rough,” Jock said quietly. “Too rough, Royd.”
    Royd’s gaze never left Sophie’s face. “It’s possible. How do we know?”
    She shook her head. “I would never—I loved him. I loved both of them.”
    “And you weren’t to blame for anything. Your name figured prominently in Sanborne’s file on the initial experiments on REM-4 but it didn’t mean a thing.”
    “I didn’t say that.” She reached blindly for the coffee in front of her. “It meant something. It meant everything.”
    “Why? How?”
    She felt as if he were battering her, ripping at her. “I was to blame. It was my fault. All of it was—”
    “Easy, Sophie.” Jock reached out and covered her hand. “I can tell him later. You don’t have to go through this.”
    “You can’t protect me.” She moistened her lips. “And I can’t hide from what I did. I have to face it every day. Every time I look at Michael and know I—” She stopped and then her eyes lifted to Royd’s face. “And nothing you can say can make me feel any worse than I do now. You can tear open the wound but it can’t go any deeper. You want to know what happened? I was young and smart and thought I could change the world. I was fresh out of medical school and went to work for Sanborne Pharmaceutical because they promised me I could devote my time to working on research I’d been doing on the side all through med