Hot Visions

HOT VISIONS

Leigh Wyndfield

® www.loose-id.com

Warning This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id® e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

Hot Visions Leigh Wyndfield This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Loose Id LLC 1802 N Carson Street, Suite 212-2924 Carson City NV 89701-1215 www.loose-id.com

Copyright © January 2008 by Leigh Wyndfield All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing, photocopying, faxing, or emailing without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC.

ISBN 978-1-59632-560-9 Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader

Printed in the United States of America

Editor: Maryam Salim Cover Artist: Croco Designs

www.loose-id.com

Chapter One October, Richmond, VA The words jumped off the page and grabbed her by the throat. Her mother had gotten married without bothering to tell her. Not an invitation. No announcement sent afterwards in the mail. Not even a phone call. Susan Wright clutched her aunt’s letter in shaking hands, the noise in the World Cup Coffee Shop fading to an irritating buzz.

I was surprised when I learned your mother remarried last weekend. Tell her congratulations from me! She reread the lines again, just to make sure she hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing in some sort of terrible dream. It shouldn’t surprise her, but it did. Crying wasn’t an option, no matter that she felt like her heart had been ripped out and stomped on. “There’s no use deluding yourself anymore,” she said aloud, ignoring the raised eyebrows from the overly pierced rocker wannabe at the next table over. At twenty-five, she needed to face facts. She would never win her mother’s forgiveness for what had happened that day when Susan was fifteen. It was time to push aside the pain and move on. Stuffing the letter into her pocket, Susan grabbed her purse and hurried to her car. As if in a trance, she climbed inside and just drove. “I don’t care. Really I don’t. She hasn’t been a real mother to me for the last ten years.” The words sounded hollow to her ears. Well, she’d better start believing them. Enough was enough. She needed to let go. God knows, her mother certainly had. With curious detachment, she realized she wasn’t heading back to her apartment on Cary Street, but instead along the Boulevard, barely seeing the antebellum houses that marked this area as one of the most beautiful in Richmond.

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She crossed Broad Street and pulled into the drugstore on autopilot. All her life she’d been paying for that mistake, always carefully guarding what she said, what she did, so that the error would never be repeated. Not with her mother and not with anyone else, certainly never with a man she’d begun to care about. Relationships, any kind of relationship, were out, except with her friends in the Survivor’s Club. They would never ask too many questions or push her past her comfort level. But she was so tired of living under the shadow of a mistake she’d made ten years ago. She had to start living for herself from now on. She needed to do something crazy and wonderful. Something the old, careful Susan would never do. Today. Right now, before she lost her nerve. It would, she realized, set her free from her past and allow her to begin a new life. “I’m tired of sacrificing the things normal women enjoy every day,” she said out loud, feeling the conviction triple with the sound of her declaration. “For once, I’m going to be heartlessly self-centered and take what I want.” And the one thing she’d wanted for eleven months and two days was Jake Matherly. “I’m going to have him.”

***** Fifteen minutes later, she sat outside Jake’s apartment with a three-pack of condoms, trying to catch her breath and steel her nerves. She’d stopped on the way to purchase protection, but now that she was here, she couldn’t believe she’d come. The nice floating, trauma-induced trance had worn off and she was now convinced she’d lost her mind. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Jake Matherly; she did, badly. Jake did something to her insides that left her stomach tap dancing and her mind in a whirl. She was pretty sure he wanted her, too, but could she make love with him and still keep her guard up?

Get out of the car and go. This is the twenty-first century and women do things like this all the time. The clock showed her personal pep talk had now lasted five minutes. If it went on much longer, she knew she’d never, ever be able to leave the safety of her car -which meant she’d be forever trapped in the pathetic world she’d built for herself, forever hiding from life. This is ridiculous…either do it or go home. Susan jammed the condoms into her jacket pocket, jumped from the car, and hurried up the walk, knocking before she could chicken out. Part of her hoped he wouldn’t be home. Jake opened his door and stared down at her without speaking. Long enough for her to have a flash of worry that maybe he wasn’t alone. Susan groaned silently. She hadn’t even considered that he might have company. Closing her eyes, she mentally rebuilt her shields, which had begun to slip under the stress. Of course, she would only need the reinforcement if she were lucky enough to get his enthusiastic participation, which didn’t look like a given.

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After a moment passed, he said, “Susan,” and braced his forearm against the doorframe, his big body humming with energy even in the relaxed pose. He had spoken, at least, but he hadn’t invited her in. Good sign? Bad sign? “May I come in?” Her brain scrambled for an alternative reason for her presence, but came up blank. He stared at her for another heartbeat, then stepped back, moving his arm in an overstated welcoming bow. She brushed past him, walking down the hall into his kitchen on rubber legs. “You’re amazing,” she heard herself babble. “This is as clean as it was the last time I was here.” Green and white tile covered the counters, every surface crumb-free. A bowl and spoon sat tucked on the draining board and she knew he had washed up after breakfast. I bet he makes his bed every morning, too. “Glad to know it hasn’t changed in the eleven months since you graced me with your presence.” His voice was cool, maybe even a little cold. “Was it eleven months ago?” Eleven months and two days to be exact. “It feels longer.” She wandered over to lean against the cabinets behind the center island, positioning herself away from the door, away from the easy way out. “What do you want, Susan?” His tone was mild for the harshness of the words, his body relaxed against the wall beside the kitchen doorway. She hadn’t realized turning him down for a date would irritate him this much. To be fair, she had turned him down three times in the last few months. That had to have worn on him a bit. But the last time was his fault, since he’d scared her into a near heart attack in the produce aisle of the grocery store. Her mind locked in on the way he held himself, the flow of muscles in his arms, his broad chest, his flat stomach under his T-shirt. She wanted to run her tongue along his skin in one long, delicious swipe. A shocking thought, but each time she’d seen him, she’d had similar desires. She knew chemically they were suited for each other, just as she knew the sun would come up tomorrow morning no matter what course of action she took tonight. She could be sad little Susan, still waiting for a mother’s love that would never come, or she could be powerful. The choice was hers. She skirted the island, stopping close enough to smell his rich scent. Male spice curled around her like a warm blanket, dragging her closer still. “I thought I’d come here to see if I could do something about this.” She deliberately placed her hands on his bare arms. Electricity arced between them, just as it had the other three times they’d touched. Jake jumped, but she lightly ran her hands down to circle his wrists. “Damn,” he breathed, the word wrenched from his throat. He swallowed. She was glad he didn’t deny their physical attraction. Then again, it would have been impossible to deny the hum of need that purred in the air.

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His lips descended to hers so slowly, she knew he fought the action. His kiss ate at her mouth, his arms hanging by his sides, still imprisoned by her hands. Her stomach somersaulted when his tongue touched hers. Heat shot through her body, pooling low, urging her to give up her reservations and just feel. Jake jerked his head back, breaking the kiss. “What in hell are you up to, Susan?” His voice was rough with both desire and suspicion. He stepped forward, forcing her to release his wrists and retreat. His brown eyes glinted with amber lights, the air between them so charged she stumbled into the island trying to gain some space and balance. The feel of the counter snapped her out of her panic and she realized she needed to use the strange attraction between them if she hoped to achieve her goal. Rubbing a hand along his chest, she whispered, “I’m here to get you into bed, Jake Matherly. It’s a straightforward proposition.” His eyes widened. “Just like that. Out of the blue, you want to sleep with me? After eleven months, you magically show up at my apartment on a Sunday, without even a phone call first, after turning me down more than once? You expect me to believe you want sex?” His chest rubbed against her now-flattened hand in a small caress, his body showing her it didn’t care about his mind’s questions. She couldn’t tell him about her recent revelations regarding her mother. That would lead to questions she wasn’t willing to answer. “It takes me awhile to make up my mind.” He barked out what she thought was a laugh, although it ended with a growl. She knew he’d wanted her since they met in this very kitchen eleven months ago at a party he’d thrown which had become a jolly mob scene. When a drunk had tripped into her, she’d stumbled and would have fallen if Jake hadn’t caught her. And that’s when it had happened. The room narrowed down to just the two of them, the sizzle of electric desire cruising through their bodies so strong, they’d stood in shocked silence. Desire like that didn’t go away. His anger over her refusals capped a simmering cauldron of passion she had only to tap into to get what they both wanted. “At first I thought you were turning me down because of John,” he said, bringing her back to the moment. “But you haven’t been with him for six months. Your thought process must run slow if it takes you that long to come to a decision.” His sarcasm ate at her. The fact that he had a point was something she chose to ignore. “I don’t go on dates when I’m with someone else and I tend to think long and hard before I get into a relationship with anyone at all.” “You weren’t really dating John anyway.” Susan’s mind went on red alert at the absolute conviction in his tone. “And what is that supposed to mean?” “You didn’t have sex with him and now you expect me to buy that you want to sleep with me?” Brown eyes watched her like a hawk. Cop eyes.

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“How do you know I never slept with John?” Susan put her hands on her hips. Now he was starting to piss her off. “My God, you men are worse than gossiping old women!” Jake shrugged, not giving her an inch. “I overheard him at a bar one night telling a table full of guys. He said it was the reason he broke things off with you.” Susan was too angry to care about his interest in her answer. “How dare he? That, that weasel! And since when does dating mean sex?” Jake grabbed her arm as she stormed by. He gave it a small shake, snapping her attention to him. “Why? Why me and not him?” She was so distracted by the slimy, gossiping antics of the male species that she answered him more truthfully than she would have otherwise. “I went out with John because he didn’t interest me.” She waved her free hand in dismissal. “You what? You dated him because he didn’t interest you? Are you saying I don’t interest you, Susan?” He shook his head in astonishment, obviously not following her logic, but the anger seemed to be gone. That was a step in the right direction. Right? “Actually, you do. Interest me, I mean. Which means no relationship for us, I’m afraid. This is just a” -- she circled her hand while she thought -- “thing.” “Let me get this straight. I interest you, so there won’t be a relationship between us?” “Yes. Which means there won’t be any strings attached. I thought guys loved that kind of thing.” She forced herself to make eye contact with him, to make sure he understood the rules up front. This was a one-shot deal. She wanted to destroy the hold her mother had over her, but that didn’t change her inability to have a relationship. He raked one hand through his hair, while the other tightened on her arm. Damn. One step forward, two steps back. “So you only want my body? Is that it?” His eyes narrowed and his lips thinned. “Am I supposed to be flattered?” “You should be thrilled.” She overrode him when he started to speak. “Jake, I don’t want a serious relationship with anyone. I can’t have one. I won’t. Oh hell, forget it.” She brought her arm down in a twisting motion that her self-defense classes guaranteed would break his hold. Her hand came free, but more because he let her go than because of her action. She made it halfway across the kitchen before his hand caught her arm again, swinging her back against the island. “Every bone in my body says I’m making a huge mistake here, but I’m not letting you walk out after coming this close to having you.” For a heartbeat, she wondered why he’d changed his mind, but then his lips were on hers and her mind shut down to everything but his taste on her tongue.

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Chapter Two When he came up for air, he slid his mouth down her neck. Tingles ran along her skin, raising gooseflesh and a shiver. Her mind went blank, her every thought focused on the internal whirl of sensation. His mouth slanted across hers, his hands participating for the first time, peeling her jacket from her shoulders. She caught it before it slid free, breaking away to rescue the box of condoms from the pocket. “Serious about this, aren’t you?” His brown eyes were glazed with passion, but there was an inflection to his voice, a combination of amusement and something else she didn’t recognize. “Yes,” she said, setting the box on the countertop before unbuttoning her blouse. “I’ve thought about this for months. I am very serious.” She opened the edges of her shirt, studying the expression on his face, the need that welled up like a cloud around him. “I’ve fantasized about touching you until I couldn’t drive by your apartment complex without aching for days afterward. Until I had to knock on your door and take a chance.” She worried her lip with her teeth, unsure why she had to tell him this, but she did. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long, long time.” The amber in his eyes glittered with something that almost looked like satisfaction; then he slipped her shirt from her shoulders. She stepped away from him to drop it to the floor, emboldened by the way he stared at her breasts. She wore a simple, white cotton bra, but the flare of his nostrils at the sight of her in it, took away all thoughts of wearing lace. Jake backed up to the island, his sweatpants not doing a thing to hide his erection. God, even in sweatpants and a T-shirt, he looks so damned good.

