by Kay Hooper
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF
Kay Hooper
BLOOD SINS
“Disturbing … Hooper pulls out all the stops.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Fans of Kay Hooper won’t be disappointed.”
—The Romance Reader
“Another solid entry.”
—Booklist
BLOOD DREAMS
“You won’t want to turn the lights out after reading this book!”
—Romantic Times
“A good read for fans of other serial-killer books and the TV show Criminal Minds.”
—Booklist
“Spectacular … With its fast pace, high-adrenaline plot, cast of well-developed characters, and fluid dialogue, Blood Dreams fills every expectation a reader could have…. I highly recommend.”
—Romance Reviews Today
SLEEPING WITH FEAR
“An entertaining book for any reader.”
—Winston-Salem Journal
“Hooper keeps the suspense dialed up…. Readers will be mesmerized by a plot that moves quickly to a chilling conclusion.”
—Publishers Weekly
CHILL OF FEAR
“Hooper’s latest may offer her fans a few shivers on a hot beach.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Kay Hooper has conjured a fine thriller with appealing young ghosts and a suitably evil presence to provide a welcome chill on a hot summer’s day.”
—Orlando Sentinel
“The author draws the reader into the story line and, once there, they can’t leave because they want to see what happens next in this thrill-a-minute, chilling, fantastic reading experience.”
—Midwest Book Review
HUNTING FEAR
“A well-told scary story.”
—Toronto Sun
“Hooper’s unerring story sense and ability to keep the pages flying can’t be denied.”
—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
“Hooper has created another original—Hunting Fear sets an intense pace…. Work your way through the terror to the triumph … and you’ll be looking for more Hooper tales to add to your bookshelf.”
—Wichita Falls Times Record News
“It’s vintage Hooper—a suspenseful page-turner.”
—Brazosport Facts
“Expect plenty of twists and surprises as Kay Hooper gets her series off to a crackerjack start!”
—Aptos Times
SENSE OF EVIL
“A well-written, entertaining police procedural … loaded with suspense.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Filled with page-turning suspense.”
—The Sunday Oklahoman
“Sense of Evil will knock your socks off.”
—Rendezvous
“A master storyteller.”
—TAMI HOAG
STEALING SHADOWS
“A fast-paced, suspenseful plot … The story’s complicated and intriguing twists and turns keep the reader guessing until the chilling end.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This definitely puts Ms. Hooper in a league with Tami Hoag and Iris Johansen and Sandra Brown. Gold five-star rating.”
—Heartland Critics
HUNTING RACHEL
“A stirring and evocative thriller.”
—Palo Alto Daily News
“The pace flies, the suspense never lets up. It’s great reading.”
—Baton Rouge Advocate
“An intriguing book with plenty of strange twists that will please the reader.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“It passed the ‘stay up late to finish it in one night’ test.”
—The Denver Post
FINDING LAURA
“You always know you are in for an outstanding read when you pick up a Kay Hooper novel, but in Finding Laura, she has created something really special! Simply superb!”
—Romantic Times
“Hooper keeps the intrigue pleasurably complicated, with gothic touches of suspense and a satisfying resolution.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A first-class reading experience.”
—Affaire de Coeur
AFTER CAROLINE
“Harrowing good fun. Readers will shiver and shudder.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Kay Hooper has crafted another solid story to keep readers enthralled until the last page is turned.”
—Booklist
“Kay Hooper comes through with thrills, chills, and plenty of romance, this time with an energetic murder mystery with a clever twist. The suspense is sustained admirably right up to the very end.”
—Kirkus Reviews
BANTAM BOOKS BY KAY HOOPER
The Bishop Trilogies
Stealing Shadows
Hiding in the Shadows
Out of the Shadows
Touching Evil
Whisper of Evil
Sense of Evil
Hunting Fear
Chill of Fear
Sleeping with Fear
Blood Dreams
Blood Sins
The Quinn Novels
Once a Thief
Always a Thief
Romantic Suspense
Amanda
After Caroline
Finding Laura
Haunting Rachel
Classic Fantasy and Romance
On Wings of Magic
The Wizard of Seattle
My Guardian Angel (anthology)
Yours to Keep (anthology)
Golden Threads
Something Different
Pepper’s Way
C.J.’s Fate
The Haunting of Josie
Illegal Possession
If There Be Dragons
Rebel Waltz
Larger than Life
ONE
“MISS CORTNEY-BENNET?”
From some distant corner of the very dark room a tiny, gentle voice reproved him. “It’s just Bennet. Most Americans don’t use hyphenated names.”
A bit rattled for several reasons, he stepped inside the loft and half-closed the door behind him. It was so dark that he had the eerie feeling of having been swallowed up by something huge and dimly threatening. It didn’t help that rain lashed the high windows or that thunder rumbled distantly.
