Ripped by Shelly Dickson Carr Read Free Book Online

Curiosity Shop, navigating a wide swath around the still-thrumming tambourine doors, toward a bank of stainless-steel elevators gleaming in the distance like a row of side-by-side refrigerators.
    Moving in the direction of the elevators, up a small set of stairs, they came to an arched doorway bracketed on either side by candelabras with a dozen fake candle stubs resting in electric sockets. Toby motioned to the archway.
    â€œThat’s the last of the Ripper exhibition, in there. A rogues’ gallery of possible suspects. We’ll skip it.” He nudged her forward.
    â€œYou mean there’s more? ” Katie gasped. Dull light from the fake candle stubs turned the ivory of Toby’s shirt beneath his duster coat a dingy grey.
    Katie shuddered. The last thing she wanted to do was to see more waxwork images of death and dying. Her face must have shown what she felt, because Toby repeated, “It’s just a summing up, with clues to who the Ripper was. We’ll steer clear of it.” He winked. “Promise.”
    Ahead of them, skirting the right-hand wall, stood a Victorian-style bench with wrought-iron armrests. Katie broke free and made a beeline for it. Plunking herself down on the narrow wooden seat, she squeezed her eyes shut and felt the thump-thud of her heartbeat crashing against her ribcage. An instant later she could hear her own little dry gasps of breathing, but was helpless to do anything about it. What ’ s wrong with me?
    â€œGoing to be sick, then?” Toby asked bluntly. When he sank down next to her, his duster coat billowed out, then settled with a rippling-ribbon effect across his splayed knees.
    Katie folded her arms over her chest and pressed hard trying to stop the shivering. Toby, unlike Collin, seemed gifted with infinite patience. Katie could barely hear his low voice with its quirky Cockney accent: “ No rush, luv. We ’ ve got all the time in the bleedin ’ world .”
    With his head thrown back, and his heavy-lidded eyes half-closed, Toby actually appeared to be savoring the musty, mothball-scented museum air. Katie stared past his shoulder to the arched entrance of the last Ripper exhibit, and watched as the fake candle flames flickered against the far wall. In the fragmented half-light, from the corner of her eye, she could see the outline of Toby’s strong face with its square jaw and cliffhanger cheekbones.
    Minutes later, like a runner breaking an easy stride, Toby ended the silence. “Look, Katie,” he said, making an exaggerated gesture as if striking a match and lighting an invisible cigarette, “for what it’s bloody worth, I know what you’re going through.” He blew imaginary smoke rings at the ceiling.
    â€œ You don ’ t know !” Trembling shook her words as Katie clenched and unclenched her fists. She hated when people told her they knew just how she felt. Nobody knows . “You can’t possibly know what it’s like to lose both parents in a nanosecond. To have a family one day, and none the next . . .” Why was she telling him this? Katie never talked about her parents.
    She pounded the bench slowly with her fists and exhaled in a ragged, shuddering way as if Toby’s nonexistent smoke rings had penetrated deep into her lungs. She didn’t really mind the uncontrollable shivering, as familiar as rain since her parents’ car accident. What Katie hated were the platitudes, those empty, shallow words of pity masquerading as sympathy. “Time heals all wounds,” or “This too shall pass,” or, worst of all, “I know what you’re going through.”
    No one can feel someone else ’ s pain , Katie thought. At least not deep down inside where it counts .
    Closing her eyes again, Katie concentrated on the voices all around her— human voices —of museum patrons and the sound of their clumping footsteps as they scurried in and out of the