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His brown hair was military short, his features strong, softened only by the dimple that flashed with his rare smiles. His brown eyes watched every movement around him. She’d noticed the few times she’d been near that he watched her, tracking her everywhere she went with an intensity he probably put into everything he did. “I want you.” She let her bra flutter to the floor. Her body wasn’t gorgeous, she knew, but the flicker of his gaze to her breasts then back to her face made her feel bold, strong, powerful. She lifted his T-shirt and he finished the motion, shrugging it off with a play of tightened muscles. His skin still held a summer tan. Splaying her hands across his flat stomach, she leaned forward, her chest to his, electricity jumping between them with a punch. They both stopped, held still by so much naked flesh making contact, the sensation exponentially more intense than when just their hands touched. She breathed in his scent. Vanilla and spice and pure male filled her nostrils. God, he even smelled amazing. She wasn’t surprised at the power flowing between them. She’d thought about this every day, dreamed about it every night, since she’d seen him two weeks ago in the grocery store. Since he had walked up behind her and hugged her, burning them both through their clothes. She’d been angry at the time. How dare he touch her when he knew how hard she fought this attraction? But he hadn’t known, and if he had, he probably wouldn’t have understood. Normal people acted on these kinds of feelings. Their lips met again, her breasts gliding against his muscled chest, rough hair teasing her nipples into tight peaks. “It’s too much,” he murmured, letting her know he felt it too. “It’s too much, but I want more. I can’t help myself.” Sliding the top button of her jeans free, he pulled down the zipper. How many times had she woken in the night, thinking of this? Her fingers slipped down his broad, tapered back, then under the waistband of his sweatpants, stroking his buttocks, making him suck in a quick breath of air. She experienced a small warning from the voice of responsible behavior in her head. It said doing this was a big mistake, that she might be in over her head. But the warning was swept away with her jeans as he pulled them down to the floor, his body going into a crouch. He pressed a kiss onto her hipbone, then bit her lightly, scraping his teeth in a slow motion that left her gasping. She balanced herself by holding onto his shoulders as he removed her shoes, then her jeans and panties. Muscles rippled in his arms as he pulled off her clothing. Her stomach trembled with need. He stood up, dragging his body along hers, the feel of hard muscle over soft flesh catching her attention for a moment. Carefully, she brushed her palm across his stomach,

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watching the quiver she produced with awe. What was between them wasn’t normal. It couldn’t be, could it? She didn’t know, but she suspected anything this good couldn’t be ordinary. She caught the top of his sweatpants to pull them down. He braced one hand on the counter as socks and sweats were dispatched. When he was free, he caught her around the waist, crushing her against the island, kissing her face, neck, and collarbone before capturing a nipple in his mouth. Her hands traced circles on his back and buttocks, then slid around to brush his erection. It was one thing to dream, quite another to see him standing before her in person. Her mind whirled on an overload of sensation. He lightly bit her nipple, zapping her back to the moment, to the feel of his mouth on her. She caressed the length of his erection with her fingertips. Her mind registered that he was hard, so much bigger than either of the men she had slept with before. She felt a flood of wetness in response, wetness that increased as his fingers combed through the hair between her legs, then parted her. “Jesus, you’re ready.” A low moan tore through him as he turned her to face the island. She caught up the box of condoms, ripping the package, spewing the packets onto the counter. He captured a condom from her shaking fingers, then touched her in long sweeping motions, pressing his cock against her back, biting her shoulder. Hard and soft, rough and gentle, he varied his caresses until she thought she would scream. “Stop teasing me,” she whispered, her desperation clear. “Ready, are you?” His baritone voice shivered along her nerve endings, and she arched back into him, enjoying the hum of contact. Bending her over the island, he widened her legs with his own. Both hands cradled her hips as he tipped her to meet him, and in one long, slow movement, he entered her. With steady pressure, he filled her, until his crown hit the top of her sheath. It was almost too tight, just the right side of pain. He stayed still, and she instinctively knew he battled the urge to come. “Not yet,” she begged. “I won’t leave you behind.” He placed his hand over her mound and slipped a finger to rest on her clitoris, keeping pressure there. Unable to help herself, she moved against his hand, moaning, searching for relief. He joined her, rocking, trying to find a pace for them. The tension in her body built to a pleasure height she never knew was possible, every muscle tensing unbearably. Then she came, milking the length of him, taking him with her over the edge. His body dropped onto hers, crushing her against the island as he trembled with his own release. Susan would have fallen if he hadn’t trapped her against the counter, her brain slowly coming back from wherever it had gone. Holy smokes! She had known sex would be good

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with Jake, but not this mind-blowing. The thought that now she’d always crave this had her shivering with fear. The hand resting beside her on the counter caught up one of the two remaining condoms. He slid out and the sound of ripping paper had her peering over her shoulder at him. “Jake?” Surely he wasn’t planning to go again? Didn’t guys require a thirty-minute recoup time? But he obviously didn’t, because he entered her, his cock as hard as if he hadn’t come minutes before. Desire swept through her, returning her to a heartbeat away from climax. Suddenly, her hard-won barriers slipped around the edges. No! She grasped at the falling walls, rebuilding them before they came crashing down around her. For the first time in her adult life, she’d forgotten all about her problem, forgotten she was a freak. She couldn’t afford to lose control. Jake was giving her a memory that would have to last a lifetime. She wouldn’t let anything spoil it. Jake’s legs were between hers, holding her immobile as he pulled her body away from the countertop. “Arch your back so you are resting your head against my shoulder,” he growled, his voice low and needy. Her shields secured, she dropped her head, bowing her body into a nearly painful curve. She should stop, but she knew she wouldn’t, knew she couldn’t no matter what the consequences were to them both. It was as if she’d stepped onto a speeding train and had no idea where it would take her next. There would be no disembarking from this adventure until their passion was spent. He brought her arms up to hook around his neck. “Stay absolutely still. I’ll take care of your pleasure.” He slid his fingers down her body, parting the lips of her sex. Then his fingertips pinched her clitoris. Lightly at first, then harder, more insistent. She moaned as he thrust inside her, his movements deep and hard. “Jake, please. More.” “Almost there. We’re almost there.” He steadied her body while it shook in fine tremors. “Keep holding onto me. I’ll bring you. I swear it.” As he said the last word, she reached her climax, screaming his name. He tumbled after her, bending over her body to rest again on the island in front of them. “Oh my God, oh my God.” She tried to breathe normally but couldn’t seem to draw enough air into her lungs. He rolled her into his arms and lifted her to the countertop, snuggling his body between her legs and holding her close in an embrace she found both protective and sweet after the hot, hard sex they had shared. They stayed that way for a long time, long enough for the sweat on her body to cool, before he pulled away.

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His brown eyes, turned golden from pleasure, held hers for the space of several heartbeats. Her body shivered as his hands touched her too-sensitive breasts, still swollen with desire, while his mouth captured hers. The kisses were long and slow and beautiful, heating them both up to another boiling point. She felt him grow hard again against her leg. “How do you feel?” He feathered his index finger across her nipple, making it pucker. The tightening drew his attention and, as if he couldn’t help himself, he ran his tongue across the bud, making her gasp. She knew he was asking if she could go another round and wondered if she had been misinformed about men’s sexual limits. “I’m better than fine.” Her voice was so husky she didn’t even recognize it. He reached for the last condom in the box without lifting his head from her breast. Brushing the foil wrapper down her arm, he handed it to her. She ripped the package open, flailing a bit, her hands not working quite right with the overload of sensation singing through her brain. For a moment, she stared at the condom, wondering which was the right side. She knew there was one -- she hadn’t lived that sheltered of a life -- but her other sexual encounters had been rushed and in the dark. Jake arched an eyebrow at the delay. “I think there’s a trick to this,” she told him, trying to sound as worldly as possible. He took it from her with a grin. “It’s the side that sticks up a bit.” Showing her, he deftly unrolled it down the length of his shaft as she looked on in fascination. Knowing any response would just make her appear even more naïve, she distracted him by trailing her fingers across the sheathed flesh, then reached below to run her hands over his testicles with a light touch. Jake moaned, dropping his head to her shoulder. “Your hands have electricity in them. You’re driving me insane.” He slid her to the edge of the countertop and dropped to one knee. His tongue caressed her clitoris, moving back and forth as if he could lick her all day long. Leaning back on her elbows, she went boneless under the onslaught, her head hanging off the other side of the island. A finger played at the opening of her passage before slipping inside. When she was balanced on the edge of another climax, he stood and slid into her, wrenching a moan from deep within at the sense of being filled to completion. Susan grabbed his shoulders as they found a slow rhythm together. Twining her legs around his waist, she lifted herself up to bring him deeper. She licked his chest and couldn’t seem to stop herself from biting him hard enough to leave marks. This time around, things had changed. It didn’t feel like sex, but more like lovemaking. It was slower, more intense, face-to-face, and deep, as if they were finally sharing instead of taking their pleasure.

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She concentrated on the feel of his body. They were dancing in a set of graceful movements, and she felt her climax swirling closer, until finally she went over the peak, her body shivering with her release. He followed seconds later, just as the last of her tremors subsided. Suddenly, his legs buckled and he grabbed her arms for balance. Unable to support them both, Susan toppled. They hit the floor, with Jake’s shoulder and her hip taking the brunt of the fall. She started laughing at the same time tears came to her eyes. The fall had hurt, but the whole scene was so ridiculous, she was overwhelmed with conflicting emotions. “Are you okay?” He smoothed her hair from her face. “Yes. No. My body is numb anyway.” She sobered and was surprised when he wiped tears away from her cheeks. No matter what happened later, she didn’t regret what they’d done. “Thank you.” “It was my pleasure.” He kissed the end of her nose and snuggled her close, easing most of her body onto his and off the cold tile floor. With such a complete feeling of contentment and joy washing over her, Susan didn’t even think about the need to close herself off from him. She had no warning at all that she was about to see, the vision washing over her without any advanced notice. And then she was trapped, watching a piece of Jake’s life unfold before her.

The woman stood over the man on the floor, her body jerking in convulsive tremors. At first the boy thought that the man had fallen down, that everything was fine. Just an accident. But then the woman turned toward him. Blood was splattered across her face and he had to hold back a scream. Her face was so contorted with rage, he almost didn’t recognize her. Dread snuck up his back like a frightening shadow. “Mother?” He reached out a hand. “Get out of here, Jake,” she yelled in a voice he’d never heard before. “Get out of this room!” She moved to block his father’s body, her robe covered in blood and bits of something else, something thick and gray, the gun still in her right hand. “I told you to get the hell out of here!” His mother had never treated him like this, never cursed, never raised a hand against him or anyone else. Who was this person? What was happening? The boy stood there, his whole world tumbling down around him. What was wrong with his father? “Susan?” Jake’s concerned voice returned her to the green and white kitchen. Susan blinked to change her focus, her body rigid, already pulling away. She knew the vision had only taken seconds. Before she could stop the words, she whispered, “My God, how could you have survived it?”

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Damn it all to hell. This was her curse. This was what she hid from people. The ability to touch them and steal their memories like the thief she was. true seeing showed her the painful experience that most shaped their lives, revealed their biggest secrets. She knew she shouldn’t have slept with him. He was too amazing for her not to want to drop her shields and feel him completely. Living behind barriers made everyone she came in contact with seem less than they were. The desire to drop her shields from the first moment she’d met him was part of the reason she’d stayed away for so long. Twisting out of the warmth of his arms, she tried to find her clothes on the floor. When she couldn’t locate her underwear, she dragged on her jeans. Make an excuse, any excuse and get out of here. “I need to get my laundry done tonight and it’s already late.” She had to leave, now, before she had another vision. Having one often led to a whole string of others. “What’s wrong?” He sounded confused, but she didn’t stop gathering her clothes. He pushed himself to his feet. She didn’t make eye contact, throwing on her bra, clipping it between her breasts even though she could feel the straps all twisted in the back. Out! Run. You’ve always been a freak and you always will be. She grabbed her blouse and shrugged into it. When he tried to touch her arm, she sprang back into the island. “Don’t touch me, Jake. Please.” She heard the desperation in her voice. Grabbing her shoes, she didn’t bother put them on. Dashing out the door, she slammed it behind her, the sound final in the evening starlight. She’d stolen her mother’s memories, now she’d stolen one of Jake’s. This is what happened when she became close with others. She had to make sure it never happened again.

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Chapter Three Jake slid down the cabinets in his kitchen to sit on the floor, wondering what had just happened. One minute, he was opening his mouth to invite Susan to dinner, having had the best sex of his life. The next, she was running out of his apartment like a football player on the way to the end zone. Women were strange creatures, but he’d already figured out this one was particularly tricky. For eleven months he’d pursued her as casually as he could, when every bone in his body screamed at him to have her now. He’d played it cool, asking her out every so often after her relationship ended with that moron John Walters, only to be turned down each time.

Then she shows up on my doorstep like the Avon Lady, propositioning me. He’d thought his heart was going to stop when he opened the door to find her standing there, looking sexy as hell in a simple green shirt, jacket, and jeans. It had been all he could do to keep his expression blank. He usually dated more voluptuous women with dark features, but something about the combination of her short, slim body, green eyes, and pixie face made him change his mind about his ideal woman. He’d wanted her from the first. Now he’d had her, but it wasn’t enough. She was better than she’d been in his fantasy the night before, or any of the fantasies he’d had about her in the last two weeks. She might not know what it meant when a guy was able to come three times in under an hour, but he did. It meant he would make damn sure he had her again. It meant he’d put his brand on her. More than sex, there was something special about her, about what they’d done, something extraordinary in the way they’d come together. Spying a bit of yellow silk under his shirt on the floor, he reached over to grasp a pair of panties with his fingertips, still too lazy to move. He held them up, spread between his

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hands and imagined her in them. He hadn’t even stopped to look as he took off her clothes earlier. Maybe that’s why she ran. He’d been too fast. Maybe he’d hurt her? He didn’t think so. He’d bet his left nut she’d climaxed each time, all three times, and that she’d enjoyed it as much as he had. So why had she bolted? He fought the impulse for a second, then gave in, burying his face in her panties. Breathing in the scent of laundry detergent and a musky woman smell that was all Susan, his cock hardened again. He jerked back as if he’d been burned. Trouble with a capital T, that’s what she was and had been from the beginning. But come hell or high water, she would give him an explanation for what had gotten into her tonight. He had promised himself long ago that he would have her, and he was talking about more than a roll in the hay. Or maybe I should say a roll in the kitchen. His lips tipped up into a half smile. He was determined, focused, and patient. Exactly what made him so good at his job. There was no way she could hold out for long, not with that amount of desire coursing through her. Hell, through both of them. Playing it cool hadn’t gotten him anywhere and she’d made the first move, giving him an opening he didn’t mind exploiting.

