Night of the Living Deb

334 Pages·2016·0.99 MB·English

by  McBride Susan

“I don’t want anyone’s life on my hands.”
Night of the Living Dead, 1968
Contents
Epigraph
Prologue
Circular pleats of red velvet draped the ceiling
above Brian… 1
Chapter 1
“Lordy, Lordy, come to mama, sweet cheeks!
Rub a little… 7
Chapter 2
It was just past midnight when I got back to… 13
Chapter 3
Twet. 23
Chapter 4
I felt grumpy and defeated as I retrieved my
Jeep… 39
Chapter 5
Twet! 50
Chapter 6
I had the sense to ask Matty to give me… 57
Chapter 7
It was not much past eight o’clock, but it was… 63
Chapter 8
Music assailed my ears, the bass thumping
palpably through the… 74
Chapter 9
Allie took the wheel on the way home. Said
she… 89
Chapter 10
“I wanted to call s-sooner, but I couldn’t get…
I’m… 98
Chapter 11
“Did you see it? Did you see it? Can you… 112
Chapter 12
I hadn’t been over to Malone’s apartment
much, maybe twice… 129
Chapter 13
I’d never imagined my life could get any
more pathetic… 147
Chapter 14
Malone had been kidnapped? 164
Chapter 15
Stephen left the house soon after, telling us
only that… 181
Chapter 16
It seemed forever since Stephen had left
Mother’s house, and… 199
Chapter 17
The ransom drop activities wouldn’t begin
until 10:45 P.M. 215
Chapter 18
I was back at my mother’s house by ten
o’clock,… 234
Chapter 19
I smelled Joy. 254
Chapter 20
As I suspected, the blipping red light on
Stephen’s laptop… 264
Chapter 21
In mere minutes, Allie produced the address
for Oleksiy Petrenko. 281
Chapter 22
The clock struck midnight as we dropped
off the extra… 291
Chapter 23
“Move,” Bernard ordered, nudging me with
the butt of his… 307
Epilogue
Thankfully, Brian and I had a few days to
rest… 315
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Susan McBride
Cover
Copyright

About the Publisher
Prologue
Circular pleats of red velvet draped the ceiling
above Brian Malone’s head, a dimly lit chande-
lier dripping down from the center. If nothing
else about The Men’s Club had cried “bordello” but that, it
would’ve been plenty.
There were tacky touches wherever he looked, if he
needed reminders that he was in a strip joint.
He didn’t.
Barmaids in red corsets, short black skirts, and high
black boots served overpriced drinks. Bored-looking
women in G-strings writhed on nearby laps, swiveling
club chairs making for easy access. Green and blue laser
lights flashed with Jedi intensity as deafening music
pounded the air with a throbbing bass.
Like, there wasn’t enough throbbing going on as it was.
The place could call itself “a gentleman’s club,” but it
was a strip joint, plain and simple, despite the upscale
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2 Susan McBride
clientele of horny, mostly white-collar males. When he’d
pulled up to the waiting valet in his Acura coupe, it had
been the lesser in a line of luxury automobiles disgorging
Rolex-wearing passengers to the curb beneath a well-lit
porte cochere. More Mercedes and Jags than you could
shake a stick at, so to speak.
It was his buddy’s idea to come here, a final request be-
fore he was due to get hitched in a few weeks, a destina-
tion wedding in Tuscany just for the bride and groom and
their immediate families.
The Men’s Club wasn’t Brian’s first choice as a site for
celebration. He would’ve been happy as a clam sucking
on the long neck of a Shiners at any number of local bars
with ESPN on the tube and the noise of folks shooting
pool. But Matty wanted a lap dance as a final adios to
bachelorhood, and a lap dance he would get.
Brian had been to this establishment on Dallas’s
northwest side a couple times before, once for business
when a client of the firm wanted to checked out the “lo-
cal action” before he caught a flight out of nearby Love
Field, and again when he’d been dating Allie Price and
she’d been curious to see what was inside the pink stucco
walls, behind the front windows filled with peekaboo
lingerie.
He didn’t plan on becoming a regular.
There was an air of desperation hanging overhead as
surely as the red velvet pleats in the ceiling. Not a feeling
he ever wanted under his own skin.
Another hour and then we’re outta here, he decided as
he polished off a third Peroni, adding to the vague fog that
lapped at his gray cells. Three was his limit for tonight—he