Kathleen Long - When a Stranger Calls

He leaned toward her and she held her breath, releasing it sharply when the tea kettle squealed.

Suddenly, reality scattered her idiotic thoughts as she shut off the burner. Matt Alessandro’s father was responsible for her mother’s murder, her father’s depression and death, and her shattered life. And here she stood, inches away from touching his son. Kissing his son. Or worse. What in the hell was wrong with her?

“Do you want me to stay with you tonight?” Matt asked.

Did she? “No.” Lindsey stepped away then. “I’ll be fine.”

“What if you get another threatening call?”

“I’ll call you.” She caught herself. “Or I’ll call my uncle.”

Suddenly she needed Matt out of her house, before her resolve crumbled. “You know, I’m exhausted suddenly….”

“Okay, I’ll go. Remember to lock up.”

“Always,” Lindsey said, relieved when he stepped outside and shut the door behind him.

But just as Matt’s taillights disappeared, the phone rang….

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Mom,

the most important heroine in my life.

I love you.

After a career spent spinning words for clients ranging from corporate CEOs to talking fruits and vegetables, Kathleen Long now finds great joy spinning a world of fictional characters, places and plots. She shares her life with her husband and their neurotic Sheltie, dividing her time between suburban Philadelphia and the New Jersey seashore, where she can often be found—hands on keyboard, bare toes in the sand—spinning tales. After all, life doesn’t get much better than that.

Please visit www.kathleenlong.com for the latest contests, appearances and upcoming releases.

Lindsey Tarlington—Daughter of Camille Tarlington and partner in Polaris, an agency dedicated to uncovering facts. When her mother’s long lost identification appears, she begins an investigation into the past.

Matt Alessandro—Public defender and son of Tony Alessandro. He’s vowed to prove his father’s innocence and clear the family name. He convinces Lindsey to help him reopen her mother’s case.

Frank Bell—Mayor of Haddontowne and Lindsey’s uncle. He’s on the fast track for the governor’s mansion and doesn’t want Matt revisiting the case that made his career.

Priscilla Bell—Mentally unstable and a recluse, she’s Camille Tarlington’s surviving sister and Lindsey’s aunt. Does she know something about the night Camille vanished?

Doug Tarlington—Lindsey’s father. He died in a suspicious one-car accident several years after Camille’s disappearance. Was his death the result of a broken heart…or did he know the truth behind Camille’s murder?

Lorraine Mickle—A former employee at Tony Alessandro’s flower shop. She was the star witness for the prosecution of Matt’s father, but was she telling the truth then? How about now?

Jimmy Freeman—A local handyman. He appears in Lindsey’s neighborhood at the same time Camille’s personal belongings begin to appear. Does he have a connection to the case?

Camille Tarlington—Lindsey’s mother. She disappeared seventeen years earlier after an alleged lover’s quarrel with Matt’s father. Was her murder the result of an affair gone wrong? Or was the motive something altogether different?

Tony Alessandro—Matt’s father. Prosecuted for the murder of Camille Tarlington, he died in jail six months later. Did he die an innocent man? Or was he guilty all along?

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Raindrops slapped the small glass panes of the bedroom’s French doors, and lightning illuminated the room, splashing against the plaster walls like an unexpected searchlight.

Lindsey Tarlington pulled the quilt up over her ears, her heart dancing against her ribs. The move was a futile attempt to block the inevitable thunder—the thunder she’d hated for the past seventeen years. Irrationally. Childlike.

The loud rumbling followed. A series of booming, rolling explosions that set her teeth on edge. The storm was moving closer. Too close for her liking.

She rolled over onto her back and tossed off the quilt, staring up at the lazy rotation of the rattan ceiling fan. The smell of damp, spring rain eased around the windows and doors, finding its way into the old house.

Another flash. Lindsey squeezed her eyes shut but then snapped them open. She was twenty-nine years old. It was long past time to get over her fear of storms.

Thunder crashed again, and she fisted the sheet tightly in both hands. Longer. The time between the flash and the boom had taken longer. Perhaps the core of the storm would miss her—miss the house she’d lived in all her life.

Another bang sounded and she narrowed her eyes at the ceiling. A car door?

Moments later, a familiar squeak filled her mind’s eye with the image of the screen door hinge she kept forgetting to oil. A sliver of fear shimmied down her spine, and her breath caught. Who could be at her front door in the middle of the night? In the middle of a raging storm?

Lindsey tossed off the covers and moved to the French doors, trying to peer over the balcony. Rain sheeted the old, thick glass, but even so, she could make out the silhouette of a car, its headlights slashing through the storm as it idled out front.

Flashes of another night seventeen years earlier played through her mind. It had been a storm just like this one. There had been a steady stream of people in and out of the same screen door that night. Family. Friends. Police.

The sounds of running footsteps jarred her from the unwanted memories, but the rain had intensified, obscuring her view. A door slammed and the headlights eased away from the curb.

What if someone had left information on one of her cases?

Lindsey plucked her robe from the back of the rocker and shrugged it on as she headed for the hallway, the wide pine planks cool and reassuring beneath her feet.

She stopped a few steps from the bottom of the staircase. No light glowed through the leaded windows on either side of the front door and her pulse kicked up a notch. Hadn’t she just changed that bulb?

A low, anxious trembling hummed to life in her belly, and she concentrated for a moment. Concentrated on controlling the irrational fear—the quickening breaths.

She drew air in through her nose, holding her breath for several beats then releasing it slowly through tense lips.

“Get a grip, Tarlington.”

Lightning flashed again as she reached for the doorknob. Thunder crashed at the precise moment she snapped open the inner door. She started, adrenaline zinging through her body.

Lord, she hated storms.

A second flash of lightning caught the small, white envelope tucked inside the storm door. She knelt quickly, pulling it free before it got soaking wet.

She slipped a finger beneath the flap as she turned, pushing the wooden door closed with her backside, glad to have its heavy thickness between her and the elements.