***** Susan called herself every kind of fool on the way home. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Had she done it on purpose? Is that why she’d shown up on his doorstep on an impulse? So she could have him without thinking of the consequences? Yes, but now she had stolen a memory from him. One in which his mother had killed his father. “Things you see aren’t always what they appear to be. Your brain makes assumptions to fill in the blanks,” she said out loud to calm herself. She heard her mother’s voice in her head as clearly as if she sat beside her in the car. “You stole my secrets. Took them like the little thief you are. Don’t ever touch me. Never. Again.” Susan had told her grandmother her mother’s secrets not once, but twice. That had turned out to be one time too many. Susan hadn’t felt her mother’s touch for the last ten years. When they were together, her mother kept a careful length of space between them, constantly rearranging herself to be out of Susan’s reach. Her mother knew touching was the catalyst. Without touch, a true seeing was rare. Susan never told her she still had visions without physical contact. God, her mother would have dropped her off at an orphanage had she known. She pulled into her parking space at her apartment building and remembered she’d left her underwear. “Oh, no!” She banged her head on the steering wheel. She tried to remember which ones she’d been wearing.

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“You practically forced him to have sex. Then you stole a memory. Then you ran out without an explanation and left your underwear. You may have just won the Idiot of the Month Award.” She slipped on her shoes and climbed from the car, slamming her door extra hard as an exclamation point to her mood. Walking to her building, she felt the lack of panties with every step. Groaning, she took the stairs to the second floor. Halfway up, she paused. If she could go back in time, would she have gone to his apartment? With a flash of guilt, she silently admitted she wouldn’t have traded her time with him for anything. For just a moment there, she’d felt what others did and had that brief, wonderful hope every woman feels when they touch a special man. Stealing a memory was wrong, but her sin had been worth it. She let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Okay, so it wasn’t the end of the world. She would just make sure it never happened again. With a nod, she climbed the rest of the way, watching her feet and replaying what had happened from start to finish in her mind. From around the corner of the landing, a man jumped out. She screamed and almost stumbled down the stairs. “Suzy-baby,” Robb Connors said, advancing on her, his face creased with concern. His voice always sounded greasy to her, as if lust dripped from every syllable. He didn’t seem surprised she was there, which meant he’d been waiting for her again. “I’ve been looking all my life for a woman like you.” Still panting and clutching her chest, Susan’s gaze swept over his casual but expensive clothes, and the stylish black hair crunched up in the front with just the right amount of gel. For a complete jerk, he was surprisingly good-looking, but his personality spoiled his looks. “Hello, Robb.” Susan put down her head and marched past Robb -- with two b’s, baby -- to her apartment door. She was not dealing with him without wearing underwear. Period. She wrestled to unlock the door as fast as she could while he sidled up to her. Inside her apartment, she turned around to face him, bracing her foot against the bottom of the door as a precaution. He’d managed to get in once and she’d had a hard time removing him. Since that incident, she had been careful not to let him past her doormat. “Suzy-baby, I’ve got tickets to see the Dave Matthews Band next week and I’ve been saving them so I can take you.” Robb reached out to touch her cheek. Susan jerked away, half shielding her face behind her door. How much worse could this night get? “Good-bye, Robb,” she said, shutting the door in his face, sending the bolt on the lock home with a snap of satisfaction. Southern upbringing be damned. She was done being nice to him. “Suzy-baby, I’ll call you later to tell you what time I’ll pick you up!” he shouted.

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It amazed Susan that he could take what amounted to more than a hundred “no’s” from her and still continue to ask her out. He couldn’t comprehend that she had no interest in him. Maybe he thought he’d wear her down eventually. What a complete bummer he lived four apartments over. That meant he would probably ask her out another hundred times. Lately, he’d become more aggressive, popping out as he had tonight and he’d added the touching bit to his bag of tricks. The last thing she wanted was an accidental memory transfer from Robb. Casual contact in any form was out of the question for her as a general rule. She didn’t want to think about what terrible things had happened to form Robb’s personality. Turning the lights on in her apartment, Susan shook off all thoughts of Robb Connors with the ease of long practice. She walked to her bedroom, changing into a sweat suit and sneakers. Running a brush through her hair, a sensual memory of Jake’s touch passed over her, almost dropping her to her knees. Susan leaned against her dresser for a few moments, trying to catch her breath and banish the physical need that blossomed with the thought of Jake’s hands brushing her belly. She couldn’t believe she’d gone to his apartment tonight. It seemed like some strange fantasy she’d daydreamed, but the deep ache of excitement mixed with joy in her stomach and the burn between her legs told her it had been very real. Three times! And each one better than the one before. Then she’d spoiled it by stealing his memory. A bolt of pain gripped her as she thought for the first time about the small boy faced with his father’s death. How much loss he must have felt, and if the memory meant what it appeared to, he had to deal with the fact his mother had been responsible for it all. Susan placed a hand on her chest to press against the ache there. She had no idea what dealing with that kind of pain and violence would be like. Maybe, just maybe, she was attracted to him because on some level she’d recognized him as a member of the Survivor’s Club as well. For the first time, she considered that. He’d seemed so well adjusted, so very normal. It never occurred to her what he could be hiding below the surface. Steadying her breathing, she forced herself to straighten and walked to her closet to grab her laundry. Picking up the basket, she marched from her apartment, locked her door, and started the trek to the spooky dungeon of a basement where the washers and dryers resided. She deserved to be doing laundry at -- she checked her watch -- nine o’clock Sunday night. It was her penance for everything she’d done from the time she knocked on Jake Matherly’s door. Well, not everything, but leaving the underwear for sure. Especially if it was one of the bad pairs she’d always been meaning to throw out, but had kept on the off chance she’d be in a laundry bind. She strode down the stairs to the ground level, then to the basement.

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Pausing on the top step, it came to her. “The yellow pair!” She hopped down the rest of the steps in relief. “Not a bad pair to leave, if I had to leave them in the first place.” She was so caught up in her own turmoil about Jake that she didn’t feel anything out of place when she entered the laundry room. “Hey, Ellie.” Her next-door neighbor hovered just inside the door. It took Susan a second to comprehend that Ellie’s laundry lay spilled on the floor. “Ellie?” Susan reached out to touch her, but stopped before making contact. Her neighbor stared at something that had made her eyes go glassy with fear. She waved her hand in front of her face instead. “What is it?” Ellie gasped for breath, peering at the floor on the other side of the folding table. “Susan, oh my God, Susan.” She panted and pointed to a spot Susan couldn’t see. Susan shuffled closer with a hesitant step. Then another. His shoes appeared first, brown and scuffed and splattered with spots of something dark. Then him, the man, swathed in a blanket of crimson. All that blood, pooling below his body, creeping toward the drain in the center of the room. A vision swamped her before she even thought of shields or barriers.

He finished loading the washer in the corner of the room. Laundry was so boring. Maybe he should go ahead and pay the extra fifty cents in his own building so he could watch TV between loads. He glanced up as someone entered, a man wearing a yellow raincoat with great big buttons. “Hello, piggy,” the man in the raincoat said in a happy singsong. He strolled across the room, around the table, the wheezing snicker huffing from the hood of the raincoat. The odd laugh alone put him on guard, running across his skin in a visceral warning. He started to put the folding table between them, but the guy in the raincoat moved so quickly there was no chance to do anything. The knife sliced in a slow arc, cutting deep into his throat, spinning him around. The last thing he saw was blood soaking into the load of whites in the open washer. Surfacing, Susan remained paralyzed by shock. Beside her, Ellie whimpered. She knew the vision she’d had at Jake’s apartment made this one all but unavoidable. There was no way she could have a vision that strong, then walk through a charged energy field like this twenty minutes later without true seeing. She tried to fight the desire to glance at the body again, but she had to look, had to see if maybe the first time she’d been wrong. This man had been alive, doing his laundry. Such a normal thing, yet here he lay. The blood slithered closer to the drain, and she wanted to stop it, block it from escaping, as if that would bring him back to life. The copper smell in the air

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coated her throat and she realized it was the blood. She gagged, but stopped herself from throwing up when it occurred to her that the man in the raincoat could still be near. Instinct took over and she balanced her laundry basket on her hip. Catching Ellie’s arm with her other hand, she ran for the stairs, not caring that laundry jiggled out of her basket as she hauled her neighbor to the second floor. She let go to juggle her keys, dropping them, then grabbing them off the concrete landing so frantically three of her nails broke. Opening her lock, she said to Ellie, “Call the police. We need to call the police.” Her neighbor stared at her with glazed eyes. Towing the still nonfunctioning woman into the apartment, she slammed the door shut and locked it. Susan flung her basket to the side and picked up the phone. “Don’t panic, Ellie. We’re calling the police.” Susan knew she was reassuring herself more than her neighbor because Ellie hadn’t spoken a word since they’d left the basement. As the phone rang, an inappropriate laugh bubbled up. Her efforts to compose herself were going to crack wide open if she didn’t calm down. Her underwear and her problems with Jake had been put into perspective by the dead body. Deep breaths. You can do this. Don’t freak out until you’re alone. That’s the first rule to the Survivor’s Club. A voice said, “Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?” This had been one hell of a Sunday. She was naïve enough to think it couldn’t get any worse.

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Chapter Four His pager went off somewhere on the floor. Jake hooked his toe around his sweatpants and dragged them closer, still too relaxed to do anything but strategize his next move. He unclipped the pager and looked at the text message. The code number had him leaping up and running to his bedroom to put on work clothes. He stopped, spun around, and retraced his steps into the kitchen. Reverently, he laid Susan’s yellow panties out on the island, his lips stretching into a crooked grin. Bet you’re regretting leaving them now that you’re home, Susan love. Maybe you’ll trade something to get them back. As soon as he had a free moment from whatever work had paged him with, he would be paying a certain attorney a visit, yellow panties in hand. Maybe even tonight, if he was lucky enough that this turned out to be an open-and-shut call, something that could be put to bed in a snap. With that happy thought, Jake jogged into his bedroom, humming the theme song from Jaws.

***** Dressed now in a suit, with his hair in some semblance of order, Jake strode from the parking lot to Building Six of Malvern Manor apartments, still feeling the afterglow throughout his body. The trendy 1940s brick apartments weren’t the usual place for a homicide, but Cary Street’s rougher sections were close enough that violence sometimes spilled over. Or maybe this was a garden-variety domestic homicide, an instance where the wife finally became fed up and kills hubby or vice versa. With a murder rate that always ended up on the top ten list, Richmond kept their homicide detectives busy. The older buildings were surrounded by trees, which while beautiful, would provide cover for anyone who didn’t want to be seen. The trees masked the parking lot from the

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road. Two sets of steps climbed up to the front yard. A well-manicured lawn, trimmed by flowerbeds, rose gently to the building itself, which was a two-story box consisting of what looked like six apartments per floor. Two stairwells led to a second-floor balcony. A crowd of uniforms surrounding the left stairwell parted and Jake saw his partner, Miles Gordon, marching toward him. Gordon beat him to every murder scene he’d ever been to. Damned if Jake could figure out how. The guy hadn’t driven above the speed limit in his life and he never seemed to hurry, doing everything with his ever-present efficiency. It was a running joke between them that Jake would never arrive at a scene first. Jake had liked and respected Gordon the first time he’d met the sharp-dressed, nononsense detective. Miles Gordon was a prim, trim, black man who was smarter than half the force, rarely wrong, and bald as a Ping-Pong ball. He was one of the few people Jake never called by his first name. It didn’t seem respectful to call him Miles and he sure as hell wasn’t calling him Mr. Gordon, since Miles was only five years his senior. So Gordon it was. Jake took in his surroundings with a practiced eye, noting the other stairwell only a short way down to the right, already curious about why no one congregated around that set of steps. The apartments were the usual rectangle format, six on each floor, but the outside was expensive brick and the light fixtures a step up from the usual apartment fare. Gordon turned when he reached Jake and retraced his steps without a word, letting Jake get a sense of the area without comment or distraction. They ducked under the police line that had already been erected, nodding to the rookie that had been placed there to log people in and out of the scene, then went down into the basement. Avoiding what looked like a shirt and a lone sock on the stairs, Jake led the way along a dank hallway illuminated by one light and stopped when he reached the laundry room. EMS, CSI and police officers filled the small space.

Christ, there must be fifteen people jammed in here. Four washers lined the wall opposite the entrance. One dryer sat on the next wall of the rectangle and three more backed against the same wall as the entry door. A long, rectangular folding table bisected the center. A basket of dirty clothes lay spilled next to the closest washer, a couple of bras visible in the tangle of shirts and jeans. As they stood there, the washer near the body buzzed to signal that the wash cycle had ended. Gordon wrote down the exact time and the washer location on his notebook. Jake took his own pad out of his coat pocket and did a quick sketch of the scene. “Is this the only door in here?” he asked, still sketching. Gordon nodded. He tended to listen much more than he spoke. “So you can’t get to the basement using the other stairwell?” “That one only goes up to the second floor. It doesn’t go down.”

