Twilight Hunger by MAGGIE SHAYNE

answering machine on the table, jabbed the record button with her forefinger.
    â€œThose shots were all taken in the past twelve hours, you know.”
    â€œWhy?” Her hand was clenching the telephone so hard her knuckles were white. She wished it was this son of a bitch’s neck. How dare he? God, he’d been in Jason’s bedroom. In Storm’s bathroom. And in that dark parking garage, alone with her mother.
    â€œTo show you how easy it is for me to learn everything about you, and how quickly and effortlessly I can get to the people you love. To shoot them. With a camera, this time, but—”
    â€œYou fuck with my family or my friends and you die. Do you understand me?”
    â€œThat’s quite the threat, coming from a girl barely out of high school.” He laughed, a deep, low sound that changed into a racking cough.
    Max held the phone away from her ear, looking at it as realization dawned. It was him. The burned guy she’d seen at the fire. He must have seen her after all. He stopped coughing, and she put the phone back to her ear. “Why are you calling me? What do you want from me, anyway?”
    â€œI want you to forget everything you saw last night. Pretend you were never there. Tell no one.”
    â€œFine. I’ll be glad to. If you’ll tell me what happened there last night.”
    â€œI’m not making a bargain with you, Maxine. You’ll do as I say. Forget you ever saw me.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œListen to me, you nosy little bitch!” She jerked in reaction to the anger in his voice. “If you so much as mention anything about seeing me at that fire to anyone, the next thing you find on your doorstep will be a body.Or a part of one. I’ll just shuffle those photos and pick one at random. Are you following me now?”
    â€œYes!” She paused, took a breath, her outrage completely smothered by her fear. He would hurt her mother, her friends. “Yes, I…look, I don’t know anything. I’m no threat to you. And I’m the only one that saw you. I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell anyone. They don’t know anything.” She was shaking. She pressed a hand to the wall because her legs felt so unsteady.
    â€œThat’s good. See that it stays that way. I’ll be watching you, Maxine. And rest assured, I know how. I’m going to hear everything you say and see everything you do. Don’t test me.”
    â€œI won’t.”
    He hung up the phone.
    Maxine wanted to sink to the floor. She looked around her, feeling exposed, vulnerable. She depressed the cutoff, then lifted it again. With a trembling forefinger, she punched the star key, then the six and the nine. Maybe she shouldn’t. Maybe he wasn’t kidding and would know she had tried.
    â€œThe last number that called this line was,” the computer-generated voice said. Then it paused as its components worked. “We’re sorry. That number is not available.” It clicked off.
    Swallowing hard, Maxine hung up the phone.
    What the hell was she supposed to do now? Was he watching her? Could he see her even now? Were there bugs or hid den cameras in her own house? She searched her mind and mentally wondered what Oliver Stone would do.
    She told herself to use her head. To think.
    Okay. The guy had been in a fire last night. Wounded,burned. Suffering from smoke inhalation, too, by the sounds of his cough. He must have spotted her leaving, maybe even followed her home, and then followed Jason and Storm. He learned where they lived, went and got a camera, sneaked back and took the shots. Then he returned to Max’s home and watched the place. He’d followed her mom to work in the wee hours of this morning and taken that shot of her. Then he’d come back here and dropped the envelope and made the phone call. Not from the pay phone, because that would have been traceable. A cell phone, maybe. She leaned over the