Shiver by Michael Prescott Read Free Book Online

apartment at eight-thirty-five, taking care to shut the door firmly and secure the dead bolt.
    She hurried along the outdoor gallery, then down the stairs. As she reached ground level, the door to the apartment directly beneath hers swung open, and Jennifer Kutzlow, patron saint of the hearing-impaired, emerged.
    “Hey, Wen!” Jennifer flashed a Pepsodent smile. “How’s it going?”
    “Hi, Jenny.” Wendy’s voice lilted up, making the words a question. Why the hell did you play your stereo so loud last night? she wanted to say, but didn’t.
    She glanced at the suitcase swinging loosely in Jennifer’s hand—an overnight bag, it looked like. Under her light spring coat, her blue stewardess’s outfit was visible, glamorous as a comic-strip crimefighter’s costume half-concealed beneath street clothes. Wendy envied the lifestyle implied by that uniform, the casual trips to distant places, the casual affairs in hotel rooms with men who smelled of Brut or Lectric Shave.
    “Off to Seattle today,” Jennifer said, as if reading Wendy’s thoughts and confirming them. “Probably be raining up there.”
    “Probably.”
    “They get lots of rain. I knew this guy once, he was from Seattle, and he told me—”
    A Mazda hummed up to the curb, and a horn blatted.
    “Oh, hey, there’s my ride.” Jennifer ran for the car, her strawberry-blond hair raveling behind her in slow motion, a TV-commercial cliché. “‘See you!”
    Her free hand flapped a wave. She hopped into the passenger seat, and the Mazda sped off.
    Wendy stared after it. Her mouth, she noticed, was still smiling. Very weak-willed, that mouth. It had this pitiful, childish need to be liked. She was very annoyed with her mouth right now.
    At the side of the building, she found her blue Honda Civic sedan parked in its assigned space. She climbed behind the wheel, snugged her seatbelt firmly in place, and backed carefully into the street, checking both the rearview and sideview mirrors.
    She drove west on Palm Vista Avenue, past rows of apartment buildings. The radio was on, turned to KTWB, the all-news station. The newscaster informed her that the recent spell of warm weather, unseasonable for mid-March, would continue through the end of the week; a Santa Ana condition was predicted for later this afternoon. Wendy frowned. She hated the Santa Anas, those dust-dry devil winds that blew in from the desert, whistling through the canyons like banshees to suck the moisture from the air and leave eyes red and skin parched.
    At Beverwil Drive she turned north, easing into a sluggish stream of traffic. The newscast reported a shooting at an automatic teller machine. A customer making a withdrawal after dark had been ambushed; apparently he’d offered resistance. Now he was in critical condition at Cedars-Sinai.
    Not me, Wendy thought reflexively; she always had the same reaction to stories like that. I wouldn’t put up a fight. If they want my money, they can have it.
    Of course, she reminded herself, I wouldn’t have visited an automatic teller machine after dark in the first place.
    She hooked left onto Olympic Boulevard. Before her, the twin Century Plaza Towers leaped up, crowding out the sky. They were three-sided modernistic high rises, the sharp edges of their roofs cutting the morning mist like scalpel blades, forming a starkly modern backdrop to the rows of townhouses and shops lining the street—older, homier buildings, almost Victorian in appearance, that reminded Wendy for some reason of false fronts on a Hollywood studio lot.
    After an irritating commercial in which the toll-free 800 number was repeated at least ten times, the newscaster updated the story that had dominated local news for weeks. The serial killer known as the Gryphon remained at large; no apparent progress had been made in the case since the discovery of his third victim, Elizabeth Osborn, thirteen days ago.
    Wendy clicked off the radio. She wished she hadn’t heard that report. She