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“Any other exits out of here?” Jake tried to see the room without the logjam of people in it. The crime scene guys were snapping pictures, the flash distracting him. “No. Other door off the hallway contains the heating and air-conditioning units. We’ve got uniforms canvassing the neighbors to see if anyone saw anything.” “I take it the perp wasn’t kind enough to hang around waiting for us?” The paramedics passed him on their way out. In general, paramedics tended to rearrange evidence, although today they hadn’t turned over the body, which was a lucky break. Body placement could be a clue. Or not. At this point, everything and anything could be important. Someone must have been blind to think there was a chance this guy was alive. One glance had told Jake this body wasn’t walking ever again. “I’m afraid he chose to leave the scene of the crime.” “How inconvenient.” “Yes,” Gordon agreed. Jake surveyed the well-lit room. Blood had splattered on the folding table and the walls, but hadn’t been apparent at first because both were painted the dull brown mud color many institutions used to cover the grime. But on the white washers and the dryer that flanked the wall at the other end of the room, the blood stood out dramatically. He could see from here the tiny spray indicative of high-velocity spatter, which told him either excessive force had been used or an artery had been severed. The washer nearest the body remained open. White clothes were sticking out of the top, as if the victim had been interrupted before he’d had a chance to push them down into the machine. The clothes showcased the blood, like red wine dashed across a wedding cake. Deborah Kay jostled by him, looking like she was ready to eat nails. She’d been the Assistant Medical Examiner since Jake was a rookie. In her late fifties, she was a short woman with blonde hair and a long face. Her humor was quick, sarcastic and sharp, tending toward dumb cop jokes, but she was damn good at her job. One of the best, she ran a tight ship. “Let’s turn him,” she ordered her staff. They rolled the body onto a gurney. The victim’s hands had been covered in paper bags to preserve anything under his fingernails from fighting off his attacker. Jake didn’t think he’d fought, though. The folding table was light enough that a hard shove would have moved it. Two people fighting in the small space would have bumped the table. Jake and Gordon moved in for a better view. Blood covered the victim’s chest, pushed from the victim’s body with the last beats of his heart. The slash of a sharp-force injury gaped in his neck. He had numerous stab wounds visible in the bloody mass that had been his chest, some of which could have occurred postmortem. Blood covered the man’s shirt, pants, and face. It was possible the cause of death was loss of blood, but he could have died from the neck wound alone. Hard to breathe when the air doesn’t make it from mouth to lungs.

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Jake noted the basics on the victim. Black hair, about six feet tall, maybe one-ninety. In shape but not a weight lifter. Nice clothes. Dockers and a buttoned-down shirt. Sixty-dollar shoes. That could mean just about anything. Jake wore the same clothes when his aunt made him come over for Sunday dinner once a month, although he spent more on his shoes than this guy had. “Repeated sharp-force trauma. Bleeding out would be my first guess,” Kay told Gordon. Gordon was one of the few cops she liked, so if he was in the room, she tended to speak directly to him. “No livor, no rigor, so death could have been within the last two hours. We’ll find out more once we get him to the morgue.” With that, she turned and marched out of the room, leading the body. The crime scene techs went through the motions of taking prints from the table, washers and dryers, but if the murderer lived in the building, proving they had been in the basement would mean nothing. Still, they could get lucky and identify someone with a record who wandered in off the street to kill this guy. Yeah, right. Then again, it always amazed Jake just how unintelligent criminals could be. He fixed the scene in his mind. All of the people here were leaving a little piece of themselves behind to contaminate the crime scene and mislead the detectives assigned to this case. It was one of his pet peeves about his job. Gordon had told him a hundred times he needed to accept it and not get all riled up. But that advice had only encouraged Jake to keep his thoughts to himself. It didn’t stop him from thinking them. He wanted to tell everyone to haul ass out of here, but turned his concentration to the blood stain on the floor instead. The victim had lost a lot of blood, to the point it had run off across the slightly sloped floor into the drain in the center of the room. All basements in Richmond had drains, since hard rains usually led to water in belowground spaces. The sloped floor had made the blood stain oddly shaped, almost like a large teardrop. Gordon closed his notebook. “A couple of neighbors coming down to do their laundry found him. We should go talk to them.” Jake nodded and followed him up the two flights of stairs into apartment twenty-five. Pausing at the open door, he noted the basket of laundry spilled to the right-hand side of the entrance. He brushed his gaze across the room, studying the trendy furniture facing away from the door into a little conversation area around the fireplace and the perfect layout of the knickknacks on the end tables. He glanced over at the witness, then stopped and did a double take. Susan Wright stood near the brown leather sofa, her beautiful face filled with fear and worry. His own stomach twisted in sympathy, but he controlled the urge to rush to her side. Someone had died and the woman of his dreams had found the body. Damn.

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Chapter Five Susan’s body language told him she was badly shaken. Her arms were folded across her chest, her brows lowered, her stance defensive. Jake wanted to cradle her close and keep her safe, but someone had died. He needed to do his job, not act like a lovesick fool. He realized he’d never known where she lived, although her apartment fit her perfectly. The room was all cool lines that were flawless on the outside but hid, he was sure, secrets in the drawers and out-of-sight places. She glanced up, straight at him, as if she’d sensed his presence. He’d wanted to see her tonight and now he would. Of course, he didn’t like the circumstances, but he couldn’t help the wash of pleasure he felt when his gaze met hers. Her eyes flared wide then narrowed, showing her quick slide into caution. Then she dropped her head into her hands. “Ms. Wright,” Gordon said, causing her to raise her head. “I’m Detective Miles Gordon. This is my partner, Detective Matherly. May we ask you a few questions?” Susan swallowed and straightened her shoulders. “I’ll help you however I can, Detective Gordon.” Gordon flipped out his notebook and began to fire off questions in his usual rapid manner, writing down all her contact information before moving on to the events of the evening. “Were you here all night?” She winced, just a tightening of her eyes, but Jake had a bad feeling it meant she had regrets about how she’d spent her evening. “No, I came home about nine o’clock.” Gordon saw the hesitation and went after it like a hound on a blood trail. “Where were you before that?” Susan flicked Jake a nervous glance that he was certain his partner caught. “I was at a friend’s.”

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Jake opened his mouth to say it was his place, but Gordon cut him off with a small motion of his hand. Jake realized this was the first time he’d actually known exactly what a witness had been doing before they found a crime scene. Susan’s actions were slightly off, her facial expressions revealing unease, so Gordon would keep digging until he found out why. But she wasn’t nervous about the crime. She was nervous about Jake. Gordon pressed on, spending more time watching her face than writing. “Describe how you found the body, please.” Susan took a deep breath. “I didn’t see him at first. When I came into the laundry room, I saw Ellie standing there frozen.” “Where is Ellie now?” “She’s next door, in apartment twenty-six. The other officer told us to wait in our apartments.” “Take me through everything that happened tonight.” Gordon stood in a relaxed stance, but his eyes were watchful as a hawk’s. Jake knew this was his I’m-putting-the-witness-at-ease pose. But Gordon was still so intense that, under certain circumstances, Jake would have to take over questioning because they both agreed he tended to get more information out of people, especially women. He was less intimidating. The fact he didn’t take over now would lead Gordon to assume he knew Susan in some way, that he was possibly involved with her. And he was. Just not as involved as he’d like to be. “I went down to do laundry right after I got home. It was so late that I was rushing.” A telling blush rose up her cheeks, which told Jake she remembered why she’d been running behind schedule. Good. Jake was glad he wasn’t the only one reliving the moment. “Do you usually do your laundry at nine o’clock on a Sunday?” Gordon was still searching for what she hid. Susan’s gaze darted to Jake and back to Gordon. The woman had the worst poker face he’d ever seen. He had no idea how she could be an attorney when everything she felt was right there. The blush and the darting gaze screamed that they’d had sex. He felt a curious melting sensation, even as he wondered why he was being such a sap. He wanted to walk over and put his arms around her, to offer her some comfort. Most civilians went through their whole lives without seeing a murder victim. His instinct was to shelter her. He gave himself a mental shake. Get it together, Matherly. He was a cop interviewing a witness. “No, I don’t usually do my laundry at this time. I was running late. Tonight was a fluke.”

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She shot the last bit at him, although her gaze was on Gordon. Fluke, meaning it wouldn’t happen again. He wanted to say something like, “that’s what you think, Susan love,” but controlled himself with effort. “Okay.” Gordon nodded, which could mean he accepted the answer or it could mean he’d made a mental note to come back to the subject later. Gordon’s tone kept Susan flustered. Her hands twisted on the sofa back, while her gaze circled again to Jake. Trying to put her at ease, Jake winked at her. Her eyes grew large and her mouth dropped open. She stood straighter, her anger at his behavior taking her attention from Gordon’s bedside manner as Jake had hoped. “I walked into the room thinking about other things, so I didn’t notice the body right away. I only saw Ellie at first. It was as if she had gone into a trance or something.” Susan pointedly concentrated on his partner. “She just stood there. When she didn’t answer me, I saw the man on the floor. And all the blood. I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at, then it clicked. All I could think was that I had to get out of the basement, so I grabbed Ellie’s arm and ran up to my apartment to call the police.” “Did you recognize the victim?” “No.” Susan paused for a second as if she replayed the event in her mind. “No, I’m sure I’ve never seen him before.” A flutter tickled Jake’s gut, telling him something was off on her last answer. He tried to figure out what bothered him. The guy was face down. How could she be sure she didn’t know him? He pushed away the reaction. Susan’s action-packed evening had made her say things in a way that had his alarm bells ringing. Gordon scribbled something in his notebook. “Where was your laundry during all this?” “My laundry?” She looked at the basket beside the door for a second as if she was trying to remember. “With me. It was with me.” “Why didn’t you drop it in the basement?” “I don’t know. It’s as if I forgot it was there and it just went with me when I left.” “How did you carry it?” Jake had been curious about this, too. It was a cop thing. Weird, small details sometimes held you up. He had to put a crime together in his mind so all the pieces fit. When the pieces didn’t fit, he jiggled them around until they fell in place or turned into a clue. “Against my hip.” Susan held her arm out from her body, demonstrating. “I held it with my left hand and pulled Ellie by my right. It’s not heavy. Most of my clothes go to the dry cleaners. I only wash my workout clothes and my underwear.”

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Susan’s gaze flicked to Jake and the red washed across her face again. Jake thought about the yellow panties on his counter. She might be embarrassed, but she still held her own, despite the terrible thing she just found in the basement. “What else can you tell me? What else did you see?” Gordon’s face snapped up from his notebook and he used his you-will-tell-me-everything interrogation voice. Jake had always been surprised at how often this tactic worked on the bad guys. “What else did I see?” Susan returned in a flash to her earlier nervousness, shifting her weight, putting an odd stress on the last word in the sentence. “What do you mean?” Jake’s gut went back on alert. Gordon’s body tensed. “Any other details you can remember?” Susan’s face relaxed. “No. Nothing. That’s all I can tell you.” Jake’s gut twisted again. Something was wrong here. Like most cops, he had a good sense of when people were lying and that sense told him something wasn’t exactly right about the last set of answers she’d given. Why was she so nervous all of a sudden? Why did he feel like she was lying? He caught her gaze but only held it for a second before she looked away. “Do you have an emergency number for the manager?” Gordon hadn’t caught that anything was off or he would have circled back. Susan nodded and went into the kitchen. She came back and handed him a card. He thanked her, shaking her hand in a businesslike manner, gave her his card in return, and strode out the door. Jake shook her hand as well, then, unable to resist, tucked her hair behind one ear and let his hand feather across her cheek in a small caress. “I’ll be back,” he whispered. She was hiding something, he could feel it, but worry shimmered in the depths of her green eyes. He wanted to hold her close and shield her, but instead he turned and walked out the door.

***** She hoped he wouldn’t be back. He shouldn’t be a part of her life. Her mother was right. She didn’t deserve to have anyone near her. Susan went into her kitchen and pulled out a Diet Coke from the fridge. Taking a sip, she ignored the dead man’s image hovering around her peripheral vision. She’d seen other dead bodies, of course. The dead played heavily in the worst memories of the living. But until the open casket at Gran’s funeral, she hadn’t actually viewed a dead body in the flesh, so to speak. There had been a moment of panic when she peered into the coffin where she’d thought Gran was alive. She appeared perfect, just like the picture she’d given the funeral home, down to the two prominent round circles of rouge Gran had always applied before ever leaving the house.

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But this, this had been completely different. The smell alone had been tight and thick, instead of filled with carnations and roses. The blood flung about the room had attested to violence. And there had been no doubt he was dead, even before the true seeing had come. She put down the Coke and braced her hands on her small kitchen table, hearing the murderer’s laugh as if he stood in the apartment with her. Her whole body shivered and she strained to take her thoughts off the violence. Jake’s mother flashed into her mind, holding the gun, the dead man before her on the floor. Her blue robe had come unbelted, showing a white nightgown with little blue flowers. Poor Jake. Susan wished she’d been there to keep him safe, to hold him when he needed one of his parents the most. He’d be back. He said he would, and that meant she could count on it. She should call his house and leave a message that she didn’t want to see him. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. To be near him after what she’d experienced would be wonderful. But with a certainty that gripped her stomach and squeezed until she felt sick, she knew her vision in the basement meant that now not only had she stolen a personal memory from him, but she had information that impacted him on a professional level as well. She was double dammed. Push him away, her mind advised. Her hand touched the phone, but she hesitated. The strange metallic taste of the basement still covered her mouth, the smell clinging to her hair. Letting her hand drop from the receiver, she went to take a shower. She’d call and leave the message later. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it now.

