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In her last desperate moments Holly told herself that this all had to be a dream, a horrible nightmare, that the blood blooming on her chest was nothing but a wild-ass memory of Lucinda on the set of Dead Heat, that the weird sensation, the pain and her floating mind were all because of the booze.

For a second, she caught a glimpse of her attacker, the pistol with its silencer in her gloved hand. As Holly’s eyes began to shutter, her assailant leaned close. She smelled of a perfume Holly recognized over the metallic scent of her own blood. Familiar . . . ? Then felt herself start to lift, her soul rising.Advertisement

The pain slipped away as Holly looked down on her body and her assailant from a distance, high over the street lamps and the rooftops. Dear Lord, it was so damned dark, so hard to tell what she was witnessing.

Was the woman peeling off her own face?

No . . . couldn’t be.

Cold to the bone, Holly felt a blindfold being placed over her eyes, and she could no longer see her own image, though she still felt as if she were floating. She wanted to strip away the blindfold, but she couldn’t find the strength to peel it off.

Thankfully, as she tasted metal and salt on her lips and gurgled up something warm and liquid from her lungs, a quiet blackness converged over her and her last thought was that she was dying, that a murderous bitch had succeeded in killing her.

She just didn’t know why.

Mitch Stevens’s bladder was about to burst. He’d been thrown out of the Pinwheel and most of the bars were shutting down, so he didn’t have a chance at another men’s room. Shit. He’d never make it home.

But it was pretty dark here in the parking lot, the streetlights not really falling on all the nooks and crannies between the scattered cars, no security camera visible, so he slipped between two vehicles, a sweet-looking Jag and a Chevy sedan, faced the side of a neighboring building, unzipped, and took aim at a dandelion growing up through a crack in the pavement.

Almost immediately he felt relief and with his immediate discomfort over, he kept up his stream and wondered if he might be able to locate a bar that would let him slip inside even though it was slightly after last call. Not the Pinwheel, unfortunately. That loser of a bartender had been gunning for him all night and so, with just one little slip where he’d fallen against a girl who was dancing, and in trying to stay on his feet had accidentally brushed her damned boob with his hand, he was out. No matter how hard he’d protested that he’d needed to use the john, the bartender had signaled to a bouncer with a Mohawk and goatee who had to be pushing three hundred pounds and who had silently but effectively shoved him sprawling onto the sidewalk. It was a damned miracle he hadn’t pissed all over the cement in front of the door.

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“Hey, loser!” a male voice catcalled from the street, and Mitch froze. “This ain’t a latrine, for fuck’s sake!”

Go to hell. Still, he finished quickly, tucking his cock into his pants as he looked over his shoulder. The fucker was walking on, jogging across the dark street to a car that was parked on the other side. “Dickhead,” he mumbled under his breath as the car’s lights blinked and its horn gave off a soft honk when the sanctimonious prick hit the remote unlock button to his van. Probably a “soccer dad.”

Making sure his fly was completely zipped, Mitch moved furtively and quickly rather than hear about his public urination from another ass, or a mugger, or worse yet, a cop. He made his way around the front of the Chevy, careful not to step in his recent puddle, and then nearly tripped again when the toe of his boot hit something soft and giving.

He caught himself and looked down.

In that instant he felt the blood drain from his body.

He was staring at a woman lying faceup on the pavement.

“Hey!” Startled, he jumped backward a step. He blinked. Tried to focus.

What the hell was wrong with her?

Tentatively he asked, “Are you okay?” But he knew she wasn’t. Hell, he wasn’t certain she was even alive. Freaked beyond freaked, he backed up and tried to think. All he could do was stare at her.

Spiky black hair stood on end around a face that was distorted, as if it were eerily melting off her body. Horribly disfigured. pqdm.com