With Just A Kiss

By Lisa M Tozier- Rowe

Melissa Raines spent her short adult life bouncing around the country, moving from town to town, job to job and loving every minute of it. While visiting her beloved cousin in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Melissa ends u with a much worse fate than anticipated by anyone--murdered!Her cousin, Amy Becker, dedicates herself to find the one that is responsible for ripper her cousin from her life and this world.
Amy Becker's prestigious co-worker, Justus Mitchell, gets involved and helps Amy in her time of need. Not only does the truth as it would seem unfold, but so does a deepening relationship begin the two amateur investigators.
In their attempt to track down this killer, they seek the aid of a local medium, Lady Samone. She can see things that no one else can. She can describe Melissa's killer to them, but how many people fit that description?
Detective William Gish narrows it down to two posible suspects out of a beginning list of five suspects. Then, Gish's hopes had come true, the forensic facts seemed to all point to his one personal enemy.
This saga does not end here, however. In book Two, Dead Yellow Roses, brings a new twist to the lives in Eau Claire. Hang onto your lawn chairs, bed sheets or whatever your reading space is and go with us for a roller coaster ride of susense and mystery and learn what could be the real truth in With Just A Kiss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lisa M Tozier- Rowe
• Release date: Sep 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301527694

Lisa M Tozier- Rowe

I live in the beautiful Gulf Breeze, Florida. Moved from Alaska back in 2007. Born and raised in Maine. Married my high school sweety 23 years ago. We have six beautiful children.I enjoying writing fiction and poetry. I like to paint art and crafts, go boating and lay in the sun. My motto: Appreciate all things

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With Just A Kiss

Lisa M. Tozier-Rowe

Copyright 2004 by Lisa M Tozier-Rowe

Revised Edition 2012

Smashwords Edition

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my loving husband, Roger, for his patience, support and liberty for me to do my own thing. I would like to thank my dear friend Tracy Neri for her help and support in editing and rounding out this book. I thank my cousin Marie Bounds for jump-starting me once again into finishing what I began so many years before.

All names, ideas and stories are a fiction of the authors own mind.

Chapter One

The darkened sky was free of concealing clouds. A low-lying breeze was slowly moving the air in twists and turns making it known, the breeze was in charge. An ominous silence overwhelmed everything in existence of a pending death. Not even a cricket was to be heard to challenge the silence. The stars were all out as spectators in an ancient coliseum with the sense of summer’s end all about, waiting. It was the perfect night.

Slouched inside his own hidden vehicle, like a crock on the water’s edge stalking his prey, he watched as Melissa exited the bar and unlocked her vehicle. He glanced at his watch with the precision of a frogs’ tongue striking a dragonfly out of the air. It was exactly 1:11 a.m.

He was sitting in his car on the edge of The Watering Hole Lounge parking lot. He had ample patience and stealth for her. He had put his time in and tonight was going to pay off for it all. Payoff for all the time he put in watching her. Watching her at the supermarket, he could write her shopping list for her. Watching her at the laundry mat, he knew most of what she had for her wardrobe. He watched her wash her car at the car wash. Even while she was pumping her gas, he watched her. He knew that she always put in twenty dollars at a time. She never filled it, or put in five dollars. It was always twenty bucks worth. He had painstakingly made the effort to know this woman for she was his next meal for his soul. Inside and out, he knew her habits.

He made himself distant from her after she had denied him. It took a lot for him to step up to the plate and ask this beautiful woman to have a cup of java with him at the café where she worked. It was nothing major, just a stupid cup of coffee with him. The slight cringe with her feminine body was enough for him. He didn’t need her verbal answer, too. That body language was enough to crush his insides. This did not have to go this way. It was her own fault that it had to be this way; because he had known from the very first moment he laid eyes on her sensuous womanly frame that she was going to be his someday. Willing or not did not make any difference to him.

He was a patient man. Patient enough. However, from overhearing her conversations, he knew that she had planned to only stay in Eau Claire for another six to nine months. She had already been here for three months or so. He had to execute his plan now, so that he didn’t miss out on his chance to place her with ‘the others’ in the special room built for love denied that he had developed within his lonely, dark soul.

The excitement of knowing what was to come made him exuberant. He had very carefully thought his procedure through. He was going to make sure that he was very gentle with her while she was in her ‘compromised’ state. This was going to be the ultimate crime of passion. His passion for her and to have her with him all the time, just like the others that lived in their own spaces in the room deep in his soul, was ecstasy. Oh, he could tell that this was going to be better than any one of the others. He thought that he loved them too, but they didn’t completely fill his heart. Not like Melissa did.

