The Night Bird (Frost Easton #1)(34)

Christie loosened up as she danced with him. Some of her energy came back. She wasn’t a great dancer herself, but she didn’t care. She forgot about the anxiety that had dogged her all day. Noah pointed at her smile and called over the music, “See? You’re having fun!”

She gave him a thumbs-up. He was right.

The B-52s became the Go-Go’s, and the Go-Go’s gave way to Donna Summer. He laughed as she lip-synched to “Bad Girls.” When the song was over, Noah put a meaty arm around her shoulder, and she left it there. They were both breathing hard. She looked up into his blue eyes and wondered if she’d judged him too quickly. Suddenly, he did look a little like Ed Sheeran.

“I love this place,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s great.”

“How about that next drink now?” he asked.

“Okay, sure.”

“Cran-tini?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

She watched him go, and he had a swagger in his step as he headed toward the bar. It was cute now. She tugged at the collar of her blouse because she was hot from dancing. She fluffed out her hair with her hands. Overhead, the music changed—something mellow this time, a Carole King song.

Somebody at the pinball machine whooped in excitement, and Arnold Schwarzenegger called out, “Awesome!”

Christie laughed.



Frankie took off her heels to run faster, but she was too late.

Midnight came and went. Half a block down the sharp hill from the cocktail lounge, she heard a scream that was more animal than human. It rose and fell, cutting through her brain like a knife. It was the scream you made when you saw hell. It was the scream you made when you were on fire.

A door slammed. Shouts overlapped. Warnings. Cries.

Ahead of her, a truck flew down Mason Street into the green light. As it did, a woman ran into the intersection, her hands over her face, not even seeing the danger. The truck’s horn blared in a wild, continuous roll. Brakes screeched, and tires burned black skids onto the pavement. There was no time to stop. Frankie turned away in horror, but she heard the sickening thump of metal and body colliding. Not ten feet in front of her, the woman’s broken form tumbled down the hill and lay still.

Frankie smelled the stench of hot rubber. Headlights and shadows crisscrossed the intersection. Footsteps pounded. She couldn’t see the face of the woman in the road, but she already knew who it was.

The dead woman in the street was her patient, Christie Parke.

The Night Bird had killed her.





17


“The Night Bird,” Frost said.

He watched Francesca Stein stare at the accident scene. The evening was cool, and she wore his sport coat draped over her shoulders. “Yes, that’s right,” she said. “That’s the name he uses in his messages.”

“And you think this person is somehow programming these women?”

She disconnected her cell phone from its portable charger and handed it to him. “You can see the e-mails he sent. He knew Christie was going to have her breakdown at midnight. He wanted me to see it happen.”

Frost studied the messages on Stein’s phone. He enlarged the photograph that had been taken inside the bar, but there was nothing in Christie Parke’s face to suggest what was about to happen to her.

Just like Monica Farr. Just like Brynn Lansing.

The police had closed the intersection. The medical examiner was processing the body. The truck that had struck and killed Christie Parke was still parked in the middle of the street, with blood on its dented grille. He saw a uniformed officer taking a statement from the driver, but there was nothing the man could have done to avoid the collision. Pedestrians gawked from behind the police tape, and neighbors stood in the lit windows of the apartment buildings that overlooked the scene. The media had arrived, too. He spotted video cameras from the local news channels.

Stein’s face pinched into a frown. She saw the cameras, too. Her name would be on television again. It was never good news that made the headlines.

“How is he doing this?” Frost asked. “How does it work?”

“I don’t know.”

Frost handed her the phone. “Can you forward these e-mails to me?”

“Of course, but I’m not sure it will help you. I asked a private security company to examine the messages, and they weren’t able to trace them.”

“We have our own experts,” Frost said. “And if you get any more—”

“You’ll be the first to know, Inspector,” Stein replied.

Her face was a chaos of emotions. She was distracted. Confused. Afraid. Upset. Her eyes kept going back to the street, as if the moment of the accident were replaying in her mind. The impact. The noise. Once you saw someone die, you were never the same. A body always left its mark.

Katie had been his first.

Wind blew down the street and whisked strands of her short brown hair into her face, but she didn’t seem to notice. She leaned her head back against the stone wall of the building behind her and closed her eyes. The downward turn of her lips was eloquent in its sadness.

“He’s taunting you, and he’s targeting your patients,” Frost said. “This is obviously personal.”

“Obviously,” she murmured.

“Do you have any idea who could be doing this?”