Read Online Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island by Sandy Frances Duncan, George Szanto - Free Book Online

afternoon.”
    â€œOh. You’ll both be working on the case?”
    â€œWe usually do.”
    A hint of discomfort on Peter’s face. Then he nodded, turned and was gone.
    Worried about the cost of the investigation? Guess Kyra hadn’t mentioned they billed by the hours the case took, not the number of investigators.

    Two weeks and one day. That long since she’d first awakened here. She knew this from her watch, which they hadn’t taken, and from a calendar that hung from a nail on the wall beside the door.
    No windows was what she’d first noted. She’d awakened to dim light from a lamp in the corner. If it burned out, would she be in complete darkness? She’d been scared: where was she, why had they taken her? The fear had gone away, replaced by anger, replaced by boredom: they were literally wasting her time. She’d needed these last two weeks to prepare for her classes. He’d promised he would release her before the term began. Maybe naïve, but she believed this. She had to.
    That first day she’d gotten up from the bed, head still aching from whatever had knocked her out, and pulled a few more of her wits together. Her legs felt unsteady. To take stock, she needed to measure the room: eight short stumbling paces by twelve, the latter estimated because the bed to the right and the chest to the left made it hard to stride from one wall to the other. One inner door: a bathroom. Private. How nice.
    Her head. She still wondered what the stuff was that had knocked her out. It took days to recover. He’d given her painkillers, but they hadn’t dulled the ache much.
    The first time he’d knocked on the door, unlocked and opened it, she’d cowered on the corner of the bed. He wore a black balaclava ski mask that completely covered his head, except for his eyes. Breakfast on a tray. She wasn’t hungry. The second time she’d stood behind the door with a tattered copy of Bleak House in her hand, the heaviest object she could find. He called through the door, “Get on the bed!” She did.
    He opened the door, set the tray on the cracked arborite table: soup, an orange, a banana. She’d sat on the matching metal chair with its torn upholstered seat and eaten while they watched each other warily. When she’d finished, he removed the tray, unlocked the deadbolt, and locked the bolt from the outside. No words.
    Meals became a ritual. There’d be a knock on the door, which told her she had to scurry to the bed and sit on it. He knew she’d done so because he could see her through the peephole in the door. Looking in, not out like in hotel rooms. Then he’d present her with her meal. When she’d finished, it was back to the bed, where she had to stay till he left and locked behind himself. Despite his jailer capacity, he did all this with a kind of grace. Under other circumstances, perhaps a courteous man.
    Susanna had lain down and listened to her head ache. The sheets were clean, as far as she could tell. She stared at the cover of Bleak House . She’d read it in June for her fall course on Nineteenth-Century Novels. She wondered who in this house read Dickens.
    Later she’d gotten up and perused the other titles in the small, flimsy bookcase—just very old detective books. No works by George Eliot, the last author she’d had to read for that course. No Henry James either, not that she expected them. She replaced Bleak House . Lot of good it would’ve done as a weapon.
    Once she’d stopped listening to her head ache, she tried to hear the noises of the house: footsteps on the apparently carpeted steps, louder steps on a hard surface overhead, water gurgling, clattering dishes. Was she under the kitchen? Then silence. No voices, not even music or TV. Headphones? Had her captor gone out? Was she alone?
    She had to escape. She tested every part of the outer walls, institutional green concrete, must be the