Unspeakable Read Online Free Page A

again.
    All at once she felt horrible for throwing him out of her office. Maybe it wasn’t an act after all. Maybe the poor kid was genuinely in trouble.
    She noticed someone on the other side of the street who seemed to be watching him, too. When Collin or Russ or whatever he called himself stopped to blow his nose, the man across the street stopped, too—behind a phone pole. Olivia wished she could see his face. “What the hell?” she murmured to herself.
    Collin took out his cell phone and started walking again. The man on the other side of the street from him began to move, too—in the same direction. Collin stayed close to the storefronts, their awnings shielding him from the rain. Olivia looked for the man across the street, but she didn’t spot him. Was he hiding again? Her breath fogged the window as she leaned close to the glass and searched for the man. There was still no sign of him. Meanwhile, Collin turned down a side street.
    Olivia heard a little click behind her, and swiveled around. The light on the base of her cordless phone was blinking. She’d shut off the ringer for their session, so all calls went directly to voice mail. She checked the caller ID:

    STAMPLER, C
206-555-5028
THUR 10-04 5:43 PM

    â€œGood God, kid, leave me alone,” she muttered, nervously running a hand through her auburn hair. She waited until the light went off. Then she picked up her phone and pressed four digits. “You have one message,” the automated voice told her. “Press one to play messages. . . .”
    Olivia almost deleted it, but decided to listen to what the kid had to say. Maybe she’d end up playing it for the police. She pressed one: “Hello, I—I’m really sorry to bother you again.” He sounded a bit throaty from crying. “I know I must have scared you in your office. But that wasn’t me. If you’re scared, please, think for a minute about how scared I must be. I don’t understand why this is happening to me. You—you deserve to know the truth. My name’s Collin, like I told you—but I’m Collin Cox. I don’t know if you’ve heard of me. I’m an actor. But—well, what happened in your office, it was no act. It happened before when my friend hypnotized me, and I’m worried it might have happened again while I was sleeping. Please, call me back at this number, okay? You’re the only one who can help me. I really don’t know what else I can—”
    The machine cut him off, and then there was a beep.
    Olivia set the phone back in its cradle. She listened to the rain tapping at her window.
    Of course she knew who Collin Cox was. That was why he seemed so familiar. He was the little boy from that thriller The Night Whisperer several years ago. Everyone knew the scene in which he was sleeping and suddenly sat up in bed to announce, “The killings are about to start.” He hadn’t made many movies since then. But he’d been in the news four months ago. While she’d been going through her own nightmare in Portland, Collin Cox, the former child star, had been making headlines for his part in a grisly double homicide.
    â€œYou’re the only one who can help me,” he’d said.
    Her office seemed so still all of a sudden—with just the gentle rain outside and her rock-sculpture waterfall trickling. The door was still locked, and the boy was gone. Yet Olivia felt the walls closing in on her again.

C HAPTER T WO
    Three months before: Seattle—Friday, July 13, 1:15 a.m.
    O n the night of the murders, Collin couldn’t sleep.
    His mother and her boyfriend, Chance, were having a party downstairs with a bunch of Chance’s sleazeball friends. Even with the tower fan on high speed beside his bed, it didn’t create enough white noise to drown out the racket down there. They were really getting rowdy. What a bunch of a-holes , he thought, pulling the sheet over