Allison Brennan - Killing Fear

Charlie raised a brow. “Smart, yes, in that he’s having you do his work for him.”

“But what if he’s telling the truth? What if he didn’t kill Anna Clark? It doesn’t make him any less a murderer, but it does mean that someone else got away with murder. And that doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Not to mention it would be the story of the year if you uncovered it,” Charlie said quietly.

“There’s that,” she agreed. She loved San Diego, but Charlie knew she wanted a national gig. She was good enough. Smart enough. Pretty enough.

She just needed something to make her stand out. And this story would do it. She was as certain of that as anything.

“All right,” Charlie agreed, “but you check in with me twice a day, do not attempt to contact Glenn, and do not do anything stupid. If he contacts you again, call the police. Watch your back, kid.”

“I’ve already gotten the lecture from the detective in charge,” Trinity said. “I don’t have a death wish. I’m not going to antagonize Glenn, and I definitely don’t want to see him again, but I can’t get this out of my head. There’s no reason for him to admit to killing three women, and not the fourth. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe he wants to have the conviction overturned. If he was wrongfully convicted, that could happen.”

“But he admitted to me that he killed those three women.”

“I doubt it would hold up in court. Beyond that, you need to be doubly careful. You’re the only one he confessed to.”

Robin wanted to stay in bed all day, door bolted, gun under her pillow. Loaded. Or better yet, in her hand, with the safety off.

Fear ate at her. A real, physical, gnawing presence that started in her mind, slithered along her nerves, until she was nearly paralyzed.

Staying in bed felt safe, but it was also wrong. She couldn’t let Theodore Glenn destroy her independence. She couldn’t lock herself away until he was caught. What if the police didn’t catch him? What if he taunted them for years? Or he came to town for a few high-profile murders, and then went down to Mexico? He could be next door…or a thousand miles away.

For a year, she had danced for a killer, served him drinks, smiled and flirted, because it was her job. When she’d realized he’d killed her friends, she’d been physically sick. When she’d learned what he did to them, when she’d slipped in Anna’s blood and fallen on her body, she’d nearly lost her sanity.

One minute she had been safe in Will’s arms, the next minute she had walked into a waking nightmare.

Will had kissed her in the foyer of her apartment building. It was nearly three in the morning and they’d spent the last hour in the bar. She wanted him to come up, but at the same time she knew he had a job to do.

“I don’t want to leave you alone,” he said.

“I have an alarm. I’m okay.”

He frowned, touched her chin. “Robin-”

The dim yellow light made his eyes darker. He looked at her as if he really cared. As if, maybe, he loved her. The thought lifted her up. He knew she was a stripper, yet he treated her with respect and affection and intelligence.

He tucked her hair behind her ears and kissed her lightly, but with more intimacy than their frantic coupling in the bar earlier. She melted against him. “Good night.”

She felt him watching her walk up the stairs. She waved at him from the landing at the top, and he left, double-checking that the door that led in to the common entry was secure.

Maybe they had a future. There was something different about their relationship, something that Robin hadn’t had before. Powerful. Passionate. Special.

She unlocked the door, reached for the alarm to put in the code and reset it. The keypad was lit in faint green, so she didn’t need lights to see, but she wished she had left the kitchen light on or something. It was pitch-black with all the drapes pulled.

“Meow, meow, meow.”

Anna’s cat brushed against her legs. “I fed you early because I had to work, you just forgot, silly cat.” She picked him up.

Pickles was wet. Sticky. “Now what did you get into?”

She smelled bleach, and while her mind started to send her a warning, her first thought was for the cat, that he was going to get sick if he knocked over the bleach and inhaled too many fumes.

She took two steps forward feeling for the lamp she couldn’t see but knew was on the end table right there on the left of the door, but she tripped. The cat jumped from her arms as she fell, her hands falling into something sticky and wet. The smell. Why hadn’t she noticed the smell? It was foul, sickly sweet. Metallic-and bleach. Her chest tightened and she couldn’t breathe. She reached back to push herself up and touched a person. A hand.

Her stomach heaved as she fumbled standing in the dark. Someone was here, on the floor. A person. Blood and bleach. Blood and bleach. No, no, no!

She found the lamp, shaking so hard that she knocked it over. She ran to the door, feeling the wall for the light switch. Turned it on.

Anna. Her blood pooled on the hardwood floor. Her eyes were wide open, staring at Robin. Duct tape over Anna’s mouth. She was naked, red cut marks all over her body. One deep bloody slash across her throat. She was dead.

Robin flung open the door and screamed. She ran down the stairs, hoping Will was still there. In the back of her mind, through the pounding in her head, she heard the shrill shriek of her alarm.

The street was empty. Will was gone.

Robin ran to the bar and called 911. That’s where she remained, covered in Anna’s blood, until the police arrived.

“He killed her,” Robin told the first officer on scene. “Theodore Glenn killed Anna and you couldn’t stop him!”

But in the back of her mind, Robin couldn’t help but think that this was all her fault.

The phone rang and Robin shook herself out of her nightmare. They had finally built a case against Theodore Glenn and put him in prison. The police would catch him again. She held on to that hope.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello, Robin.”

Theodore.

She slammed down the phone, acting on instinct and not common sense. She stared at the receiver. Damn, damn, damn! The police might have been able to trace the call. Maybe she could have learned something about where he was or what he planned to do.

“Call back, you bastard!”

Damn him. What had she done? Let her fear take control again.

Robin had met Theodore soon after he started visiting the club regularly. Back when it was still RJ’s, back when they stripped and danced and paid the house half their tips. But even then, she’d made enough money to put herself through state college and keep her mother from losing the small house that had been her grandparents’, but which her mother had taken a new mortgage on to pay for whatever she thought she needed.

Robin had just graduated from college, with honors in commercial art and art history, and she could have quit stripping. But there were two things that she valued, both of which cost money. Her dream to own her own house-a real home-and to be an artist. Paint supplies weren’t cheap, and she needed time and daylight to paint what she loved. She didn’t want to be miserable at a desk job or creating ad campaigns to sell more useless stuff, like all the junk her mother was continually suckered into buying.

But she couldn’t say she was happy stripping, either. Robin didn’t know what she could do to realize her dreams, and she felt trapped. Uncertain. And lonely. Especially after Sean left her.