Page 5 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

“Reed doesn’t confide in me. Or anyone. It’s just not his deal.”

Ina wasn’t persuaded. “Not even pillow talk? You know, men really open up in bed.”

“Let’s not even go there.”

Ina sighed loudly. “Don’t play the blushing virgin card. I know you, Nikki. If you want something, you go after it and, hell or high water be damned, you get it.”

“Come on, Ina. Think about it. If there were another serial killer running loose in Savannah, don’t you think I would know about it?”

She could almost hear the gears turning in her agent’s mind. In her mid-forties and shrewd as hell, Ina was barely five feet tall and the only agent in New York who had wanted to take a chance on Nikki when she’d submitted her first manuscript. Ina had seen what others couldn’t, and now, damn her, she was trying to wring out of Nikki that same essence and perspective for a brand-new sales-worthy story. “So get creative,” she suggested, and Nikki heard bracelets jangling as she shifted her phone. “Maybe this time not a serial killer per se.”

“Just a really sick monster with some kind of a blood fetish?”

“Or foot, or hand or breast. Or whatever twisted obsession turns him on.” Ina gave a laugh that was deep and throaty from years of cigarettes. “Yeah, that would probably work.” Clearing her throat, she added more earnestly, “You know the book is due in six months. It has to be published next year if we don’t want to piss off the publisher and if we want to keep the Nikki Gillette brand out there.”

Oh, Nikki knew all right. The date was circled in red on two calendars and highlighted in the virtual office on her computer as well. She wasn’t about to forget, and she really couldn’t. The struggling Sentinel was a slim remnant of its former self. Layoffs had been massive and painful. Nikki was working part-time for the paper and lucky to have a job. More and more, she relied on the advances and royalties from her books. Between the economy, the new technology, and her own ambition, she’d backed herself into a financial corner. She would be an idiot if she didn’t make this work. “Okay, okay. I’ll come up with something,” Nikki heard herself say. As she hung up, she wondered what the hell that something would be.

She didn’t take the time to think about it now. Instead, she flew down the circular stairs to her bedroom below, peeled off her jeans and sweater, and stepped into her running gear; old jogging pants and bra, a stained T-shirt, and favorite, tattered sweatshirt with a hood. She’d never been one for glamour when she was working out. Her running shoes were ready, near the back door, and after lacin

g them up and tossing the chain with her house key dangling from it over her head, she took off down the interior stairs and out the back, then sprinted around to the front of her home, ignoring the coming darkness. Her mind was a jumble, not just from the pressures of coming up with a blockbuster idea for a new book, but also from the fact that she was about to marry Reed. In her family, happily-ever-afters rarely occurred, and now she was planning to marry a cop—one with a tarnished reputation who’d left a string of broken hearts from San Francisco’s Golden Gate to Tybee Island here on the Eastern Seaboard.

“You’re a masochist,” she muttered under her breath as she jogged in place, waiting for a light so she could run through Forsyth Park. And deep inside a hopeless romantic. The light changed, just as one last car, an Audi exceeding the speed limit, scooted through on the red, and Nikki took off again.

Starting to get into her rhythm, her heartbeat and footsteps working together, she ran beneath the canopy of live oaks, their graceful branches dripping with Spanish moss. Usually the park had a calming effect on her, brought her a sense of peace, but not today. She was jazzed and irritated; Ina’s call had only added to her stress level.

Get over it. You can handle this. You know you can.

The air was heavy with the scent of rain. Deep, dusky clouds moved lazily overhead, and the temperature was warmer than usual for this part of November. She sent a worried glance toward the sky. If she were lucky and kept up her brisk pace, she might just be able to make it home before the storm broke and night completely descended.

With that thought, she increased her speed.

A few pedestrians were walking on the wide paths, and the street lamps were just beginning to illuminate. A woman pushing a stroller and a couple walking a pug made her feel a little calmer, because the truth was that Nikki wasn’t as confident as she seemed, wasn’t the pushy cub reporter who’d been irrepressible and fearless in her youth. She’d had more than her share of anxiety attacks since her up-close-and-personal meeting with the Grave Robber. To this day, small, tight spaces, especially in the dark, totally freaked her out. So she ran. In the heat. In the rain. In the dark. Even in the snow during the rare times it fell in this part of the country. She didn’t need a shrink to tell her she was trying to run from her own demons or that her claustrophobia was because of her past. She was well aware that she was walking on the razor’s edge of some kind of minor madness.

Hence, she flew down the cement sidewalks and cobblestone streets, along asphalt county roads or muddy paths, speeding along the beach or cutting through woodlands. Mile after mile passed beneath her feet, and as they did, the nightmares that came with restless sleep and the fears of closed-in spaces seemed to shrivel away and recede, if only for a little while. Exercise seemed safer than a psychiatrist’s couch or a hypnotist’s chair or even confiding in the man she loved.

You’re a basket case. You know that, don’t you?

“Oh, shut up,” she said aloud.

By the time the first raindrops fell, she’d logged three laps around the perimeter of the park and was beginning to breathe a little harder. Her blood was definitely pumping, and she slowed to a fast walk to alleviate a calf cramp that threatened, veering into the interior of the park again, only to stop at the tiered fountain. Sweat was running down her back, and she felt the heat in her face, the drizzles of perspiration in her hair. Leaning over, hands on her knees, she took several deep breaths, clearing her head and her lungs.

Straightening, she found herself alone. Gone were the dog walkers and stroller pushers and other joggers.

No surprise, considering the weather.

And yet . . .

She squinted and found she was mistaken.

On the far side of the fountain, beneath a large live oak, stood a solitary dark figure.

In the coming rain, she and the man in black were alone in a shadowy park.

Her heart clutched, and a sense of panic bloomed for a second as the stranger, an Ichabod Crane figure, stared at her from beneath the wide brim of his black hat, his eyes hidden.

Every muscle in her body tensed. Adrenaline fired her blood.

It was so dark now that even the streetlights cast an eerie hue.

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