***** Gordon went with Jake to talk to the neighbor, although he stayed quiet for most of the interview, letting Jake take the lead. Ellie didn’t really know anything except how to hold Kleenex tissues against her face. Her inability to function made him think about how well Susan held up in the situation. Sure, she was shaken, but she wasn’t a weeping mess like this woman. The upshot of Ellie’s statement was she came in right before Susan and found the body of someone she didn’t think she’d ever seen before. It was her laundry spilled across the basement floor. She hadn’t seen anyone around before she went down to the basement, but her downstairs neighbor, Mr. Parker. She didn’t have much else to add, even after Jake brought her a glass of water to help her calm down. Gordon left her with his card and Jake made a note to interview her again when she’d had a chance to get herself together. They left her apartment and paused at the railing on the landing, looking out at the grassy yard and the parking lot. “I think we should hit Mr. Parker tonight.” “Agreed.” Intensity rolled off Gordon in waves. It couldn’t be healthy to be that focused all the time.

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“No time like the present,” Jake murmured, his mind wandering off to dwell on Susan again. What had she been hiding? “Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today?” Gordon asked in return, showing a rare flash of humor. Jake shook off his thoughts as they set off down the stairwell together. “You know what they say, Gordon. An ounce of prevention beats a pound of something or other.” Jake knocked on apartment sixteen, putting his cop mask on. The door opened to reveal a fifty-year-old man with what Jake called The Swoop. He had tried to hide his baldness by growing one side of his remaining hair longer and swooping it over his bald spot. Jake could see Mr. Parker was trying hard to fight the softness that comes with age, obviously working out enough to keep his middle firm under a roll of fat. He wore a silk robe that in earlier times would have been called a smoking jacket, his feet in matching silk slippers. “Mr. Parker?” At the man’s nod, Jake said, “I’m Detective Matherly and this is Detective Gordon.” He showed his badge. “May we come in?” Parker seemed to think about this for a second, then gave a car salesman smile. “I don’t see why not.” His too-jovial tone had Jake deciding, with only those five words, that he didn’t like him. “May we have your full name, please?” “Paul Ryan Parker. What’s this about, officers?” “Where were you tonight, Paul?” By calling him by his first name, Jake put him in an inferior position, the way an adult would treat a child. He didn’t often use this method during interviews, preferring the I-am-your-friend technique. There was something in Paul Ryan Parker’s reactions that rang false. With the stream of emergency and police officials swarming around the apartment building, he shouldn’t be acting so surprised about a visit from the police. “Here. In my apartment.” “The whole night?” “Well, I got home around eight-thirty, I guess.” “Home from where?” Jake didn’t feel like giving him any slack. Gordon took notes while he watched Parker squirm. The guy was either hiding something or was naturally slimy. He couldn’t tell which. “From dancing class.” Parker paused, then rushed on, a nervous smile twisting his lips. “Ballroom dancing. All those lonely single women looking for a romantic guy who is willing to wine and dance them through an evening. You should try it. I’ve gotten three dates out of it in the last month.” Jake ignored the opportunity to become friends. “Did you see anyone when you got home?”

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“Well, I saw the little gal who lives upstairs. I think her name is Ellie. I’m not sure where you’re going with all this.” Paul Parker switched tactics from chummy, “just one of the guys” back to innocent “what’s going on.” “Did you see anyone else?” Jake didn’t react to the change. “No I didn’t. What’s this about?” Jake watched him carefully. “Someone was murdered in the laundry room of this building.” Why the act, Parker? There’s no way you didn’t hear the commotion outside. Parker blanched. “I can’t believe it. Malvern Manor is such a nice community.” That sounds rehearsed, like really bad reality TV. Why had he changed into a robe? Were his clothes bloodstained? Or was he one of those guys who walked around wearing a housecoat? Jake had never worn a robe and wondered why any man would. “Where are you taking dance lessons?” “At Studio Twenty-One. Ask Reba, my dance instructor. She’ll tell you I was there.” A note of panic crept in at the end of his answer. “Did you hear anything out of the ordinary?” Jake interspersed accusations with harmless inquiries. “No, nothing at all. But I’ve been watching a movie since I got home.” Parker’s hands fluttered with nerves. Jake noticed the cover for Girls Gone Wild Spring Break sitting on the coffee table. He’d always wondered who ordered those videos and now he knew. High-end furniture predominantly done in leather dotted Parker’s living room, surrounded by what appeared to be real artwork. Parker had some bucks considering he lived in an apartment. Jake wondered why he hadn’t bought a house. Gordon spoke for the first time as he handed Parker his card. “Give us a call if you can remember anything else, Mr. Parker. We appreciate your cooperation.” They left without shaking his hand. “What do you think?” Jake asked. “Don’t know. He seemed nervous. Let’s check the alibi.” “I can’t figure out if my gut’s saying anything about this guy, or if it’s that he’s so slimy I want to accuse him of something just to get him off the streets to save the lonely women of the world.” “He’s quite a ladies’ man.” Gordon’s tone held a dry shade of subtle sarcasm. “Yeah, bet he’s got them panting after him.” As he descended to the basement, he thought again that something was off in Susan’s statement as well. It could be the stress of finding a body. Or the stress of what happened between them. Or a combination of both. But something told him it wasn’t any of these things. She wasn’t saying everything she knew. As soon as he had the chance, he’d be back to find out what.

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***** Later, as they walked to their cars, he stopped Gordon in the parking lot and said quietly, “Susan was at my place tonight.” Gordon nodded. “Figured that out. Think she has anything to do with this?” “No way. Besides being physically unable to cut someone with that kind of force, she wouldn’t have had the time to kill him and then go down with her laundry after Ellie arrived. She left my place close to nine.” “She your new squeeze?” Gordon wasn’t one to pry, so the question caught Jake off guard even as it amused him. Gordon talked about dating like someone raised in the ’50s. “She’s warming up to it. She’s having a little commitment issue, but we’re working on that.” Jake grinned at Gordon’s surprised expression. For some reason, his partner seemed to think he was a ladies’ man. Up until tonight, he had been living like a monk for the last eleven months. Jake almost mentioned his suspicions about Susan’s statement, but decided to keep it to himself. Technically, he should have brought up any concerns sooner, but he hadn’t because the circumstances were unusual, to say the least. This woman had left him an hour ago naked on his kitchen floor. He couldn’t trust himself to be one hundred percent objective right now and Gordon hadn’t seen anything off. Maybe he was wrong. Why was he acting so protective? Jake forced himself to be honest as he got into his car. Eleven months of obsessing about her, coupled with what had happened between them tonight, made objectivity difficult. It was as obvious as the leaves dropping from the trees in the crisp October air. Susan Wright had gotten under his skin.

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Chapter Six Susan wasn’t surprised when she opened her door to find Jake on her doorstep. What surprised her was that he had waited a whole day to track her down. She had picked up the phone three times to tell him not to come, but she couldn’t do it and was more than a little angry with herself for being so weak. The fact was she both wanted to see him and wanted him to leave her alone. She should tell him to go, but instead she stood back and made the same mocking enter gesture he greeted her with twenty-four hours before. She saw from his grin that her replay wasn’t lost on him. Jake strolled in, seemingly without a care, and began a complete inspection of her living room. He ran his fingers along her couch, then studied the placement of the bric-abrac on the end table. She wanted to grab him, hold him tight, and tell him she was sorry about his father, that she knew what it was like to be a survivor. With an ache, she wished he would hug her and take away the images of the guy in the basement. She hadn’t stopped thinking about death all day. She cleared her throat to get his attention and hardened her heart. “What do you want, Jake?” she asked, using his words from the night before in an attempt to distance herself from him. Jake stopped his examination of the impressionist print over the mantel to give her his full attention. “Missing anything?” Susan had known it was coming, but still had to fight down the urge to act as if she didn’t know what he was talking about. “You know I am.” “Serves you right for leaving my apartment in such a huff.” The grin he gave her was more teeth than lips. “We might be able to work a trade if you want them back.”

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She could tell from his tone he teased her, but she wasn’t in the mood for games. He walked closer, his gaze turning serious, both hands reaching to tip her head so he could study her face. “You’re looking rather pale, Susan love.” His touch was light but firm. “What’s wrong?” She had spent her day in the middle of a contract negotiation with two parties that wouldn’t give an inch, making a mockery of the term “negotiate.” This, added to last night’s two visions, one on top of the other, mind-blowing sex, and a dead body had done their damage. She had half expected him to show up at work, which kept her stomach in knots all day. She wanted to sleep for a month. Pulling out of his hands, she crossed the room. “Oh, I don’t know, Detective Matherly. Everything’s going so smoothly lately that I really don’t have a care in the world.” “I’m sorry. I know you were scared and I wanted to come back last night, but it was impossible.” Worry, fear, and hope filled and drained out of her body in a loop that left her exhausted. He had always been like this. Intuitive, unflappable, irritating, and totally desirable. “What do you want, Jake?” She took a steadying breath and sat down on her overstuffed chair. “I’m beat.” He followed her and sat on the coffee table. Susan couldn’t control a flash of irritation over his abuse of her furniture and was rewarded with an amused twist of his lips and glint in his brown eyes. He scooted forward so that their knees touched. “You tell me what you didn’t tell Gordon last night and I’ll get out of your hair.” She stiffened in reaction to his question and knew by the widening of his eyes that he felt it. She forced herself to relax. He didn’t know anything. He was fishing. They were connected, had been for a long time now through the electric attraction they generated, and he could catch emotions from her others couldn’t. She had to fend him off, divert his attention. “I don’t understand what you’re asking me,” she said as calmly as she could. “Are you saying I had something to do with this?” “Did you?” “No!” She knew he didn’t really think she was involved with what had happened. He was purposely putting her on edge. She fought to steady herself again. Her body no longer felt exhausted, but filled with energy. Her emotions were all over the map and she knew why. Jake Matherly sent her into a tailspin. Susan looked, really looked, at the man sitting rudely on her coffee table, his knees still touching hers. He was dressed in a charcoal gray suit, which complemented his short brown hair. It didn’t hide his broad, muscled chest, but accented it. The white shirt tapered over his flat stomach in such a way that she wanted to touch him. On close inspection, she realized

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his tie had little stickmen on it, in different poses, their eyes x’s to indicate they were dead. It hung between his legs as he leaned into her space. She had a sudden intuition that his humor disguised his past heartache with death. His strong face still had a bit of tan on it from the hot, dry summer they’d had, setting off brown eyes that were narrowed in concentration. Intelligence and determination radiated from them. “But you know something you aren’t telling. I can feel it.” His words snapped her back to the conversation. She wondered what to tell him, what evasion would satisfy his curiosity. “I answered all Detective Gordon’s questions as truthfully as I could.” “Did you?” “Yes.” “Do you know Robb Connors?” She blinked at the change of subject. Where had this come from? “My neighbor in apartment twenty-one?” “Yes.” Staring at him, she wondered where he was going with all this. “I know Robb.” “What is your relationship with him?” His voice was suddenly all cop, cold and detached. “My relationship? We don’t have a relationship.” Jake had a right to question her about leaving something out, since she had. But she was not going to allow him to imply she would date a total scab like Robb Connors. “How do you feel about him?” “Robb? Please!” Jake grinned, relaxing the cop face for a second. “Come on, I know you wouldn’t date him. He’s not your type. Just tell me the scoop on him.” She drew herself up. No one would save her. She’d have to deal with Jake by herself. “How do you know what my type is?” “Because, Susan love, I’m your type.” Her mouth dropped open. He grinned and held up his hands. “Come on now, you walked into that one.” Then he turned up his palms and made a give-it-up motion, wiggling his fingers at her. She sighed in exasperation. “If you’re talking about Robb as a person, he’s a little heavy with the flirting. He asks out every woman he sees and won’t take no for an answer. My neighbors and I think he has a rotation that goes by apartment. Ellie, then me, then Georgia. The other two apartments have couples living in them, so I think those women are safe. I’m not sure if he hits on the first floor tenants, since I don’t know them very well. It’s a running joke with the three of us.”

