Confer, Lorelei - Deadly Deception (Siren Publishing Classic) Read Online Free Page B

around in the grass surrounding the concrete pad outside the door for a key or a wire, hairpin, anything she could use to jimmy the lock. She picked up a thin sharp stick, jabbed it into the key hole, and jiggled it back and forth. Nothing! She pulled the broken stick out and retried the door. It wouldn’t budge. There has to be a way through this damn door!
    She ran her fingers along the doorjamb but only the knob protruded out. She looked behind her, running her shaking fingers through her hair. She patted herself across her chest, her back and front pockets of her pants, searching for anything, anything at all. She felt a poke in her underarm, thinking it a stick, she absentmindedly reached to pull it out and found the underwire of her very-worn bra sticking out. Voila! For once, it paid to have large boobs.
    She quickly pulled out the wire. She put the smaller end into the lock and jiggled it up, down, and around with both her hands. She felt something move. Saying a quick prayer, she turned the door knob and pushed. She fell forward into the house onto her bruised and bleeding elbows and knees.
    Ouch!
    She jumped up, closed the door softly, and locked the deadbolt, trying not to make any noise. She turned around, with her back to the door, and sank to the floor. While taking in big gulps of air, as quietly as possible, she listened for any sounds coming from inside the house. Her heart pounding in her ears was deafening. She wiped her brow with her torn sleeve and closed her eyes as she rested her head on her bent knees and tried to catch her breath.
    She didn’t want to disturb anyone, or announce an intruder. She especially didn’t want anyone calling the police for breaking and entering, not after what happened to her father. She didn’t know who she could or couldn’t trust, and until she did, she would be on her own. Who knew? Maybe the cops were involved in this somehow. She hoped the house was empty so she could hide from everyone until she could figure out on her own what to do next.
    Free at last, at least away from her so-called friend Amanda and her cohorts. A shudder ran through her as she thought of where she had been held, shaking her head, clearing it of the past lingering thoughts, she wondered when and how she would be able to pick up the pieces of her mangled life.
    Gazing around the room, Isabella saw a child’s bedroom with two single beds, some toys between them on the floor, and a dollhouse similar to the one she had played with as a child. Below the long window and between two beds sat a dresser with a lamp on top, which spread the light leading her to this house. She immediately turned off the lamp so no one else could see it from the woods as she had.
    She fell to her knees looking around for a place to hide. Lifting up the comforter, she looked under the beds, but they were boxed all the way to the floor. She looked around the room again. There wasn’t any closet, only one other door leading into the rest of the house. What idiot would build a big house like this without a closet in a bedroom?
    No, no place to hide in this room, not under either of the beds, not in the nonexistent closet, not behind any long drapes. Nowhere!
    She needed a safer place to hide. She jumped up, desperate, thinking about what to do, where to go. Looking around again at the meager furniture, she didn’t see anything that she could use to put in front of the door to buttress it from her pursuers. She lifted up one of the center ends of the curtains to take a swift peek out the window. Oh, no!
    Amanda stood along the darkening edge of the woods, in the shadows of the trees looking directly at her.
    Leaping away from the window, Isabella hoped Amanda hadn’t seen her. She turned, sprinted for the doorway heading into the huge dining room, looking for somewhere to hide. A closet, a hutch, or a buffet. I’m little enough to fit into a small area. There was no place to hide in there.
    She ran to the next room, the