Last to Know by Elizabeth Adler Read Free Book Online Page A

blasting behind Rossetti’s voice. “So why are you at the club instead of in your bed anyway?”
    “Just amusin’ myself.”
    There was silence, then Harry said, “Detective Rossetti, you and I are a couple of lonely guys, using our jobs to keep out of real relationships with real women, hangin’ in clubs at four in the morning drinking stale coffee out of cardboard cups and checking that the rest of the world is okay while we are not.”
    Rossetti drained his cardboard cup and tossed it into the waste bin. “And finding out why young women get themselves burned up in a house fire and their mothers go missin’. Ever think the girl might have wanted to get rid of her mother, Harry?”
    Harry’s laugh was without amusement. “Not a shot,” he said. “This one’s just a poor kid who survived an inferno that should by rights have killed her too.”
    “That mean you think the mother is dead?”
    “I’d bet on it,” Harry said. “Now, will you please go to Mass General and check on that motherless young woman for me? I’m gonna get some clothes on, I’ll be with you in a couple of hours.” Harry paused, suddenly remembering. “Oh God,” he said, “I’m supposed to get a flight to Paris tomorrow. Today. Mal said she’d meet me.”
    Rossetti straightened up, slicked back his hair, and unbuttoned his black leather jacket. “Story of your life,” he said. “Better call her. And don’t leave Squeeze behind in your hurry to check the girl.”
    “I’d never do that,” Harry assured him.
    Walking through the parking lot to his black BMW, Rossetti thought that was probably part of Harry Jordan’s problem. That and his relationship with women. One woman. Namely, Mallory Malone. “Love of his life.”

 
    10
     
    Here I am again, and you can see, I am getting closer, not on target yet but then, I like a little foreplay. You really thought my target was that mother? Think it was the hunky detective who’s always saving folk that should not be saved? What about the little kid who’s always looking where he should not be looking and might, in the end, be the one that proves to be the greatest danger to me. Spyers, voyeurs, call them what you will, always have a sharpened sense of normalcy; they know through seeing it so often what is usual and what is out of sync, out of place. Different.
    I’ve seen him up in that fig tree, “spying on the spy” you might say. Though of course he would not have seen me. Nobody does when I don’t wish to be seen. Funny, I’ve always had that ability to disappear in front of your very eyes, almost to become invisible by becoming someone other than who I truly am. Which, in my heart, and yes I do have one, is a perfectly attuned killer who loves getting away with it, loves fooling everyone. Why not go to your local library and look me up in the many manuals on psychological and sexual deviants. Or just Google it.
    Diabolical, you might say. Depraved. A demon. Don’t put all those labels on me. I am perfectly normal. I look normal. I look like anyone in your neighborhood. I look like you. I could be you. Or a friend of yours.
    Well, now, we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we, what happens next, and to whom.

 
    11
     
    Back at the lake, the helicopter had left. Diz saw his siblings waiting on the shore as he stepped out of Harry’s boat and trudged through knee-high water to the shore. Cold water, Diz realized now, with a shiver, he hadn’t noticed that earlier, in the “heat of the moment,” you might say. His brother Roman was already there. He flung a friendly arm over Diz’s shoulder, something he had never done before. Diz guessed mostly big brothers were like that, keeping their distance and not letting you into the lordly high place where they “lived.” But now, he seemed to think he had done something remarkable, jumping into the lake and swimming to the rescue of the girl whose name Diz still did not know. He had suddenly become a hero, even