The In Death Collection Books 6-10 - J. D. Robb [137]
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Holiday in Death
J. D. Robb
Table of Contents
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
chapter sixteen
chapter seventeen
chapter eighteen
chapter nineteen
chapter twenty
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
HOLIDAY IN DEATH
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1998 by Nora Roberts
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
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ISBN : 978-1-1012-0369-9
A BERKLEY BOOK®
Berkley Books first published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.
First edition (electronic): July 2001
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
—YEATS
Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.
—ALFRED EMANUEL SMITH
chapter one
She dreamed of death.
The dirty red light from the neon sign pulsed against the grimy window like an angry heart. Its flash turned the pools of blood glistening on the floor from dark to bright, dark to bright, slicing the filthy little room into sharp relief, then damning it to shadows.
She huddled in the corner, a bony girl with a tangle of brown hair and huge eyes the color of the whiskey he drank when he had the money for it. Pain and shock had turned those eyes glassy and blind and her skin the waxy gray of corpses. She stared, hypnotized by the blinking light, the way it blipped over the walls, over the floor. Over him.
Him, sprawled on the scarred floor, swimming in his own blood.
Small, feral sounds rumbled in her throat.
And in her hand the knife was gored to the hilt.
He was dead. She knew he was dead. She could smell the ripe, hot stink of it pouring out of him to foul the air. She was a child, only a child, but the animal inside her recognized the scent—both feared it and rejoiced over it.
Her arm was screaming where he’d snapped the bone. The place between her legs burned and wept from this last rape. Not all the blood splattered over her was his.
But he was dead. It was over. She was safe.
Then he turned his head, slowly, like a puppet on a string, and pain washed away in terror.
His eyes fixed on hers as she babbled, scrambled back deeper into the corner where she’d crawled to escape him. And the dead mouth grinned.
You’ll never be rid of me, little girl. I’m part of you. Always. Inside you. Forever. Now Daddy’s going to have to punish you again.
He pushed to his hands and knees. Blood fell in fat, noisy drops from his face, from his back, slid obscenely from the rips in his arms. When he gained his feet and began to shamble through the flow of blood toward her, she screamed.
And screaming, woke.
Eve covered her face with her hands, held one tight over her mouth to hold back the mindless shrieks that tore at her throat like shards of hot glass. Her breath heaved so painfully in her chest she winced with every exhale.
The fear followed her, breathed cold down her spine, but she beat it back. She wasn’t a helpless child any longer, she was a grown woman, a cop who knew how to protect and defend. Even when the victim was herself.
She wasn’t alone in