Dead End Read Online Free

phones.
    Not a good sign. Definitely not a good sign.
    As she turned the corner onto Evan’s street, she was surprised to see his car parked out front. Annie pulled into the space behind his and turned off her engine. Walking alongside then in front of his car, she placed her hand on the hood. It was cold. The car had been there for a while.
    Okay, so I was probably right about him sleeping.
    She slipped the key he’d given her three months ago, when their relationship passed from occasional to steady, into the lock. Assuming that he was in fact asleep, she opened the door and quietly entered the townhouse then paused in the foyer. From the basement, she could hear music. Loud blues, which grew louder with every step she took in the direction of the steps leading downstairs.
    “Evan?” she called.
    “Yo!”
    Well, if nothing else, he was awake.
    She descended the steps into the long, narrow space Evan had been working on for the past year. His goal was to have a fully operational family room—complete with wide-screen TV, a bar, and a built-in stereo—before next Christmas. For months, he’d barely had time to work on it. Today, he appeared to be determined to make up for lost time.
    In the center of the room, Evan stood over a table saw. At his feet, a pile of two-by-fours was stacked unevenly. He turned on the saw and proceeded to cut first one, then another, of the lengths of wood until they were all of a uniform size. Annie sat on the third step from the bottom, watching the pile grow, making mental bets with herself as to how many minutes would pass before he would turn around and talk to her.
    Finally, she stood up, unplugged the saw, and turned off the radio.
    “Why, yes, I was able to find a ride home from the wedding, nice of you to inquire.”
    “Any one of a dozen people would have been more than happy to see you home on Friday night. I knew you’d have no problem getting a ride.” No longer able to cut, he started to stack the wood in an obsessively neat pile, an attempt on his part, she knew, to concentrate on anything other than her.
    “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” Her eyes narrowed. “You knew someone else would take me home after you dumped me?”
    “I didn’t dump you. I got called out.”
    “Not another . . . ?”
    “Yup.”
    “Same as the others?”
    “The same—but different this time.”
    “Are you going to elaborate?”
    “Same MO. Throat slashed. Vic is the same age as the others, but no one seems to know who she is. No ID. No one’s reported her missing. And she’s Hispanic. The others have all been white, reported missing before the bodies were found. This girl, it’s like she came out of nowhere. I’m not sure what to make of that.”
    “You’re sure it’s the same guy?”
    “Like I said, same MO. Same cause of death, the missing shoes—”
    “Any chance of a copycat?”
    “We never released the details, no one outside the investigation knows about the shoes.”
    “I realize this is an important case, but you could have taken one minute on Friday night to tell me you were leaving.”
    “I couldn’t have gotten to you even if I’d tried.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “It means you were in the Shields zone. No outsiders allowed.”
    “That’s ridiculous.”
    “Is it? I did come over to the table, but I couldn’t get through the throng. Couldn’t even get your attention, you were so caught up with whatever story whichever Shields was telling at the time.”
    “If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were jealous.”
    “Maybe you don’t know me so well, after all.”
    “Are you serious? You’re jealous?”
    “Let’s just put it this way, Annie. It’s really tough having to compete with a dead man for your attention. Especially when that dead man was, by all accounts, an absolute paragon of—”
    “Stop it, Evan. Just . . . stop it.”
    She turned her back and started toward the stairs. She got up to the second step