Read Online The Sleeping Doll by Jeffery Deaver - Free Book Online Page B

anything—it was way expensive. She was just too squirrelly to stay in one place.
    That’s what I should’ve named you. Stay Still Jennie. For fuck’s sake, girl. Sit down .
    Looking at the produce, looking at the rows of meat.
    Looking at the women with boring husbands.
    She wondered if the intensity she felt for her boyfriend was simply because it was all so new. Would it fade after a while? But one thing in their favor was that they were older; this wasn’t that stupid passion of your teenage years. They were mature people. And most important was their souls’ connection, which comes along so rarely. Each knew exactly how the other felt.
    “Your favorite color’s green,” he’d shared with her the first time they’d spoken. “I’ll bet you sleep under a green comforter. It soothes you at night.”
    Oh my God, he was so right. It was a blanket, not a comforter. But it was green as grass. What kind of man had that intuition?
    Suddenly she paused, aware of a conversation nearby. Two of the bored housewives weren’t so bored at the moment.
    “Somebody’s dead. In Salinas. It just happened.”
    Salinas? Jennie thought.
    “Oh, the escape from that prison or whatever? Yeah, I just heard about it.”
    “David Pell, no, Daniel. That’s it.”
    “Isn’t he, like, Charles Manson’s kid or something?”
    “I don’t know. But I heard some people got killed.”
    “He’s not Manson’s kid. No, he just called himself that.”
    “Who’s Charles Manson?”
    “Are you kidding me? Remember Sharon Tate?”
    “Who?”
    “Like, when were you born?”
    Jennie approached the women. “Excuse me, what’s that you’re talking about? An escape or something?”
    “Yeah, from this jail in Salinas. Didn’t you hear?” one of the short-haired housewives asked, glancing at Jennie’s nose.
    She didn’t care. “Somebody was killed, you said?”
    “Some guards and then somebody was kidnapped and killed, I think.”
    They didn’t seem to know anything more.
    Her palms damp, heart uneasy, Jennie turned and walked away. She checked her phone. Her boyfriend had called a while ago but nothing since then. No messages. She tried the number. He didn’t answer.
    Jennie returned to the turquoise Thunderbird. She put the radio on the news, then twisted the rearview mirror toward her. She pulled her makeup and brush from her purse.
    Some people got killed . . . .
    Don’t worry about it, she told herself. Working on her face, concentrating the way her mother had taught her. It was one of the nice things the woman had done for her. “Put the light here, the dark here—we’ve got to do something with that nose of yours. Smooth it in . . . blend it. Good.”
    Though her mother often took away the nice as fast as shattering a glass.
    Well, it looked fine until you messed it up. Honestly, what’s wrong with you? Do it again. You look like a whore .
    •    •    •
    Daniel Pell was strolling down the sidewalk from the small covered garage connected to an office building in Monterey.
    He’d had to abandon Billy’s Honda Civic earlier than he’d planned. He’d heard on the news that the police had found the Worldwide Express truck, which meant they would probably assume he was in the Civic. He’d apparently evaded the roadblocks just in time.
    How ’bout that , Kathryn?
    Now he continued along the sidewalk, with his head down. He wasn’t concerned about being out in public, not yet. Nobody would expect him here. Besides, he looked different. In addition to the civilian clothes he wassmooth-shaven. After dumping Billy’s car he’d slipped into the back parking lot of a motel, where he’d gone through the trash. He’d found a discarded razor and a tiny bottle of the motel’s giveaway body lotion. Crouching by the Dumpster, he’d used them to shave off the beard.
    He now felt the breeze on his face, smelled something in the air: ocean and seaweed. First time in years. He loved the scent. In Capitola prison