He could almost feel her hair in his hands as he sat there in his car waiting for the right time. He closed his eyes and rubbed his fingertips together, pretending. Soon, he would not have to pretend. He was so ready. She was so ready. He had all that he needed with him in his vehicle to complete his mission.

There were often wagered fights going on in town and he knew most of the men that participated in them. He knew pretty much who took what for a drug, how much and how often. But there was one drug in particular that caught his attention after hearing some of the men talking amongst themselves about it. It was used as a miracle pain reliever, enabling a man to perform several fights a night, quadrupling his winnings. If taken in mass doses, could cause paralysis and possibly death.

There were always wagered fights going on in town and he knew most of the men that participated in them. He himself had fought several different fights. He wanted to establish a rapport with the guys so he could obtain the drugs he needed without suspicion.

He had experimented with that particular drug on himself so that he understood it, and knew it personally. It was then that he knew what his instrument of choice was for his big night. In only a two-week period, he had obtained the perfect dose that he knew would work for his mission.

He knew she was ripe. The time was now. He could see that she was getting to know some of the other men around better than he wanted. The way that it was right now, though, was perfect. She developed enough of a suspect base for any pending investigation that he would be okay. He remembered how she looked when she first arrived at The Lounge four hours earlier. He could see it in her eyes and body language. He saw it as if she was looking for sex, on the hunt. He could see her scoping, looking the room over for ‘possibilities’. He wanted her before that happened, had to have her before that happened.

As he watched her get into her car, he could feel the pounding adrenaline pumping in his wanting veins. He was tempted to smooth his jet-black hair back out of habit and re-adjust his hat, but refrained in fear that any movement at all would gain her unwanted attention. She backed her car out of its spot, the taillights going from white back-up lights to the steady glow of red and headed in the direction of her apartments. He stayed, as he had practiced so many times before, watching her tail lights grow farther and farther away down the street.

He repeatedly looked at his watch, staring at the tick of the second hand, agitating himself with his own impatience. He had driven this route many times, timing it out perfectly when he should leave the parking lot himself to catch her. Eleven seconds to make the connecting turn onto Hallie Road. Then he had seven and a half minutes to catch her before she came into view of the apartment complex’s parking lot that swam with floodlights. Time was up. He started his vehicle, looking all around himself making sure he was not being watched himself and pulled to get out from within its confined space. His latex-glove hands were sweating as they rung the steering wheel with excitement.

As he came over the knoll, he could see her taillights sitting still. He adjusted himself in his seat. The anxiety and anticipation was almost overwhelming, but in turn, it was what made him want this event even more. Her car was stopped for some reason, parked half on half off the road. This was an unplanned event. Flat tire? Maybe she drank too much and got sick on the side of the road. He was exhilarated at the luck, but at the same time questioned what it could have been to make her pull over like that.

He slowed his car taking care to leave all tires on the pavement. There could not be any traceable tire tracks left behind. He stopped about thirty feet behind her car. Once he actually had stopped the car, she had stopped also, staring at his car. He wanted to assess the situation from a distance comfortable to him before he got out. She was behind her car about fifteen feet or so. She had been walking away from her car towards his direction before she stopped. He saw her look down at something then back up at him.

Too much time was passing, he had to make his move now or forget it completely. Since she had seen his vehicle, there would be no other chance in the future. He could read her body language as if he was reading a script. It was becoming obvious to him, possibly before it was even obvious to her that she was going to make a run for her car. He shut his car off pulling the keys out of the ignition and slipping them into his deep inside pocket of his jacket. He chose to step outside of his vehicle now.

This was his point of no return. He saw her go backwards; one step, two steps, as he took his steps toward her, one, two. Then she did it. She spun around using her arms as if she was pushing off the solid silence of the air for more speed and broke into a run for her car and her life. She knew something was bad about this guy, something horribly bad. She could feel it, even taste it. He seemed to emanate a wave of cold, preceding him that comes with the presence of evil.

With his size and strides, he easily caught up with her just before she reached her car door handle. She tried to cry out, the thick silence of the night stopping in the back of her throat, choking her. In what seemed like only a half a second, he managed to wrap his hand and arm under her left armpit and around the front of her head to cover her mouth, his hand gripping under her right armpit. This forced her left arm straight up into the air. Even then, he was careful not to cover her nose so that she could keep breathing. At the same time, grabbing her right arm with his, he pulled it o the middle of her back. He had her totally restrained within a couple of quick seconds.

