When All The Girls Have Gone Read Online Free

decision.”
    Damn. She sounded way too earnest, even to her own ears. She could hear Jocelyn’s voice in her head.
    That’s right, Charlotte, a good-looking man flashes you a sexy smile and asks a simple question and you go straight into lecture mode
.
You’ve got to lighten up, woman.
    The stranger’s smile dimmed a couple of degrees.
    “Right,” he said. “The thing is, I’m just trying to get a feel for the options that are out there. Grandma has lived in the same house for fifty years. She’s nervous about moving into a community full of strangers.”
    Charlotte felt herself on solid ground now. Forget trying to flirt with him, she thought. Just stick to business.
    “Does your grandmother play bridge, by any chance?” she asked.
    He seemed surprised by the question, but he recovered quickly.
    “Are you kidding?” he said. “She plays killer bridge.”
    “Then she’s golden,” Charlotte said. “Trust me, as soon as the word gets out in the community that she plays, she’ll have no problem making friends.”
    “Thanks, I’ll let her know.” He paused, as if trying to decide whether to engage in further conversation with her. “What do you think the in crowd will be playing when you and I are ready for a retirement community?”
    “Video games, probably.”
    He chuckled and some of the warmth returned to his smile.
    “You’re right,” he said. “Well, thanks for the info.”
    He went through the glass doors and disappeared into the lobby.
    She went out into the rain and walked briskly along the sidewalk. She had managed to amuse him for a moment. That was the good news, shethought. The bad news was that she had not been trying to be funny. She had blurted out “video games” in answer to his question because it was the first thing that had popped into her head.
    She hadn’t exactly flirted with a stranger, but there had been a little whisper of the female-male vibe in the exchange and that realization boosted her spirits. Maybe whatever it was inside of her that had been crushed by the Brian Conroy fiasco wasn’t dead after all. Maybe it had just been hibernating.
    A little flicker of awareness prompted her to glance back over her shoulder. She didn’t expect to see the man again. By now he would be at the front desk in the lobby asking for more information and perhaps a tour of the village.
    She was surprised when she caught a glimpse of him on the other side of the glass doors. She could have sworn he was watching her.
    The knowledge that he had apparently found her interesting enough to warrant a lingering glance should have given her another pleasant little rush of feminine satisfaction. But for some inexplicable reason, it didn’t. Instead it sent a shiver of unease across the back of her neck.
    Great. Now I’m getting paranoid.
    Maybe the experience with Brian had affected her nerves, as well as her confidence in her own judgment.
    That was not a cheerful thought.
    She walked a little more quickly, very aware of the damp chill of the fading day. She suddenly wished she had been able to accompany Jocelyn to the secluded island convent. There was a certain appeal to the idea of going off the grid for a few weeks. But she had been on the job at Rainy Creek for only a year. There was no way she could have taken a whole month off.
    She promised herself that when she got home she would use the meditation app that she had bought after completing the mindfulness class.

CHAPTER 3

    Max Cutler stood in the middle of Louise Flint’s living room and absorbed the sense of emptiness. It was always this way in the personal space that had once been inhabited by the dead—at least it was always this way for him.
    Early on in his career as a profiler he had been told by colleagues that it was his imagination that conjured the sense of gloom. If he had not
known
that someone had died in that particular place, they said, he would not have experienced any particular vibe.
    But he did know that Louise