“Sorry. Uh—I got a message about a problem.”
There was a long silence broken only by a muffled crash as he took an unwary step forward, tripped over something unyielding, and found himself sprawled across what seemed to be a large box. The tiny voice reached him through his muttered curses.
“A slight problem. You may have noticed that it’s dark.”
“The whole building’s dark,” he retorted, peeling himself off the box.
“Well, you own the building. Can’t you do something about it?” Suspicion abruptly entered the ridiculously small voice. “You do own the building, don’t you?”
“Not at all,” he responded politely, barking his shin on what felt like a boulder. “I just stopped by to rape and pillage.”
“Perfect weather for it,” she murmured.
“Look, where are you?” he demanded, trying to home in on that small voice.
“I’m not sure. I was in the shower when the lights went out, and I haven’t been able to find my flashlight. I just barely found the phone.”
Before he could stop himself, he asked, “Did you find any clothes?”
“I found a robe.” Her voice turned reflective. “Or maybe it’s just the towel Caliban chewed a couple of holes in. It feels like a robe, though.”
Fascinated, he took a step toward her voice, tripped again, and found himself hugging something tall, unyielding, and furry. Recoiling violently, he trippe
d going backward and sat down hard on yet another box.
“What the hell?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I just ran into something with fur,” he managed to say.
“Is it alive?”
“I sincerely hope not!”
“Oh, well, that was Fluffy. He’s a bear. A stuffed bear,” she added rather hastily.
He took a deep breath. “Oh.”
“Yes. Don’t you have a flashlight?”
He decided to remain where he was on the box because there was something definitely unnerving in encountering a bear—be it ever so stuffed—in total darkness. “I couldn’t find my flashlight,” he explained, adding, “I just moved in yesterday myself.”
“You’re a lot of help,” she told him severely. “What is your name anyway? I’ve forgotten.”
“Noah Thorne. And you’re Stephanie Alexandra Cortney Bennet,” he said, remembering not to hyphenate the surnames. “It stuck in my mind.”
“Impressive, isn’t it?” she agreed cheerfully. “I was born with it, but use it only professionally. To my friends, I’m just Alex Bennet.”
For some time Noah had been conscious of a wry feeling about his mental image of the lady with the impressive name. Now he was certain that image was slightly off. They had never met face to face, or even talked on the phone; he had seen some of her interior decorating and had hired her through correspondence to handle the decorating of his building.
And Alex Bennet, upon learning all the details of the conversion, had instantly requested a loft for herself. She had decided to relocate to San Francisco from the East, and both the job and the loft had sounded perfect to her. But he had been gone all day while she moved in, and they still hadn’t met.
Neither of them knew the building at all well—she because it was her first day here, and Noah because he’d been out of town working on a commission while the conversion took place.
It was an old building, a warehouse recently and very roughly converted to lofts. There would be five lofts eventually, although only two were presently habitable: the one he had moved into on the top floor yesterday, and the one Alex Bennet had taken on the first floor today. Neither loft was much more than bare floors and brick walls at this point.
Noah had tired of his apartment in a vast complex downtown, and had instantly decided to move here when the warehouse-conversion idea became feasible. He planned to manage the building himself, taking the top floor as both living and work areas. It would allow him plenty of space and time for his photographic work, he’d decided.
He wondered now if he was being optimistic about having plenty of time. Everything that could go wrong had already, and he’d been here only since yesterday. He’d had the plumber out only hours after moving in to fix various clogged drains, requested the building contractor to return in order to close up a doorway somebody had officiously added to the plans, and now it most certainly looked as though the electrician would have to be called.
He sat on a box in a very dark room, wary of moving because of a stuffed bear, and growing more and more curious about his decorator/tenant. He had checked his answering service after leaving his studio late in the afternoon, stopping by a phone booth because his home phone hadn’t been connected yet, and his studio phone had just been disconnected since it was his last day in the place.
There was little he could do about the situation, but when his service reported a problem with his tenant, he’d felt honor-bound at least to find out what the problem was. Encountering darkness upon entering the building, he’d felt his way cautiously up the three flights of stairs to his own loft, searched fruitlessly for a flashlight, then felt his way back down the stairs to Alex’s loft.
For all the good it had done either of them.
Suddenly aware of the silence, he suggested, “Matches? Candles?”
“Are you kidding? I couldn’t even find my clothes.”
Noah calculated the position of the bear, carefully got off his box-chair, and made another attempt to work his way toward her voice. When his outstretched fingers encountered fur, he jerked his hand back, silently damned his sense of direction, made a ten-degree correction, and went on.
The next few minutes were strange, to say the least. Locating a wall by nearly running headlong into it, he felt along it until he found a door. Opening the door was an instinctive reaction—and so was hastily shutting it when a deep and eerily menacing growl issued from within.
