3rd Degree Read Online Free Page B

flicked on a CD. The Reverend Al Green. I stepped into the shower and took a swig of a beer I'd brought with me. I leaned back under the warming spray, the grit and soot and smell of ash chipping off my body, swirling at my feet. Something made me feel like crying.
    I felt so alone.
    I could've died today.
    I wished I had someone's arms to slide into.
    Claire had Edmund to soothe her on a night like tonight, after she pieced three charred bodies together. Jill had Steve, whatever... Even Martha had someone - me!
    I felt my thoughts drift to Chris for the first time in a while. It would be nice if he were here tonight. It had been eighteen months since he died. I was ready to put it behind me, to open myself to someone, if someone happened to be on the scene. No drum roll. No “Ladies and gentlemen, the envelope, please....” Just this little voice in my heart, my voice, telling me it was time.
    Then I drifted back to the scene at the Marina. I saw myself on the street, holding Martha. The beautiful, calm morning; the stucco town house. The redheaded kid spin-ning his Razor. The flash of orange light.
    Over and over I ran the reel, and it kept ending at the same point.
    There's something you're not seeing. Something I had edited out.
    The woman turning the corner just before the flash. I had seen only a glimpse of her back. Blond, ponytail. Something in her arms. But that wasn't what was bothering me.
    It was that she never came back.
    I hadn't thought about it until now. After the blast...The kid with the Razor was there. Lots of others. But the blond woman wasn't among them. No one interviewed her. She never came back...Why?
    Because the son of a bitch was running away.
    That moment flashed over and over in my mind. Some-
    thing in her arms. She was running away. It was the au pair. And the bundle in her arms? That was the Lightowers' baby!

Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree

Chapter 15
    HER HAIR FELL in thick, blond clumps onto the bathroom floor. She took the scissors and cut again. Everything had to start over now. Wendy was gone forever. A new face began to emerge in the mirror. She said good-bye to the au pair she had been for the past five months.
    Cut away the past. Wendy was a name for Peter Pan, not the real world.
    The baby was screaming in the bedroom. “Hush, Caitlin. Please, honey.”
    She had to figure it out - what to do with her. All she knew was that she couldn't let the baby die. She had listened to the news reports all afternoon. The whole world was look-ing for her. They were calling her a cold-blooded killer. A monster. But she couldn't be such a monster, could she? Not if she had saved the baby.
    “You don't think I'm such a monster, do you, Caitlin?” she called to the bawling child.
    Michelle lowered her head into the sink and dumped a bottle of L'Or‚al Red Sunset dye all over her, massaging it into her cropped hair.
    Wendy, the au pair, disappeared.
    Any moment now, Malcolm would come by. They had agreed not to meet until they were sure she hadn't been followed. But she needed him. Now that she'd proved what she was made of.
    She heard the sound of the front door being rattled. Michelle's heart jumped.
    What if she'd been careless? What if someone had seen her coming back with the kid? What if they were kicking the door down now!
    Then Malcolm stepped into the room. “You were expect-ing cops, weren't you? I told you they're stupid!” he said. Michelle ran over to him and jumped into his arms.
    “Oh, Mal, we did it. We did it.” She kissed his face about a hundred times. “I did the right thing, didn't I?” Michelle asked. “I mean, the TV is saying that whoever did this was a monster.”
    “I told you, you have to be strong, Michelle.” Mal stroked her hair. “The TV, they're bought and paid for, just like the rest. But look at you.... You look so different.”
    Suddenly, there was a cry from the bedroom. Mal took a gun from his belt. “What the fuck was that?”
    She was behind him