Killer's Prey by Rachel Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

chocolate.”
    “I honestly don’t know.” Jake leaned back against the counter. “I like the way you make it.”
    Rosa smiled. “My family recipe. I only put in a little sugar for you.”
    Jake laughed quietly. He suspected Rosa’s preferred brew would be more like drinking black coffee than anything he had once thought of as hot chocolate. As it was, the way she made it for him it was nearly a bitter brew, saved only by the little sugar and small amount of milk she added for him. And he especially liked it when she spiced it up with a dash of chili powder.
    Her version, he often thought, was probably closer to the way the pre-Colombians had used chocolate.
    He wound up carrying a tray to the living room, and Nora’s mug had some extra milk and sugar in it. Breaking her in easily, he thought with mild amusement.
    He set the tray on the coffee table, then turned to look at Nora. She had curled around herself in the armchair and closed her eyes. Maybe she was sleeping?
    He retreated to his own favorite chair and sat, just studying her. He’d felt sorry for her most of the time they were growing up. The way she had to dress, that father of hers, the horrible scoliosis brace that must have been awful to wear...but mostly because there was enough about her that was different that she was an obvious target for the other kids.
    He knew he’d damn well been her only protector a lot of the time, except for that other girl, Jody, who was now the mother of four and looking matronly at thirty. But Jody had been a bit of an outcast, too, for some reason or other.
    He’d never really understood some of that stuff. At least not until the night Nora had asked him to take her to the senior prom and offered to sleep with him afterward. His own words still had the power to make him cringe, never mind how they had made her cringe. He’d been wanting to apologize for years, but that would have to wait. She clearly had more important issues right now.
    Unlike most of the folks who had to depend on news coverage, as a cop he’d gotten a damn good look at the more detailed reports of what had been done to her, including the initial suspicion that she was covering an affair with a student’s parent to protect her job as a school psychologist. Obstruction of justice? A pretty thin thing to hold a woman on when she’d been nearly killed by a brutal rapist.
    He couldn’t imagine what those cops had been thinking. But he knew enough of the details not to be at all surprised that she was finding recovery slow. There was just so much a human body could take, and she should have died in that ditch. The psychological trauma had to be beyond imagining. And now here she was, back in her hometown and living with that caveman the town called Deacon Loftis.
    It was a good thing Jake had been raised in a different church because if he’d grown up listening to that man, he’d have believed God had abandoned the world to Satan. Or maybe that there was no God at all.
    How was she supposed to deal with Fred Loftis on top of everything else?
    But he could understand why she had come back here. No job. And worse, that man was out on bail. He couldn’t figure that one, either. How any judge would think Nora’s attacker shouldn’t be in a cell until the trial...
    Well, not for him to reason why, but if he were Nora, he’d have wanted to get as far away from Minneapolis as possible, and without a job her options had clearly been limited.
    She stirred a little and opened her eyes.
    He found a smile to offer. “Rosa made her special hot chocolate for you. I warn you, though, it’s not very sweet.”
    She astonished him with her non sequitur. “This chair smells good. Rosa deodorizes it, doesn’t she?”
    “Yep. That commercial spray, once a week.”
    “I like that smell. I used it all the time...before.”
    He didn’t miss the slight hesitation, and wondered if her entire life had become a series of “before” and “after.” Then she stretched