“What in heaven’s name—?”
“That’s just Caliban. You said I could have a pet,” she reminded him anxiously. “He’s very well-trained.”
Noah decided not to ask exactly what kind of pet Caliban was; judging by the sound of his growl, he was a big one. Making another guess as to the location of his tenant, he turned and tentatively started back across the room. “It would be much simpler,” he said, “if we just went out and got flashlights and oil lamps.”
“Well, I hate to be a bother,” she told him, “but you’ll have to do that. I’m not dressed to go anywhere. At least I don’t think I am. Won’t the power come back on?”
“If lightning hit a transformer or something,” he replied, “and work crews are out. But if it’s just this building, who knows when we’ll have power?”
“I called the power company; they said it was the storm.”
“Did they estimate when service might be restored?”
“Apparently they didn’t dare. I called your service again to let you know what they said, but you’d already checked in for the last time. I really didn’t think there was anything you could do, but …” Her voice trailed off for a moment, then resumed rather stolidly. “But I’ve never been totally alone in a strange city before—with no lights—and I got a little nervous.”
Instantly he said, “I don’t blame you. A strange apartment is bad enough, but in the dark? My heart’s still pounding from running into your bear.”
She giggled, and since the voice sounded very near, Noah reached out an experimental hand. “Is that—”
“Yes, that’s me,” she said, startled and slightly breathless.
He swiftly drew back his hand. “Um … sorry.” She had a little-girl voice, he reflected, but there was nothing childish about what his hand had encountered.
Alex cleared her throat. “Blind man’s bluff has its pitfalls. Look, I’m near the couch. I’ll back up and move sideways, and if you take a step forward, I think we can both sit down.”
Gingerly they managed the feat.
“I really should go out and find some kind of light,” he said, “but, quite frankly, I’m not looking forward to making my way back to the door.”
“That’s why I stayed in one place,” she confided. “Since the loft is basically one huge room, with only a bedroom and bath separate from it, the movers pretty much just dumped everything and left. I think Caliban was making them nervous.”
Something about that name bothered Noah, but he couldn’t pin it down; he only knew that every mention of the name twanged a chord of uneasy memory. “He isn’t vicious, is he?”
“Oh, no. He’s just big. And he looks a bit … um … unusual.” Before Noah could comment, she was going on cheerfully, “I must say, I’ve never before met a client under circumstances like these. Or a landlord, for that matter. Are you going to be a good landlord?”
Both taken aback and amused by the question, he answered gravely. “I certainly hope so. But I’m new at it, so you’ll have to bear with me—no pun intended.”
She giggled, a curiously enchanting, gleeful sound, and Noah felt his interest in her growing. She couldn’t be as young as she sounded, although if his encounter with womanly curves was anything to go by, she was certainly much shorter than the average woman. He decided that there was something vastly intriguing about this meeting. It was, he knew, because of the total darkness; with sight no help to him, he found himself using other senses more intensely than he could ever remember doing before.
His ears found the sound of her voice pleasant and musical, the very small and low-pitched timbre of it oddly fascinating. She smelled of herbal soap, reminding him of a dark-green forest after a spring shower. And though they were not touching, he could feel the warmth of her beside him on the couch. Questions filled his mind, and in the enigmatic darkness those questions were a tantalizing mystery.
Upon hearing the name Stephanie Alexandra Cortney Bennet, Noah had fleetingly visualized a tall and queenly woman, chic, sophisticated, and with a strong sense of style. Alex was a freelance decorator, which meant either that she was very successful, hadn’t been at it very long, or else was taking a tremendous gamble on her own abilities. He knew of two apartment buildings she’d done in the East—the work he’d seen and been impressed by—and both clients had spoken well of her.
Now that he thought about it, both those clients had also seemed a bit bemused, and the remarks, identical from both men, now rose in his memory. “She’s a very good decorator.” Not an unexpected remark from a satisfied customer, to be sure, Noah thought. But … somehow peculiar.
Unconsciously he began listening even more intently with every sense, both curiosity and a pleasurable feeling of mystery prodding him. And something else, some odd, compelling sense of … certainty? “Did you just get into town today?” he asked, wanting to hear more of her oddly fascinating little voice.
“Yes, this morning. It was a long drive.”
“You drove?” he exclaimed. “Across the country?”
“The pioneers blazed a trail,” she reminded him, amused. “I just followed it.”
“But you didn’t drive alone?”
“Except for Caliban. It was fun, really. I got to see a lot of the country, and whenever I needed to rest, I just pulled over somewhere and slept in the van.”
In spite of darkness, reality was taking an even sharper turn away from his imaginings: She was obviously not the chic first-class traveler he’d expected.