Gillian rose stiffly from the chair. Her former grace and elegance were gone, and she looked suddenly old. She fixed Bonnie with an ice-cold stare.
“You may be a lot of things, Miss Parker. But you’re not clean.”
***
There was nothing more to say after that. Bonnie let herself out. She left the house and crossed Ocean Drive to the boardwalk. She leaned on the railing and watched the sun.
It was cool for August, the surf still rough. Clouds scudded past, the whitecaps matching their tempo. But behind the clouds there was blue sky.
Gillian might have doubts about the fix, but Bonnie had looked at it from every angle, and she knew it would hold up. The only possible hitch was Kurt’s time of death—shortly after the plane’s departure from Millstone Airport, when, according to her scenario, he should have died a little earlier. But she wasn’t worried. For all she knew, there were no witnesses to establish exactly when the plane had left. More to the point, Kurt’s remains probably wouldn’t be found for a couple of days. He had no friends, and no one would come calling on him until somebody noticed the smell. By then, an accurate time of death would be impossible to determine.
To the south, she could see the pavilion in a haze of distance. Squinting, she made out a couple of uniformed cops. Someone must have spotted the shell casings and bullet holes from last night’s firefight. Another piece of the puzzle for Dan Maguire. But that was no problem either. Hell, maybe Kurt Land’s prints would turn up at the scene. He’d been there, after all.
It had all worked out. She was tired now, and hungry. Ravenous, in fact. She figured she would stop at the Main Street Diner, and chow down on their eggs Benedict. But not quite yet. She was too restless to sit and eat.
She started walking north, away from the pavilion. The wind beat at her face. Joggers huffed past. Kids flashed by on bikes, reminding her of Sienna Wright. The sight of them made her feel good, but the feeling faded as she thought of what Gillian Hart had said.
You’re not clean.
Bonnie couldn’t argue. She knew who she was and what she was. Since midnight she’d made two men into corpses. There had been other men before them. And there would be more.
She wore hats and made small talk and tipped waitresses. She looked and acted like any other person. But she was not like the others. She could shoot a pleading man in cold blood. And feel nothing. Nothing at all.
She was a killer—hard as a bullet, sudden as a shock, and, always, cold around the heart.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
As always, I invite readers to visit my website at www.michaelprescott.net, where you'll find news items, information on my books, and other good stuff.
The lines of verse that serve as an epigraph for Cold Around the Heart are excerpted from a poem written by the real Bonnie Parker, which was found among her personal effects after her death. I've taken the liberty of altering a couple of words in the last line, which originally read, For they know they can never be free.
My thanks to Diana Cox of www.novelproofreading.com for her careful proofreading of the manuscript. Any remaining errors are mine.
—M.P.
Also by Michael Prescott
Shiver
Deadly Pursuit
Blind Pursuit
Mortal Pursuit
Stealing Faces
The Shadow Hunter
Last Breath
Next Victim
In Dark Places
Dangerous Games
Mortal Faults
Final Sins
Riptide
Grave of Angels
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