Read Online Her Last Whisper by Karen Robards - Free Book Online

anxious eye on the space around them, and on Michael. Every instinct she possessed screamed that she needed to get him out of her officeand away from the prison as quickly as possible, but as he still seemed to be almost completely incapacitated there wasn’t much she could do. The last thing she was worried about at the moment was a missed phone call, but checking her phone gave her a ready-made excuse to stay right where she was. Pretty soon either Tony or Pugh was going to want her to accompany them somewhere, and when she wouldn’t they were going to wonder why she was refusing to leave her office. Since her brain was apparently in a fear-induced fog it was good to delay having to come up with a reasonable-sounding excuse for as long as possible, and hunting for her phone/checking her messages provided just such a delay. When she spotted her phone poking out from under her purse she didn’t know whether to feel glad or sorry, but she picked it up, which required a little more time-eating maneuvering—she had to snag her purse first, then dump the items she was carrying into it. Bending to retrieve it gave her a chance to mouth a worried “How are you feeling?” at Michael. He answered with a tight-lipped, “Just peachy keen,” which besides being obviously untrue didn’t provide any helpful information. Her gaze swept him: his eyes were half-closed; the white lines on either side of his mouth came, she thought, from his jaw being clenched so hard. Lying on his back with one knee bent he looked as rigid as if he had been carved from wood.
    Not good signs
.
    She certainly couldn’t carry him; she couldn’t even touch him. Once again she reminded herself,
There is nothing you can do
. That hard truth set her nerves to jumping all over again. Taking a deep, hopefully calming (hah!) breath, she looked down at her phone and saw that there were two missed calls. One from Tony, and a slightly earlier one from Special Agent Lena Kaminsky, a member of Tony’s three-person team. Like Tony, Kaminsky had left a message.
    Attention caught by that, she frowned at Tony. “Kaminsky called me.”
    “Sugar Buns?” Michael’s eyes flickered with interest. He was, she was glad to see, beginning to experimentally flex his broad shoulders; both legs were now bent at the knee. Progress? She hoped. Sugar Buns was his nickname for Kaminsky. It never failed to irritate Charlie, which, she knew, was at least one reason he continuedto use it. “Since when is she a member of the Charlie Stone fan club?”
    Michael might be irritating, but he had a point. A call to her cell from prickly Kaminsky, whom she definitely wasn’t on just-phoned-for-a-chat terms, was nothing if not unexpected.
    “She told me she called you,” Tony said. “Here’s the thing: her sister’s disappeared. Kaminsky thinks she might have run afoul of a serial killer.”
    “What?” She looked at Tony with shock. Lena Kaminsky was not a friend, exactly. As Michael had pointed out, Kaminsky wasn’t even a fan of the expertise that Dr. Charlotte Stone, renowned serial killer expert, brought to the investigative table. Raised a Scientologist, Kaminsky didn’t believe in psychiatry, for starters. From the beginning she’d made it clear that she was deeply skeptical of every insight Charlie provided the team. Add to that her suspicion of Charlie’s occasionally unaccountable behavior (for which Michael and the whole spectrum of the spirit world could largely be thanked) and her disapproval of Charlie’s budding friendship (?) with Tony, and their relationship, as the saying went, was complicated. Still, they’d nearly been killed together during their last serial killer hunt, which had had the upside of forging some pretty strong bonds between them. In any case, Charlie could definitely sympathize with Kaminsky over this. She felt cold all over.
    “So the first thing Dudley thinks to do is come running straight for you,” Michael said with disgust. Charlie