Fade to Black Read Online Free Page B

kitchen for the Jack Daniels.
    She found the three-quarters full bottle nestled by her collection of Italian recipe books. She remembered she’d left the JD there when she’d last had a drink—one week ago when Carr had privately given her ‘the nod’ that she would succeed Billy as Detective Chief Inspector, at least in an acting capacity. It had been a pleasant, solitary evening during which she had allowed herself to bathe in the satisfaction of having made the grade.
    She smiled at the recollection. She also remembered managing just two shots of the JD over two hours before falling asleep by nine o’clock. A big drinker she was not.
    Kicking off her boots, she padded glass in hand, to her sofa by the window, flicking on the sound system as she passed. She dropped onto the soft leather as Nora Jones whispered the intro to ‘ Come away with me’ . Allie gulped at her drink and shivered. Her eyes watered at the strength of the drink. She closed them and revisited the terrible scene at the hospital. She shivered again.
    Poor Billy’s last words came back to her. They were bizarre and disturbing. What had rattled him so much that he would risk not taking his medications just so he could tell her of his fears? And why her? Surely there were people closer to him that he would have wanted to confide in? Despite their dysfunctional working relationship, she had definitely learned things from Billy, at least in the early days.
    And now he had alluded to something else beyond the ‘normal’ crime, if there was such a thing. He was troubled by something nastier, darker .
    “Accept him,” Billy had said at the last. Perhaps he had been hallucinating, thinking he was actually talking to God or whomever he defaulted to in a crisis. But somehow that didn’t feel quite right either. . She looked at her watch. It was late and she really should call her friends. She sighed as she thought about the next day’s priorities. She would have to go in to work early to brief the rest of the team about Billy first thing. She threw down another gulp at that thought. The funeral would be held on Friday, she supposed. That was three trying days away.
    Fixing another drink, but with less space-wasting ice this time, she settled down, her head nestled back on the largest of the sofa’s loose cushions. The strange, bike-adhering white feather drifted into her mind, but before she could explore that bizarre little cameo appearance, her eyes closed again. It had been a draining twelve hours.
     
    4:15 a.m.
     
    She bounded off the sofa like a gymnast, spilling the remains of her drink on the wool rug. Staring stupidly at her watch, she cursed herself. She’d completely forgotten to ring Greg and Phoebe, her friends from BTP she’d be meeting tomorrow…no, today! “ Goddamn it!” Her head swiveled as an email pinged on her laptop. She picked up the empty glass, stalked over and pounded the key to open the message.
    “Better watch that language-he’ll get pissed off.”
    “What the…?”
    She spun around is if to catch someone hiding in the room.
    Long, pure-white feathers cascaded down the walls, covering the sofa, the mat, the coffee table—the entire living room. It was a blizzard of white. The fine dust from the feathers caught in her throat. The room filled. The feathers were now waist deep. Panic took hold as she tried to wade to the door, but the feathers were like thick snow. Her leg hit something hard and unseen under the blanket of feathers and she felt herself falling.
    The feathers rose up to claim her as she fell through them, plummeting toward a dark door. After an eternity, she landed on something familiar. She felt around tentatively, unable to see, her eyes swollen and streaming from the fine dust. Her hands moved across a coarse material, then some piping. Her sofa? Frantically clawing at the cushions, she fell to the floor, jolting herself awake.
    Clambering to her knees, she rolled back up onto the sofa, sweat