Fatal Exposure. Gail BarrettЧитать онлайн книгу.
“Drugs, probably.” Tommy had only hung out with other addicts toward the end.
“Any other factors that might affect her appearance, like wind or sun damage to her skin?”
Parker frowned. As a runaway, she would have been exposed to the elements. But if this woman really was B. K. Elliot, her photos sold for thousands of dollars a pop—meaning her impoverished days were long gone.
“Let’s say she was homeless during her teen years,” he decided. “Then she straightened herself out and led a comfortable life after that.”
Sudhir added a trace of squint lines around her eyes. “Weight gain?”
Remembering the photo in the newspaper, Parker shook his head. “No, keep her thin.”
“How about her hair?”
He studied the image taking shape on the screen. “Longer, just past her shoulders. And not so curly, just kind of wavy and thick.”
Sudhir continued to work, slowly transforming the scrawny adolescent into a young woman. A hauntingly beautiful woman with a small, feminine nose, elegantly sculpted cheekbones and an intriguingly sensual mouth.
His heart picked up its beat.
But what held him captive were her eyes. Her eyes were wounded, poignant, raw, as vulnerable as those of the children in B. K. Elliot’s photos. They drew him in, sparking a sense of awareness, an oddly tumultuous feeling that went beyond the usual pull of attraction for a pretty face.
Something he had no damned right to feel for a woman involved in his brother’s death.
With effort, he shrugged off the erotic tug.
A moment later, Sudhir released the mouse and sat back, his chair creaking under his weight. He tilted his head to the side. “So what do you think?”
His heart beating triple time, Parker unfolded the newspaper and held it beside the monitor. Sudhir’s low whistle echoed his thoughts. She was a dead ringer for the woman in the paper.
“I think I found a killer.”
Now he just had to track her down.
* * *
Unable to shake the weariness dogging her steps, Brynn Elliot pushed open the door of her Alexandria, Virginia, row house and trudged inside, the blast of heat enveloping her like a caress. God, she was tired. A week spent scouring the streets of New York City in near-freezing temperatures had done her in—and not just physically. It was the suffering that got to her, the violence inflicted on those defenseless kids. And with every passing year the runaways looked younger, more cynical, their wounded eyes filled with more despair.
A feeling she’d once known well.
Knowing better than to go down that depressing track, she deposited an armload of newspapers and junk mail on the kitchen table, then shrugged off her backpack and coat. She couldn’t change her past. And neither could she rescue the world. She simply tried to reveal the truth, to force the hypocrites in high society to face the hell of these children’s lives—lives they had betrayed and destroyed.
Really not wanting to revisit those old ghosts, she glanced at her kitchen phone, its voice mail indicator light flashing like a squad car at a crime scene, then crossed the kitchen to the pantry and rummaged for a can of soup. The messages would be from Haley, a perpetual worrier, needing to make sure she was safe. Brynn had missed her weekly call-in thanks to the punks who’d stolen her cell phone in New York. She was just glad they hadn’t noticed her camera. The photos she’d taken of the child prostitutes on Rockaway Boulevard were her most poignant work to date.
Impatient to upload the photos to her computer and get to work, she dumped the soup into a bowl and stuck it into the microwave to heat. Then she called up her voice mail, set the phone to speaker and started disposing of her junk mail so she could clear a space to eat.
“Brynn, are you there? Pick up the phone,” Haley’s voice called out. Smiling at her friend’s predictability, Brynn tossed several pieces of junk mail into the bin.
“Brynn, it’s important. Call me right away,” her next message said.
“I will,” Brynn promised. “Just give me a minute to eat.”
“Why haven’t you called me back?” Haley demanded in her third call, desperation straining her voice. “Where are you?”
“In New York, fighting off a couple of punks.” Punks she could have evaded in her younger days. Making a mental note to buy another disposable cell phone, she threw another batch of junk mail away.
“For God’s sake, Brynn, why haven’t you called me? Have you seen the newspapers? I need to talk to you right away.”
The papers? Brynn paused, unable to ignore the urgency in Haley’s tone. Had there been something about Haley’s shelter in the newspaper, something that might have exposed her friend’s identity—a danger they all had to avoid?
Worried now, she dumped the rest of the advertisements in the trash, then started flipping through various newspapers, not sure what she was supposed to find. But whatever it was had to be important. Haley wasn’t the type to panic. She dealt with high drama daily in her shelter for runaway, pregnant teens. And if she was worried enough to call...
Her sense of anxiety growing, Brynn riffled quickly through the papers, scanning political columns and crime reports to no avail. Then a front-page photo caught her attention, and everything inside her froze.
It was a photo of her.
The room swayed. She gripped the table for balance, a dull roar battering her ears. Someone had photographed her leaving the art gallery—and splashed it across the front page. But how had they figured out who she was? She hadn’t spoken to a soul. She hadn’t even greeted the clerk. She’d simply strolled through the exhibit, discreetly checking the status of the photos, then left.
Praying she was somehow mistaken, she unfolded the newspaper, but there wasn’t any doubt. The headline screamed “Mystery solved!”
Reeling, she sank into a chair. How could this have happened? She’d been so blasted careful. She’d lived off the grid for years—always on the move, constantly changing her identity with her friends’ help. Even later, when her career had taken off, her agent had stepped in, doing all the promotional work, accepting awards on her behalf, never revealing what she looked like or where she lived. Now a momentary lapse—a quick visit to the gallery to estimate her earnings—had destroyed everything. And all because she’d needed to upgrade the plumbing in Haley’s shelter before she left on her New York trip.
Staggered by the scope of the disaster, she pressed her fingers to her forehead and tried to think. A reporter had connected her to her work. Exactly how he’d done that, she didn’t have a clue. But the media would come out in droves. Her stepfather would hunt her down. So would Tommy’s killer, assuming he was still around.
Panic bubbled inside her. She was in danger. Terrible danger. So were Haley and Nadine.
No, Nadine would be all right. She’d called a few weeks back to let Brynn know she was heading to Peru, journeying to the remote mountain villages to do her charity medical work. No one would find her there.
But Haley... She was in D.C., running her shelter for pregnant teens—an open target for their enemies.
If she wasn’t already dead.
Horrified, Brynn leaped to her feet, knocking over her chair as she lunged across the kitchen and grabbed the phone. Punching in Haley’s number, she prayed that she’d pick up.
The doorbell buzzed.
Her heart slammed to a halt. She snapped her gaze to the door. The microwave dinged, but she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, her attention riveted on the front door.
She’d never met her neighbors. No one knew she lived here except for