Fade to Black (50 page)

Dear God, no. No, no, no.

She’s shaking her head, but he doesn’t seem to get it; he keeps right on fumbling his way through an invitation of some sort.

“If you like cake, I thought … Do you like cake? I do. I love it. And we could … I could—”

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” she blurts. “Sorry.”

He stares at her, eyes wide, jaw hanging.

“Look.” She tries to brush past him. “I’m really busy and—”

“If you’re busy,” he blurts, stepping into her path, “we can—”

We?
This time, she doesn’t even try to hold back the shudder.

“Thanks, but I can’t. No. No.”

She waits for him to retreat, perhaps hanging his head in defeat.

But he stands there in front of her, looking at her, his gray eyes shadowed.

Kristina shrugs and starts to step around him.

Jerry holds his ground.

Unsure whether to be infuriated or frightened, she casts her gaze at the ceiling and says, “Excuse me. I need to get my mail.”

Still, he doesn’t move.

How dare he? He’s just standing here, blocking her way.

“If you don’t move,” she says levelly, “I’m going to call the cops and have you arrested.”

Without another word, Jerry steps aside.

Shaken, Kristina walks down the corridor toward the vestibule, eyes focused straight ahead.

But she can feel him standing there staring after her, and it’s giving her the creeps.

Just before she enters the vestibule, she impulsively lifts her right arm and raises her middle finger.

“Jerk,” she mutters, flipping him off without looking back to see if he’s still watching.

Something tells her that he is.

New York Times
bestseller WENDY CORSI STAUB is the award-winning author of more than seventy novels. Wendy now lives in the New York City suburbs with her husband and their two children.

www.wendycorsistaub.com

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Shadowkiller

Sleepwalker

Nightwatcher

Hell to Pay

Scared to Death

Live to Tell

Dearly Beloved

Coming Soon

The Good Sister

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A print edition of
Fade to Black
was originally published in 1998 by Pinnacle Books, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.

Excerpt from
Nightwatcher
copyright © 2012 by Wendy Corsi Staub.

FADE TO BLACK
. Copyright © 1998 by Wendy Corsi Staub. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition DECEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062230102

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