Read Whispers at Midnight for Free Online

grip on Hugo, who growled in protest. Poor cat, he hadn’t liked the trip, he hadn’t liked the rain, and he never liked being held against his will. He was going to like what was coming next less than all of it put together. In preparation, the fingers of her left hand locked around his front legs like kitty handcuffs, and her right forearm, on which his squirmy twenty-pound bulk rested, clamped him like a hotly contested football against her side.
    Ready now, Carly glanced at Sandra. “I don’t know about you, but I vote we get while the getting’s good.”
    “I hear you.”
    Before they could execute the required about-face, a totally unexpected sound shattered the peace of the night. Loud as a siren, it seemed to go off right in their faces; both women jumped about three feet in the air. Under the circumstances, the shrilling tones were a little less welcome than a cloud of angry yellowjackets. Aghast, Carly realized even as her feet touched down again that the noise seemed to be coming from Sandra. Or, to be more precise, from Sandra’s phone.
    “Shut it up! Turn it off!” Carly instinctively grabbed for the electronic traitor even as Sandra, staring down at the shrieking thing in her hand with as much horror as if it had suddenly morphed into a writhing snake, flipped it open and started punching buttons in a frantic effort to comply. Carly’s grab dislodged the phone. It somersaulted through the air to land smack at her own feet. From its new location it emitted another of its hideous blasts. Then another. And another. Frozen to the spot, she was too rattled to do anything except stare at it with dropped jaw and saucer eyes.
    “Who’s there?” The challenge, issued in a raised voice, held a menacing note, and it snapped Carly’s appalled gaze up again. The man was no longer walking away. Though the darkness obscured much about his appearance, it was clear that he had turned around. In fact,though she and Sandra were now at least a quarter of the way back down the slope and partially concealed by soggy foliage, he seemed to be looking in their direction—damn that stupid phone anyway!—and the hand holding the gun was definitely in motion. It was rising. More to the point, the gun was rising with it—and it was turning their way.
    Carly’s stomach dropped like a broken elevator.
    “Shit,” Sandra said, summing up the situation perfectly. As one, the two of them pivoted and bolted for the U-Haul.
    “Hold it right there!”
    The command slowed neither Carly nor Sandra by so much as a whisker. Heart pumping a mile a minute, hanging on to a now-struggling Hugo for all she was worth, Carly ran for her life. Sandra, arms and legs moving like pistons, her black leggings and oversized black tee shirt making her little more than a rapidly vanishing blur as she tore down the hill, shot past her, opening a commanding lead.
    Who knew? Carly lost focus long enough to marvel that normally indolent Sandra had it in her to move that fast. Then she thrust the thought aside, and put heart and soul into saving herself and her ungrateful cat. In other words, she tightened her death grip on writhing, clawing Hugo, put her head down, and ran.
    Was he coming after them? Even as she ducked low-hanging branches and slithered on slimy moss, the prospect sent icy prickles down Carly’s spine. Worse, was he staying put, but taking careful aim as a prelude to shooting one of them in the back? Which, given the way her life had been going lately, would be her, of course. Thanks to Sandra’s unexpected burst of speed, she was closer to the prospective shooter, and in her jeans and yellow tee shirt undoubtedly a far more visible target. Carly cringed as she tried not to imagine what it would feel like to have her spine drilled by a bullet.
    “You there! Stop!”
    Not in this life. Gasping for breath, Carly ran faster. Her heart pounded as if it were determined to beat its way out of her chest. Blood thundered in her ears. The