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“Ellie’s the one who found the body?” Jake’s face returned to the cop mask he’d worn earlier. “Yes. Georgia’s apartment is next door.” She pointed to the left. “But she might be out of the rotation now that her brother has moved in. I’m not sure. We haven’t run into each other to catch up for the last few weeks.” “From the description one of the canvassing officers gave of him, it sounds like Connors looks like the victim.” “Who was he? The man in the laundry room?” She’d lain awake thinking of him in his final moments of life, playing the vision over and over again in her mind like a broken record. “Jim Daugherty. He lives over in the Woodbridge Apartments.” “Woodbridge? Aren’t they a few miles away? What was he doing in our laundry room?” “Doing his laundry.” The simplicity of his statement seemed to amuse him and he grinned at her. “It’s fifty cents cheaper per load here.” She remembered in her vision he’d thought something like that, but she hadn’t realized what it really meant. “He came here to save money? To save fifty cents?” “Turns out he always does his wash over here in different buildings. His girlfriend said he was such a penny pincher that they didn’t eat out anywhere they didn’t have a coupon for.” “Why was he killed? Surely not because he was sneaking in to do his laundry?” Jake rose and prowled to a display of little boxes on the mantel and began systematically lifting the lid of each of them as he spoke. “Daugherty was a nobody. Besides being the cheapest guy on the planet, he was harmless. No gambling, steady girlfriend with an alibi, no debt, no real money to speak of, family living across the country, no enemies, church volunteer, works at a bank as a teller. The guy didn’t even drink, believe it or not. A regular Ward Cleaver.” He lifted the lid of the last box. Susan used to keep things in these boxes, but found that people couldn’t resist looking inside, so she’d moved her keepsakes into the boxes in her bedroom where they’d be safe. He crossed the room and took his seat on the coffee table again. “That’s a strange coincidence that Robb looks so much like the victim, don’t you think?” Susan thought back to her vision, when she could see the dead man while he was still standing. “I guess he did -- the same hair color and height. Are you saying that’s relevant?” “I don’t know what’s relevant and what’s not at this point. Connors’ description matched almost word for word with the one I wrote down for the victim and it raised a red flag for me.” He shifted on the coffee table as if it was uncomfortable. She hoped it was. “He sounds like a piece of work. Did you see him Sunday night?”

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Perplexed at his line of questioning, she tried to figure out how this related to her visions. “Why? Do you think he killed that man?” “Do you?” “Did you talk to him already about all this?” “He’s next on my list.” He raised an eyebrow for an answer to his previous question. She shook her head. “I would think he’d kill a woman before he’d kill a man, the way he chases anyone in a skirt.” “The first rule in police work is anything is possible. The second is there is no such thing as a coincidence. As far as I know, Connors could be repressing his homosexuality and was secretly in love with the victim.” It was such a weird thought that Susan couldn’t help but laugh. This was the danger with Jake. He amused her, as well as turned her on. “He certainly gets repressed a lot by women.” Brown eyes narrowed. “Is he giving you a hard time?” From the sound of Jake’s voice, he wasn’t asking this question as a policeman. The thought both pleased and worried her. She debated the answer for a bit, then decided to be as honest as she could with him. “Somewhat.” “Somewhat how?” She sighed. She might as well tell him. He’d pester her until she did. “A week or two ago, he pushed his way into my apartment and I had to threaten him with the police to get him out.” Jake stared at her for five heartbeats and she realized he fought to control his anger. She held up her hands to stop him from getting too wound up. “He’s harmless. Just a pest.” Jake was silent as he seemed to digest that. “So?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at her. “So what?” “Did you see him Sunday night?” If occurred to her that this odd, winding conversation might be an interrogation technique. Susan reminded herself to be careful. “Actually, I did.” He hummed, the sound filled with irritation. “Why didn’t you say something before?” “Because, Jake, neither you nor your partner asked and I didn’t think it was important.” “All right,” he said, exaggerating the words a bit. “Let’s take it from the point where you left me naked on my floor and move forward again.” “We’ve never talked this through from that point, Detective.” Susan could feel her own irritation increasing. They locked gazes for what felt like a minute, but then she gave in. “I

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drove straight from your place to here. Got out of my car. Walked up the stairs. When I got to the top of the stairs, I screamed at Robb.” “You did what?” “I screamed at him.” She made a winding motion with her hands. “He popped up all of a sudden and startled me. He’s been doing that lately.” She held out a palm to stop him from interrupting her again. “Then I walked into my apartment and shut the door in his face. I changed clothes, grabbed my laundry, and went down to the basement.” He made a T with his hands. “Okay, back up. Weren’t you concerned Robb would be waiting for you when you left your apartment?” “I figured he’d be off asking someone else out. I don’t think of him as a threat. In the past, when I’ve said no, he usually goes off and asks Ellie or Georgia out.” “What do you mean when you say he’s been popping out at you lately?” “He’s been waiting for me outside my door. It’s his new method of asking me out, ever since I put in caller ID and stopped answering his phone calls. This is the second time he’s done it in the dark, but this time I was distracted, and when he jumped out at me, I screamed. It was stupid.” “Did you speak to him?” “Yes. I said, ‘Hello, Robb’ and ‘Good-bye, Robb.’ I don’t think I said anything else.” “What did he say to you?” During the conversation, he had somehow inched closer to her, his knees on either side of hers now. “He asked me out on a date.” She sank further into the chair to gain some space. It was hard to think with him this close. “Did you say yes or no?” He slid further forward, pinning her in. “Not that it is any of your business, Detective, but I didn’t say either. I told him last month I would no longer repeat myself and that if he asked me out again, he should assume my answer is no.” “Has he asked you out that many times?” She nodded. “He’s a pain in the rear, but I don’t think he killed that guy in the basement. He wasn’t acting in any way out of the ordinary.” “Except for the fact he wouldn’t leave your apartment when you asked him to and he’s purposely scaring you. It sounds like he’s escalating, becoming more aggressive.” Susan looked at her hands resting in her lap. She could handle Robb. The man she couldn’t handle was sitting on her coffee table. “Why did you say to Gordon, ‘that’s all I can tell you’?” Jake pressed his knees into her thighs, switching to his original line of questioning. “The only people who say stuff like that are being threatened by others, like a prostitute with her pimp. Since you aren’t in that situation, I want to know what you couldn’t tell Gordon.”

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Susan’s mind raced, trying to keep up with his subject change and ignore the press of his legs against hers. “I don’t know why I used that wording, Jake.” She wanted to get up and pace, but he blocked her in, almost surrounding her. “I was flustered, that’s all.” She made herself maintain eye contact with him. He had to believe her and stop fishing because she wasn’t going to tell him about her visions. “Can’t you understand that?” He searched her face for a moment, and nodded. “That could be it.” At her relieved sigh, he added, “Could be, but I don’t think so. What aren’t you telling me? You were calm as can be before Gordon asked what else you had seen. You jumped at that last word.” Jake stressed the word seen as Gordon had. Susan tried not to move in surprise. He had said “seen” like she thought of it when she was speaking about true seeing, with emphasis. But in trying to stay still, she gave herself away. She could tell by the flash that moved through his eyes. “Jake, what else could I be holding back from you? I walked down to the basement, saw Ellie, saw the body and called the police from my apartment. I don’t know what you think I could hide in that scenario. Ask me anything you want. I’ll give you the answers to your questions.” She pushed his shoulders to move him away so she could put some space between them. “But I don’t know what you want me to tell you.” “That’s the puzzler. I know you’re holding something back, but I don’t know what.” He stood up, looking cagey, and stalked in a tight circle beside the coffee table. Susan started to stand, too, but Jake returned, forcing her into her seat. He leaned over and grabbed her chin. “I’ll be back when I have the right question, Susan.” He planted a rough kiss on her lips that had her mind skittering in confusion. “Until then, you know where I live if you want to come tell me what the right answer is.” He rose, then dropped back on the coffee table to grab her head for another kiss. His lips slanted across hers, his tongue dipping into her mouth. Susan felt all the energy in her body pool between her legs, setting her instantly on fire. Jake broke the kiss and for a moment, they both sat there in a daze, panting for breath. She wanted to pull up his shirttail and run her hands along his chest. Acting as if it was the greatest effort of his life, he stood and walked to the door. He turned with his hand resting on the knob. “I was serious about working out a trade if you want your underwear back,” he said, his voice coming out in a growl. An overwhelming urge to ask him to stay the night roared through her. Why not? He wanted her and she damn sure wanted him. They were adults, dammit. Don’t be a fool. She needed to separate from him, not pull him closer. He was a walking wall of temptation that would only lead to heartbreak. “Keep them as a souvenir, Jake. I’m not giving you anything else.” “You’re wrong, Susan love.” He made it sound like a promise. And then he left, tossing a “make sure you lock up behind me,” over his shoulder.

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She got up, locked the door, and rested her head against it, totally disgusted with how close she’d come to asking him to stay. It was as if his very presence infected her mind to the point she went insane for him. She had to sleep with a cop, didn’t she? Her number one priority would now be to avoid him at all costs so he wouldn’t cause her to slip up again. He threatened everything she had spent her life protecting and she’d be a fool to put herself in that danger. Worst of all, he knew she had a secret. The cop in him would never stop until he found out what it was.

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Chapter Seven Jake shook off the desire raging through his body with difficulty. He needed to interview Robb Connors before he left the apartment complex since his behavior around Susan had escalated into weirdo-ville. Part of him hoped Connors would be added to their pitifully short list of suspect hopefuls for last night’s murder. His emotions were shading his perspective on this case. It wasn’t a good sign. He sighed and tried to put his concerns about Connors hitting on his woman aside. “My woman? Jesus, Matherly,” he groaned out loud. One day since he’d slept with her and he had already started using possessive terms for her in his mind. Stopping outside of apartment twenty-one, he gave himself another lecture about where his head should be before he knocked on the door. An in-shape early-thirty-something-year-old with black hair and even, handsome features appeared. Jake didn’t know what he’d expected, but he was surprised at how goodlooking Robb Connors was. He realized he’d assumed Connors must be ugly to act so desperate with the ladies. He must have some unappealing qualities that canceled out his handsome face. “Robb Connors?” he asked, opening his jacket to show the badge clipped to his belt. “I’m Detective Matherly. I’m working on the investigation of the man killed here in the laundry room. May I come in?” “Sorry, Detective Matherly,” Connors said, not sounding very sorry at all. “I’d rather you didn’t. My place is a mess.” He shrugged and kept the door pressed against his side as if he was afraid Jake might try to look past him. Jake flipped open his notebook and wrote “weird behavior” under the heading Robb Connors Interview that he’d written earlier. “I need to ask you some questions.”

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“I already answered some cop’s questions last night. Is there some reason you’re interviewing me again?” Jake met Connors’ gaze with a blank one of his own. “I’m following up on some loose ends. Where were you last night between seven and nine-thirty?” “Here. In my apartment. The other cop already asked me that.” Jake continued without commenting. “For the whole time?” “For most of it. I went out and spoke with a neighbor for a few minutes.” “Which neighbor?” “Susan Wright. I went to see if she wanted to go to a concert with me.” Connors pressed his lips together in a thin line. “She said she couldn’t go. She had other plans so I left and came back here and watched The Dating Game on Lifetime. It’s on between eight and nine.”

The Dating Game? Hadn’t that gone off the air in the ’70s? “So you watched The Dating Game after you spoke with Miss Wright?” Jake wrote “spoke with Susan during the time she was at my apartment.” He didn’t bother to look up at Connors while he wrote in his notebook. He didn’t have to see his face to know he was lying. “I also had a long conversation sometime last night with another woman I’m seeing. We spoke on the phone for maybe an hour.” As if you’re seeing Susan, Jake thought, stamping down his irritation. He was a professional and would act like it. He would not give in to his burning need to give Connors a warning about his behavior with women. What was up with all the men at this apartment complex? He wrote “check when Dating Game comes on Lifetime.” Jake hadn’t heard of a man watching anything on Lifetime before. Wasn’t that a women’s-only channel? “Does this woman have a name?” “Margaret Jones. You can call her if you want.” Connors paused and tapped his foot. “Maybe I confused the two conversations. Maybe I spoke with Susan after my show went off?” His voice became defensive. “Look, what’s with all these questions? Am I a suspect or something?” “It’s just standard procedure,” Jake said, his voice sounding like he believed it himself. “So you spoke with Susan after The Dating Game went off?” “Right about then, I guess. Maybe a little before nine.” “You missed the exciting conclusion to your show?” Jake kept his face bland and the sarcasm out of his voice. “I noticed during the commercial break that she was walking up the stairs and thought I’d catch her as she came in.”

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Jake no longer had Connors netted in a lie, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t the killer. His story was too specific, too fact-filled. People tended to give generalities and then move to specifics, but Connors had gone the other way. “Why the rush?” “The concert is coming up and I need someone to go with me. I’ve already paid for the tickets.” “So Margaret couldn’t go?” Connors shrugged. “She’s busy.” “While you were out of your apartment, did you see anyone else around?” “No. Only Susan.” Lucky Susan, Jake thought. “Did you know Jim Daugherty?” “No, who’s that?” “He was the victim. Did you see anything at all yesterday that looked suspicious? Anyone hanging around who shouldn’t be here?” “No. Look, I already told you. I spent most of the evening in my apartment. Before that, I was at my mother’s house. We went to church together.” Jake thought the church part was a nice touch, because everyone knew people who went to church didn’t commit murder. Riiiggghhht. He wrote “can’t be a murderer, goes to church” in his notebook. “If you think of anything, give me a call.” Jake handed over his card. Connors nodded and closed the door in his face without saying good-bye. He’d lied about Susan’s reaction to his date, but that might be so he wouldn’t look stupid in front of another guy. But he’d been tap dancing around his movements for the evening. Jake knew where Susan had been from eight to nine and it wasn’t with Connors. Jake would give Margaret Jones a call when he got back to the station and see where she fit in the timeline. Susan has some really weird neighbors. It was hard to tell if they were murdering weirdos or your regular, everyday kind of weirdos. He would have to ask Gordon his opinion.

***** The man on Jake’s right let out a whistle. “Six o’clock, gentlemen. Look what’s coming in the door.” Jake shook himself out of his partial stupor. He had been turning what Susan could be hiding over in his mind for the better part of an hour and his companions had long ago given up on including him in the conversation. They all knew he was a dog with a bone when it came to work, so they left him to his own company.