He muscled her to the front of the car, lifting her so that her toes could not touch the ground. She tried to put her feet on the grill of her car and use it to shove the two of them to the ground for a great escape, but the excruciating pain that came up her spine when she tried to lift her legs almost made her pass-out.

He lugged her over to the tall, green grass on the side of the road. He drew his leg in behind her two, pulling her feet out from underneath her. He eased her down as they both went to the ground. He did not want to hurt her or bruise her. This was important to him. Not only for his twisted desire to have her join his harem he carried inside the secret room he kept in his soul, but to also throw any attempt at an investigation off.

She tried desperately to use some of her self-protection strategies that Michael had taught her to dislodge him from on top of her, but he was just too strong and large. She was tall, but a small, delicately framed woman and he most definitely had the upper hand. He held his forearm on her neck with his knee in her chest. His other knee was on the ground, with the rest of the leg crossed over the tops of hers. She was unable to move anything, plus she was fighting for air. With his free hand, he removed a needle from his duster jacket pocket. Using his teeth, he took the cap off from it and swallowed it on purpose.

Through all of this so far, he had not spoken a word. After de-capping the needle, he put it to her neck where the veins were popping out trying to pump life’s blood through them. She tried to recoil from the touch of the stainless steel against her flesh, but he easily managed to press the needle’s head into her skin and vein. He continuously depressed the plunger until he had emptied the needles’ contents into her blood stream. She could feel the cold liquid moving inside her.

In his admiration for performing his meticulously planned capture, he unknowingly to himself set the syringe beside her left ear.

She could feel it as it went down into her body. Just as quickly as that, she could feel a numbness coming into her limbs. First her fingertips tingled, but not like when your arm falls asleep from lack of circulation. It was a different kind of tingling. She could not move her fingers anymore. The expression of panic washed across her face as she looked into his dark face. She was close to passing out from the pressure of both his arm and his knee. He eyes were large in the darkness, straining to see the face that was hidden in the deeper shadow caused by the brim of his hat. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head, her lungs desperately seeking more air.

He slowly released his forearm from her slender neck allowing her to take a needed deep breath to catch up. Her necklace left its imprint in her skin. She choked on the cool air at first, but then her body’s desire to have more overwhelmed her choking and let it in. He waited a few more seconds gazing at her, making sure that she was not going to pass out or move and then sat back straddling her hips.

At this point, she no longer had any movement of her extremities. She had lost the ability to move her toes, legs, hands or arms at all. She could tell that she was starting to have trouble breathing, too. Soon, she would not even have the ability to blink, or even to cry. The despair building in her was immense panicking. She did not want to die. She only wished that it had taken her mind first. Instead, this Evil allowed her to know all that he was doing to her, but she could not, even for the life of her, fight against him.

Off, in what seemed like the far distance, she could hear her favorite song playing on her car radio, She’s An American Girl. She sucked in her breath in a labored way as she tried to cry and could not. She could remember back when she was riding in her car on a warm summer’s day, heard this song for the first time, loved it and thought to herself, "I’d like to be like that, an American girl. Just livin’ the life."

She was not living any kind of a life right now. She was scared that she was not going to make it through this night. She was feeling a dizzy sensation in her head now. If only I’d pass out and be done with this demented torture! She thought to herself. Then his presence around her once again brought her thoughts to what he was doing to her.

He stood up, brushed himself off, and walked over to her car. He opened the passenger side door and reached in and shut the car down, leaving the keys in the ignition. Melissa moaned inside herself as if to recognize the parallel of his shutting off her American Girl and how her body was shutting down as well.

He then went back to her, bent down to one knee, and proceeded to take her blouse off. He manipulated each arm with great care as he undressed her, holding her head in his hand when necessary. Once he removed it from her, he held it up to his face. The expression on his face was that of extreme pleasure. He breathed in deeply, taking in all that he could of her divine scent. He rubbed it on his rough cheek in a caressing way slightly rounding his shoulders in pleasure. Then he took the time to fold it very neatly and set it aside.

He loved the way she looked laying there. He played his fantasies in his head of her wanting him, as he softly rolled her to one side and unhooked her bra. It was a pale blue bra that matched her blouse. This was just like