Woman On the Run by Lisa Marie Rice Read Free Book Online Page A

neighbors, had been spatting. Julia hoped they’d still be together when—if—she ever got back. Nobody made lasagna like Paul and Andrew could be counted on to accompany her to all the art shows.
    An insanely cheery Halloween postcard was going to be sent to them from Florida, reminding them of the Halloween ball the three of them had attended the year before. If only they knew… Julia smiled as she had a sudden image of Andrew and Paul coming to her rescue.
    And Federico Fellini, the world’s most beautiful and most temperamental cat. Would his new owners realize that he liked his meat cooked medium rare and that he caught chills easily?
    She wished her life were a movie and she could rewind it to a month ago and decide not to go on her little photographic safari in the wilds of the industrial area along the docks. Anything would have been preferable. Root canal work. Elective surgery. Even finally reading her ancient, unopened copy of War and Peace , cover to cover, including the footnotes.
    Anything at all would have been better than what she actually did do—drive down to the docks for her try at gritty photographic realism, since her stab at a romantic nature shoot had simply netted her a wasted roll’s worth of blurred butterfly wings and out-of-focus dandelions.
    Well, she’d certainly gotten her share of gritty reality.
    Julia had made her way down the empty street, looking into shop windows as she went. Even though it was nearly dark, no one had turned on the lights yet and it was like walking through a ghost town. The street was eerie. The town was eerie. Her life was eerie.
    She tried to cast the whole scene in her mind as a movie, an old trick of hers when she was scared or lonely or depressed. Right now she was all three so she dove inside her head and starred in her own film.
    A ‘40s movie, she thought. Filmed in black and white. It fit. All color had been leached out by the gray sky edging towards night. The bad guy…oh, Humphrey Bogart. Or maybe…Jimmy Cagney.
    And I’m the beautiful heiress tracking down a clue to the mysterious death of…of my uncle here in this ghost town…and I only have this statue of a falcon to go on…and this private eye I hired is handsome and suspicious…
    Julia entertained herself with her fantasy that she spliced together from a number of classics until she reached the weather-beaten door of the small wooden A-frame house Herbert Davis had found her. Then the fantasy dissipated. No ‘40s movie heroine worth the name would have a house that let in gusts of gelid air, had a heating system that went on the fritz constantly and leaked.
    Julia was forced to move back into cold, cold reality.
    She walked up the steps of the wooden porch that was badly in need of repair and inserted her key. She stopped when she heard a scrabbling sound and sighed heavily. She’d been beating off a mangy, scrawny stray dog for two days now. He had tipped over her garbage can twice. No matter how loud she yelled, he always came scrounging back.
    No wonder she preferred cats. Cats had too much dignity to behave like juvenile delinquents.
    She spied a dusty yellow-brown shape at the edge of the porch. “Shoo!” she said angrily. Oddly enough, the dog didn’t run yipping away, as it usually did. Julia sighed and decided to forego the rock-throwing. The way her luck was going today, she’d probably miss the stray and hit the mayor.
    She turned the key and heard a low moan from the porch as she walked into the house.
    A moan.
    She threw her coat on a chair and rammed her hands into her skirt pockets, trying to blank out the memory of the sound. But the creature had definitely moaned.
    Well, it wasn’t any business of hers. Damn it, she didn’t even like dogs. Julia walked into the kitchen to make herself a soothing cup of tea, then stopped, eyes narrowed, tapping her foot.
    I’m a fool , she thought, turning around to walk back out the door.
    The dog was huddled in the corner of the