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When he first looked up, he’d only seen the long-haired blonde in the lead and the tall, dark-haired woman behind but as they moved, the dark-haired woman fell back a step to reveal the shorter woman beside her. Strawberry-blonde hair, amused green eyes, and that full, sensuous, laughing mouth added up to one person. His attention snapped onto the object of his recent musings and everything else in the bar faded into a peripheral haze. What was she doing out at a meat market like Buddy’s after seeing a dead body two days ago? Through narrowed eyes, he tracked the three beautiful women across the floor to a table. He didn’t miss the fact that every other male was watching them, too. He almost didn’t identify the jealousy as it welled up inside him. His first thought was that he was angry with her for being here. His second was she had been playing with him when he was at her apartment. The woman yesterday had looked beaten. This woman didn’t look beaten, she looked gorgeous. Then he noticed the dark smudges beneath her eyes and the slight droop to her shoulders. He knew he would have sensed it if she had been acting last night. So why was she here? Her head turned as she glanced around the room, a slightly amused tilt to her mouth. Jake didn’t know why she was here, but he knew she wouldn’t be staying. If she wanted some guy to look at her, he would stare at her all night long. At home. He felt himself stand as if yanked by invisible strings. “Going somewhere, Matherly?” Someone at the table asked the question, but Jake didn’t stop to figure out who it was. Because suddenly he knew the question he had to ask, as if a light switch had gone on in his brain. What thing would most people not want to tell a police officer? Could it be that simple? “I have a question I need an answer to,” he muttered, already moving toward her.

***** Night had followed day and Susan had managed to keep herself in one emotional piece, only to be dragged out to Buddy’s Bar. A hush fell over the smoky room when she and her two best friends crossed the threshold. Courtney had been right. The bar was packed on Tuesday nights, if tonight was any indication of the norm. Packed with men, all watching a college football game on the many TVs around the room. A bar full of men was something she didn’t need. Based on her choice of company, she should have known she would end up in a place like this. Both Courtney and Nicole were notorious boy-hounds. But she couldn’t say no when they pressured her to come out with them. And they were right, staying at home was asking for another restless night. She hadn’t slept well the last forty-eight hours. Thoughts of dead people interspersed with fantasies of

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Jake had her tossing and turning. Even though she had loved her apartment from the first day she’d seen it, she now toyed with moving. Possibly tomorrow, although she kept telling herself one death in the basement didn’t mean Malvern Manor was dangerous or that ghosts roamed the hallways. Her mood never failed to pick up when she went out with her friends, especially in situations like this that had a high probability of turning out to be amusing. Both of them were beautiful women in their own way and Susan knew she was a perfect companion to them. She wasn’t interested in relationships in general, and one-night stands were a definite no-no for her. Jake was her one failing -- a no-no that had turned into a yes-yes. That meant her two friends only had to compete with each other for whatever men were in play. And usually enough men came their way that they didn’t need to fight at all. Perhaps that was the wrong word for it, since neither of them respected men enough to end up fighting except when it amused them. Susan saw through her friends’ exterior facades to who they really were inside. They also had secrets they didn’t want to share and the three of them had an unspoken pact to let their pasts remain hidden. Not once had they spoken about their childhoods. Susan loved that her friends accepted her without prodding her demons. She’d recognized fellow survivors when she saw them the first day she’d started at her law firm. Within the first month, the three had started eating lunch together. They all agreed the only important things happened in the present. In the Survivor’s Club, the past stayed in the past. Nicole was in the lead tonight. Her long, blonde hair was pulled back into a clip with just a few wisps of bangs hanging down, highlighting her gorgeous face. Dark blue eyes and a full mouth were her best features, and the ice blue tube top she wore left her perfect shoulders bare. All three women wore simple black pants, but only Nicole’s hung on her hips to reveal a slash of her flat stomach. If Nicole was a song, she’d be a sexy, hip-hop dance tune, with a pumping bass that every man in the bar could hear. Courtney was on Susan’s right, dressed completely in black. The tallest, she was almost six feet in her high-heeled boots. Courtney’s was a different tune every time Susan saw her. Although tonight she seemed mellow enough, her friend could change in a heartbeat. Susan had been frightened a couple of times by Courtney’s mood swings. Something had happened in her past that brought a mask of anger up for her to hide behind, even when the offense was relatively minor. But ninety-nine percent of the time, she was pure fun. Black, short hair was slicked back from her face to show off her exotic features. Taking a quick survey of the room, Susan felt Courtney had about an even amount of admirers as Nicole did. The reaction was so typical, Susan felt sorry for all the chumps, ah, men in the bar. Her gaze swept the room again in amusement, but stopped on a face she had missed before. It was one of the few in the crowd who wasn’t looking at either of her friends. Jake Matherly stared directly at her and he didn’t appear very happy. She put her back to him as she sat at the high table, her legs a bit wobbly just from seeing him again.

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She pulled in a quick breath, then let it out. If just seeing him made her feel like this, she was in serious trouble. The hair on the back of her neck rose in anticipation as she sensed him moving closer. It was as if a fine piece of string was tied between their bodies. Every step he took in her direction made the string pull tighter, until she knew he stood only a hair’s breath from her back. His hands closed over her shoulders and she jumped, even though she’d known he was there. There was nothing she could do. She was trapped.

***** She jumped when his hands came down on her shoulders and he knew she felt cornered, but he wasn’t going to let her get away. He breathed into her ear, “I’ve got the question. Let’s get out of here so I can ask it.” He straightened, pulling her off the high barstool in the same motion. He made it exactly one step away from the table when the tall, dark-haired woman stepped in front of him. “Where do you think you’re going with my friend?” Her voice carried through the room, causing the conversation around them to fade. “Courtney,” Susan said in a tone barely above a whisper, all calm in the storm. “This is one of the detectives from the murder at my apartment complex. He’s got some questions to ask me.” Jake could tell Susan was worried about her friend’s reaction and he cursed himself seven ways to Sunday for strong-arming her. What in the hell did he think he was going to do, drag her out of the bar? Jesus, where did his head go when he got around her? He knew exactly where it went -- straight to his pants. Courtney tipped her head as if deciding on her next move. “Are you sure you want to go with him? As your attorney, I highly advise you not to speak to him without me present.” “Attorney?” Jake asked. Did she hire a lawyer? Susan ignored him. “Courtney, please. You’re a contract attorney.” Courtney laughed delightedly, her mood changing lightning fast. “I’ve always wanted to say that!” Susan pulled on Jake’s arm to bring him a step closer to the table. “Detective Matherly, these are my friends from work, Courtney and Nicole.” Jake didn’t care which one was which. They wore too much makeup and too little clothing. Compared to Susan, they appeared garish and harsh, even though a year ago he might have thought otherwise. He’d thought he liked women like Susan’s friends. He’d found out eleven months ago he was wrong.

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Nicole’s smoky voice purred her appreciation as she gave Jake a quick once-over. “Come on now, Detective, we’re trying to cheer her up. Don’t pull her out of here quite yet.” Well, that explained why she had come out tonight. Jake studied them and tightened his grip on Susan’s arm. They were piranhas, he could tell. The blonde looked like she was going to lean over any second to lick him and the tall one kept giving probing looks to the top of his jeans. Jake didn’t even realize he had stepped slightly behind Susan until she glanced at him with sparkles of amusement dancing in her eyes. Answering his silent plea, she spoke up. “Detective Matherly has another round of questions for me so I’ll see you guys tomorrow at work. I was too tired for this anyway. We’ll go out this weekend.” Jake could tell Susan sheltered him out of pity, but any help was welcome. “Good hunting,” Susan called back over her shoulder to her friends as he propelled her out of the bar.

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Chapter Eight “I feel like I need a shower after the looks those two gave me. God, Susan, who in the hell were those women? Beautiful but deadly, taken to a new extreme.” “Scared you, did they?” Susan couldn’t stop the laughter that escaped. She thought it was kind of cute that a man who risked getting shot every day at his job would be scared of her two friends. “I work with them. Nicole is a paralegal and Courtney’s another attorney at the firm. They’re also my best friends.” She didn’t bother telling him they were bound together by secrets, that their beautiful exteriors hid something deep and tragic. He wouldn’t understand. Or maybe, with his own childhood, he would. His mother standing in her robe filled her mind again and she blinked it away, along with the pang of sadness. “Just promise me you won’t leave me alone with them.” At her snicker, he added, “The tall one was checking out my package.” Susan laughed until she was wiping tears away. “Now you know how women feel. All men should get that treatment at least once in their lives. It would make the world a better place.” “Did you drive?” he asked her as they reached the parking lot. “No.” Grabbing her hand, he pulled her to his car, stuffing her into the front seat as if she might make a run for it. She wiped her hand on her pants to try to stop the tingles his brief touch caused. They drove the few blocks to her apartment without speaking. Susan wondered where his mind had wandered. Mentally, she tried to gear up for the upcoming confrontation. Jake pulled into her apartment parking lot. They both got out at the same time, but he met her as she came around the car. “Follow me up the stairs,” he said, looking around with

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an alertness that put her on guard. Or maybe, as a police officer, he was always like this. She didn’t know him well enough to tell. They climbed the stairs with Susan feeling like she was playing follow-the-leader. At the top, Jake took her keys and opened her door. “You’re spooking me, Jake.” She was going to have to move. She’d check the paper tomorrow. She stood in her living room as he did a quick sweep. It was a small apartment, with one bedroom, one bath, a kitchen, and a large living room that all formed a square. While the layout was unimaginative, Susan thought her decorations made it interesting. She liked the bold splashes of colors against the brown leather couch and the beautiful, but simple dark coffee table. And she enjoyed the added touch of the exposed beams across the ceiling. She’d miss living here. When he came back into the room, she met his gaze. “Should I be this worried?” If he said she should move out tonight, she would. “I’ll be honest. I don’t know. This case is a bit of a puzzle.” He prowled restlessly across the deep blue oriental carpet covering the hardwoods. She watched him, knowing he was edging his way around to asking her his question. There is no way he can know or even suspect my visions. “From the angle of the knife, the person who did this was the victim’s height, about six feet or so. And it takes some serious strength to do that kind of damage so we’re fairly sure the perp was a man. No evidence of the person’s identity, no obvious motive. Only a single strand of hair that wasn’t the victim’s and we have no way of knowing if it was a stray hair picked up from the floor of the laundry room when he fell. The lab is so backed up, it will take eight weeks for us to get the results of the DNA test, even with a rush.” Susan drifted closer to hear him, because his voice had gotten softer as he spoke. “No one saw the guy who did it. Not a soul.” Jake’s gaze met hers and she knew he was about to pounce, her stomach clenching in anticipation of what was coming. “Did they, Susan?” He moved closer, closing the gap between them. “Or did someone see him?” She moved away instinctively, trying to come up with an acceptable answer. “I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He closed the distance again, his voice a whisper. “I think you do, Susan. I think you do know what I’m talking about. I think you saw him.” She shook her head slowly and whispered, “No.” She hadn’t, not in the flesh. He pressed his advantage. “Yes. That’s what you’re withholding from me, isn’t it? That’s what I think you’re hiding. Because you know something, I can feel it.” “No, nothing.” Get him out of here. Now. She stopped backing up, dredging up anger to give her some defense. “Out. Out of my apartment now. Right now.”

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He held out his hands as if he would surrender. “Come on, Susan, don’t make me leave. You said you would answer any questions I asked you.” “And I have. Now you can leave.” She pointed to the door. “Or I’m calling the cops.” She stumbled a bit on that one and saw him start to smile. “The other ones. Get out.” She marched to the door and held it open. “What’s going on here? What are you hiding? Because I know it’s something and I want you to tell me what it is.” He ran his fingers through his hair, not moving toward the door. “I’ve answered your questions. If you have any others, please ask them. Otherwise, you need to leave. I’m starting to get insulted by your line of questioning.” She felt a twist of guilt run through her. She didn’t want to lie to him but couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth. “You’ll answer any of my questions? How about this one?” Now he moved, but not out the door as she hoped. He walked to her, took the door out of her hands, and closed it instead. “Did you lie in bed last night, tossing and turning, your whole body aching for me, Susan love?” He framed her head in his hands and tipped her face up so she had to meet his gaze. “Because I did. I lay there in my bed, with an erection so hard you could have hung clothes on it. Aching for you.” He feathered a kiss across her lips. “So did you?” “Yes,” she whispered, her anger and guilt washing away with the touch of his mouth. Suddenly, they weren’t cop and witness. They were man and woman. Attraction swirled between them, igniting them both into a higher flame. “I laid in bed without you last night and it was all I could do not to get in my car and drive over here.” His hands eased their grip and he massaged her shoulders and neck. He leaned down for another kiss, his lips still gentle. Susan heard herself moan, her whole body flooding with excitement and anticipation. “I don’t think we should do this.” It sounded weak to her but she at least had the presence of mind to say it. He ran his lips across her cheek to her ear. Licking slowly up the outer ridge, he whispered, “Liar.” “Jake.” Susan shivered as his tongue captured her earlobe and pulled it into his mouth. He released her, letting his teeth scrape across her sensitive skin. “Say you want me. I won’t have you convince yourself you don’t want this when morning comes.” “I do. I want you.” She tried to focus as his mouth suckled at her throat. “I’ve always wanted you. It’s dangerous.” “Oh yes, it’s dangerous all right. But it doesn’t make it any less real.” He drew away from her. She opened her eyes to stare into his brown ones. “Say yes.” She took a deep breath and said, “Yes,” on the exhale.

