Pretend You Don't See Her by Mary Higgins Clark Read Free Book Online

he was staying.
Once in his room, he tossed the binder on the bed and promptly poured a
generous amount of scotch into a water glass. Half of it he bolted down; the
rest he would sip. It was a ritual he followed after a job like this.
                 Carrying
the scotch, he picked up the binder and settled in the hotel room’s one
upholstered chair. Up until the last-minute glitch the job had been easy
enough. He had gotten back into the building undetected when the doorman was at
the curb, helping an old woman into a cab. He had let himself into the
apartment with the key he had taken off the table in the foyer when Lacey
Farrell was in the library with the Waring woman.
                 He
had found Isabelle in the master bedroom, propped up on the bed, her eyes
closed. The leather binder had been on the night table beside the bed. When she
realized he was there, she had jumped up and tried to run, but he had blocked
the door.
                 She
hadn’t started screaming. No, she’d been too scared. That was what he liked
most: the naked fear in her eyes, the knowledge that there would be no escape,
the awareness that she was going to die. He savored that moment. He always
liked to take his pistol out slowly, keeping eye contact with his victim while
he pointed it, taking careful aim. The chemistry between him and his target in
that split second before his finger squeezed the trigger thrilled him.
                 He
pictured Isabelle as she started shrinking away from him, returning to the bed,
her back to the headboard, her lips struggling to form words. Then finally the
single scream: “Don’t!” —mingling suddenly with the sound of
someone calling her from downstairs—just as he shot her.
                 Savarano
drummed his fingers angrily on the leather binder. The Farrell woman had come
in at that precise second. Except for her, everything would have been perfect.
He had been a fool, he told himself, letting her lock him out, forcing him to
run away. But he did get the journal, and he did kill the Waring woman, and
that was the job he was hired to do. And if Farrell became a problem he would
kill her too, somehow … He would do what he had to; it was all part of the job.
                 Carefully
Savarano unzipped the leather binder and looked inside. The pages were all
neatly clamped in place, but when he thumbed through them he found they were
all blank.
                 Unbelieving,
he stared down at the pages. He started turning them rapidly, looking for
handwriting. They were blank, all of them—none had
been used. The actual journal pages must still be in the apartment, he
realized. What should he do? He had to think this through.
                 It
was too late to get the pages now. The cops would be swarming all over the
apartment. He’d have to find another way to get them.
                 But
it wasn’t too late to make sure that Lacey Farrell never got the chance to ID
him in court. That was a chore he might actually enjoy.

  5
                 SOMETIME
NEAR DAWN LACEY FELL INTO A HEAVY, DREAM-filled sleep in which shadows moved
slowly down long corridors and terrified screams came relentlessly from behind
locked doors.
                 It
was a relief to wake up at quarter of seven even though she dreaded what she
knew the day would bring. Detective Sloane had said he would want her to go to
headquarters and work with an artist to come up with a composite sketch of
Curtis Caldwell.
                 But
as she sat wrapped in her robe, sipping coffee and looking down at the barges
slowly making their way up the East River, she knew there was something she had
to decide about first: the journal.
                 What
am I going to do about it? Lacey asked herself. Isabelle thought there was
something in it that proved Heather’s death was not an accident. Curtis
Caldwell stole the