Broken Dolls (A Jefferson Winter Thriller) Read Online Free Page B

was thirty, so why the hell was she acting like a lovesick teenager? It was crazy. She glanced through the window of her cubicle, convinced every set of eyes would be aimed in her direction, but everyone had their heads down. Rachel could hear the bang and clatter of the call centre on the other side of the glass, the chirping of the telephones, the mumble of dozens of one-sided conversations.
    She stared at the report on her screen and willed the words to make sense. It didn’t work. All she could think about was tonight. She’d told Jamie she was going out for a birthday drink with some of the girls after work. Not that he cared. She could have told him she was emigrating to Australia and she would have got the same uninterested, grunted non-response. It hadn’t always been like this. Back at the start, they used to talk through the night, sharing their dreams and secrets. But those days were long gone, eroded away by the daily grind of six and a half years of marriage.
    Underneath her desk was her bag, and inside the bag was her expensive perfume, her best underwear and her favourite little red dress. The dress highlighted all the good bits, hid all the bad bits, and was sexy without being slutty. That last part was important. She didn’t think Tesla would appreciate slutty. There was something old-fashioned about him. He was a gentleman, in both senses of the word. It was his sensitivity that had attracted her in the first place, that probably more than anything else. It was nice to have someone who listened to her, someone who made her feel that what she said and thought actually mattered. Someone who appreciated her for who she was.
    Rachel stared at the jumble of words on the screen and told herself there was still time to bail out. Then she thought about Jamie and all the hurt he’d caused her and she knew that wasn’t going to happen. She’d been chatting with Tesla for the last couple of months and the more she got to know him, the more she liked him. She hadn’t even met the guy, didn’t even know his real name, but there was no getting away from the fact that he understood her in ways she had never been understood by anyone. He got her. Really got her. Jamie had never understood her so completely, not even back in the good days.
    She glanced at the clock on her screen, saw it was only three thirty. Four and a half hours until they met up. Four and a half hours that were going to drag like the last day of school.

5
    I stood with Hatcher at the end of the lake and watched Barnaby drag Graham Johnson home. The snow had finally started, fat flakes that hung suspended in the lamplight, trapped in slow motion. This was just a taste of things to come. The weathermen had promised blizzards and the newsreaders had promised chaos, and I saw no reason to argue with them. Johnson was already halfway along the lake. The old guy obviously wanted to get home before the snow really got going. I didn’t blame him. Being stuck out here in a snowstorm was nobody’s idea of fun. I tapped out a cigarette, lit it with my battered brass Zippo, and ignored the waves of disapproval coming from Hatcher.
    ‘The unsub was here,’ I said.
    ‘That’s what Johnson said?’ replied Hatcher.
    ‘Not in so many words.’
    ‘So what did he say?’
    ‘What he said wasn’t important. What’s important is what he felt. And what he felt was that someone was watching.’ I nodded to a nearby clump of trees. ‘From over there to be exact.’
    ‘What he felt ,’ echoed Hatcher. ‘Not sure that one’s going to stand up in court, Winter.’
    ‘And that’s the problem with being a cop these days. You spend too much time thinking like a lawyer and not enough time thinking like a detective.’
    I headed over to the trees and peered into the gloom. Dark shadows moved with the swaying branches and the eerie whistle of the wind filled the air. Before Hatcher could lecture me on the dos and don’ts of contaminating crime scenes, I pushed