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His mouth crushed hers and they kissed as if their lips would melt into each other. He felt so good, so perfect, so right. His tongue stroked along hers, his hands at the buttons of her blouse. His fingers fumbled but he stuck with it until he finally pushed the fabric free of her shoulders. He stepped away, capturing her hand to pull her toward the couch. Sitting on the arm, he dragged her between his legs. “I rushed last time. I want to look at you.” Susan tried to shake off the surge of embarrassment that came over her as she stood there before him in her simple, white bra. The expression on his face told her he liked the view. Her nipples tightened into tight peaks in response. He pulled her closer, nestling her against the hard ridge of his erection. His hands tightened around her as he ran his tongue along her right nipple, wetting the cotton. The friction was different from anything she’d ever felt. He suckled, bringing in as much of her breast as he could. Need raced through her body, wringing a moan from her at the sharp sensation. When his mouth moved away to the other side, she saw that the wet mark on her bra highlighted her dusk-colored areola through the cloth. “God you have beautiful nipples,” he whispered, his breath blowing across the wet material to make her shiver. He stroked across her one more time before kissing her lips. His hands went to the top of her pants and she realized that she would be naked before he even had his shirt off if she didn’t take the initiative. She pushed his suit jacket off his shoulders and he shrugged to let it fall to the sofa. His fingers returned to the top of her pants, unzipping them as she pulled at the knot on his tie. Her hands struggled to cooperate. She was trying to kiss him, feel his fingers stroking her waist, and take off his tie at the same time. She was on overload. “Wait!” She pulled back from his mouth and batted at his hands. “I get to take your tie and shirt off before you can remove my pants.” “My apologies for rushing.” He grinned, then slid his belt free and shrugged out of his shoulder holster, setting it carefully on the coffee table. “I’ll provide you with a copy of the rules tomorrow.” She returned his smile as amusement combined with desire. This is how it should feel with a lover. Laughter merging with need. Tugging his tie free, she tossed it over the sofa. Then she undid the buttons on his shirt, one after the other, her hands working as fast as they could. “Mmm,” she hummed in appreciation as she parted the fabric. He had the best chest she’d ever seen. She leaned down to run her cheek across his skin. Turning her head, she took one of his nipples into her mouth, sucking lightly. He drew in a sharp breath. For a moment, as she swished her tongue across the tightened tip, she thought about how she was getting to know what he liked in bed. She wanted to please him, wanted him to be in her power, wanted him to please her. It was a strange feeling.

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Jake unbuttoned the cuffs and let his shirt fall onto the sofa. “Shirt’s off. My turn.” He pulled her pants to her hips, then dropped to one knee to push them to the floor. Stepping out of her heels, she drew off her trouser socks as she discarded her pants. “Stop. I want to see you this time.” His gaze raked her body. “I went too fast before and didn’t get to see you in those yellow panties of mine.” “Of yours?” “You gave them to me,” he said, grinning at her. “I know you didn’t mean it, but a card laid is a card played. I’m not giving them back.” “Jake,” she said, trying to make her tone a warning. “Susan.” He ran his hands down her body, then back up to slide across the outside of her underwear. “What on earth are you going to do with a pair of women’s panties?” “Frame them and put them on my bedroom wall.” “You wouldn’t!” “Of course I wouldn’t.” He winked. “But you’d better come over to my place regularly to check, just to make sure.” She narrowed her eyes. “That’s blackmail.” “Isn’t it though?” Jake reached up and undid the clasp between her breasts with a flick of his wrist. “Oh yeah,” he whispered as he kissed her breasts again. “Pants,” she said. “I get to take off your pants now.” At his groan, she added, “fair’s fair,” in a breathy voice. He stood straight so she could undo the zipper and slide them off his hips, but caught a condom out of his pocket as they fell. She raised an eyebrow, glad he’d thought of protection since she hadn’t. In fact, the whole thing had slipped her mind in the heat of the moment. “You’re sure of yourself.” “Just hopeful.” He lightly flicked her nipple with the foil packet, making her gasp. His brown eyes went amber with desire. They were feeding off each other, every move heightening the experience for the other person. She pulled down his boxers and slid off her underwear, done with the foreplay. “You’re about to have your hope fulfilled.” “I can’t wait.” Then he grabbed her close and fell backwards over the sofa arm. She landed sprawled across his chest, letting out a surprised yip, then snuggled between his body and the back of the sofa. “Shouldn’t we be going to the bedroom?” “No time.” He ripped open the foil packet and rolled on the condom. Then his fingers brushed down her stomach and found her clitoris, sliding past into her body, making her groan his name. He pulled her into a sitting position. “Ride me. I want to watch you come.”

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For a moment, she had a flash of fear that her shielding might fall again. Then she tossed out the feelings. It was selfish, but his secrets were safe with her and she wasn’t letting the old, conservative Susan rule her life anymore. At least not when it came to Jake. She rose up on her knees to straddle him and took his shaft into her hands. Sliding his head back and forth across her opening, she teased them both before working him inside her. She only took in his head, then leaned forward to rest on his chest. He tried to push up, but she raised herself away from him. “Susan,” he groaned. “Deeper.” “No.” She wanted to control this. He’d set the pace last time and she wanted her turn. It felt wonderful to have only a small amount of him inside her, and she didn’t plan to move until the anticipation overwhelmed them both. She raised her head and captured his lips with hers, leaving herself at the top of his erection. “Feels good, doesn’t it?” “Yes,” he ground out, pushing up again. She moved away, squeezing her internal muscles on his large head, winning a groan from him. Careful not to take any more of him inside her, she leaned back to roll his testicles in her fingers. She lightly cupped them in her hand, tugging them as she lowered herself a little more onto his shaft. “Susan,” he warned between clenched teeth. She leaned down to hear him better. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his hands moving to her hips. “But I’m not in the mood to play.” He pulled down hard as his cock rammed deep, bringing him home, wringing a cry from both of them. For a second, they stayed wrapped in each other’s arms, their bodies shaking with the impact of what he’d done. Then she moved, gliding along his shaft. Every time she came down, she ground her clitoris into his body and felt herself edge closer to release. She had to come, felt her body demanding it. Tension built inside of her -- up, up, up --until she couldn’t stand it anymore. God, she needed to peak so badly. His hands helped them keep in time with one another, guiding her hips until they worked as one. They were both close, every muscle in their bodies tightening. Then he thrust up into her as she came down, hitting some secret place inside of her she hadn’t even know was there. That was all she needed. “Jake,” she cried, as an orgasm raced through her body. Another climax hit her as she felt him come. She moaned and crumpled forward to rest on his chest, tremors shaking through her body with little aftershocks of pleasure. Finally, Jake pulled out of her body and rolled to his side, tucking her against him. “God, Susan, you’re amazing,” he said, kissing her hair and holding her tight.

*****

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She was amazing and for this moment, she was his. It wouldn’t last. She’d pull away again. Instinctively he knew it. They were fantastic in bed because their bodies couldn’t withhold information. Until she spilled whatever secret she kept, he’d keep hitting a wall. He would be as gentle with her as he could, but that wall was coming down. It was only a matter of time.

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Chapter Nine For a moment, Susan watched Jake sleeping, reluctant to wake him up and throw him out. She needed to think things through, though, and she couldn’t do that with him here. A lock of short brown hair fell across his forehead, making him appear younger. The beauty of his biceps caught her attention and she tracked her gaze along his shoulder up to his face. Unable to control the urge, she feathered a finger across his masculine mouth. His lips parted and he drew her finger in for a kiss and lick. Desire curled in her stomach, her breath catching, but she still managed a firm, “I’m kicking you out.” One corner of his mouth hitched up. “Stop thinking. It ends up spoiling everything.” She gave his shoulder an experimental nudge, then placed a kiss on the smooth muscle in his arm. “Good-bye, Matherly.” He sat slowly, holding her gaze until he sighed. “You’re set on me leaving, aren’t you?” When she tried to scoot from the couch, he held her down for a long, luscious kiss. Susan felt the electricity arc between them like a snap. She wondered if that would ever change or if it would always be like this. Then he stood, dragging on his pants, leaving her panting and needy. “I should be staying the night, waking you every hour to devour your delectable body, but instead, I’m going home for a cold shower.” He drew on his shirt, stepped into his shoes, then shrugged on his holster. The whole time he studied her naked body, desire plain in his gaze. She let him look, unable to stop the glow that came from being viewed with desire for the first time in her life. And she hadn’t had a vision. They’d shared deeply, but her true seeing had stayed silent. It was an unbelievable gift that she’d always treasure, no matter what happened to spoil things.

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Picking up his tie and coat, he strolled to the door. “All right, I’m going, but I can tell you right now that I’ll be back. Lock the door behind me. And keep your eyes open.” Pausing at the door, he looked at her for a second before saying, “You may not have known him, but Jim Daugherty is dead. Don’t let his killer go free if you know something that might help us. Nothing’s worth that.” He closed the door before she could come up with a suitable reply. Pulling on her clothes, she realized his guilt trip over what she had seen in the basement was working, for all she tried to fight it. She had a strong desire to tell him about it. “Don’t be an idiot, Susan. He’ll never believe you.” She went to the mantel over the nonworking fireplace and touched her box collection, lifting the lids as Jake had done the day before. She loved this box collection. Boxes hid secrets. There were twenty-five total, one for every year of her life. Her grandmother had started it, but after she died, Susan had continued to buy the little boxes as a Christmas present for herself. She had put them on the Christmas list she gave her mother year after year, but had finally stopped when she realized her mother wasn’t going to buy them for her. Susan wasn’t the only person her mother had been angry with about the true seeing. Gran had caught the brunt of her mother’s ire as well. As far as her mother was concerned, Gran’s genetics had caused this abomination. Should she call her mother and wish her well for her new marriage? Or send a note? It seemed like the mature thing to do, but she really didn’t feel like it. All of a sudden, she missed her grandmother. She wished Gran was still alive so she could ask her advice about all her problems. Her grandmother had been the only person to believe her about the seeing and still love her despite it. She remembered the first conversation they had about it, when she was thirteen or fourteen, in her grandmother’s kitchen. “Gran,” Susan said, “I have something I want to talk to you about, but Mother says I

shouldn’t tell anyone.” Susan had thought long and hard for the whole week she had been visiting her grandmother about whether or not to tell to her about it. “Oh?” Gran rolled dough out on the floured countertop. “You know you can always talk to me about anything, Susan. You can tell me anything and it will be kept only between us.” “Mother says I’m making it up but I’m not, Gran.” “Making what up, dear?” Gran got out a drinking glass and used it to cut circles of dough to make biscuits for dinner. “Well, sometimes I see things. Things that have happened to people.” Susan picked up the two flamingos that were Gran’s salt and pepper shakers. “Like a movie, in my head.”

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“Hmmm.” Gran looked up from the dough, her always-busy hands stopped in midmotion. “So. You have the gift of true seeing, do you?” At Susan’s look of surprise, Gran had laughed. “You didn’t think you were the only one? No, no. My sister and your great-greatgrandmother both had that gift.” Gran’s face turned grave. “And it’s a scary gift to have, Susan.” “Yes.” Her voice was serious despite her young age. She had known from the first time it had happened that it was a big responsibility. She felt a myriad of emotions flow through her. Relief that she wasn’t the only one with this gift was foremost in her mind. But even if she wasn’t the only one, that didn’t help her with her current problem. “I see things that no one wants me to.” “What have you seen?” “Mother had sex with Mr. Johnson in the choir room at school.” Susan allowed the words to burst from her, knowing that if her Gran believed them, she’d know that her mother had cheated on her father. She steeled herself for her grandmother’s disbelief. Susan’s mother wasn’t the type to do that kind of thing. Susan’s mother was a saint, volunteering at the Junior League and with the PTA. Her mother was the picture of propriety. “Who is Mr. Johnson?” Gran asked, her voice holding no judgment for her daughter’s actions. Gran didn’t judge anyone. Susan was relieved that she had been believed so easily. She didn’t want to get her mother in trouble. It was just that the pressure of the secret had become too great for her. “My choir teacher. I told Mother I saw it, but she said I was lying.” Tears welled up. “I told her I see all kinds of things, like when Billy Henson told the whole class he fell out of the tree and broke his leg but his father really pushed him down the stairs. But when I told Mother, she slapped my face and told me I was lying.” Susan raised her face to look at her grandmother, her lips trembling. “I’m not lying, Gran.” Gran came over and leaned against the countertop. “Susan, dear, I know you aren’t. But you have a terrible gift. No one wants their memories stolen, which is what you are doing. That is what scares your mother and will scare anyone you tell about this. Your mother knows she shouldn’t have slept with Mr. Johnson and you knowing about it makes her defensive and angry.” “But what should I do, Gran? I can’t stop the visions. I’ve tried.” “You can’t stop them, Susan.” Her grandmother’s face was kind and understanding. “But you can stop talking about them. People have a right to their secrets. You should never tell what you see.” “But.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “Sometimes I see terrible things.” Gran hugged her tight, rubbing her back with her hands. “I know you do, Susan. And it’s a large burden for you to carry.” Her grandmother pulled back to tuck a loose lock of hair behind her ear. “But no one will ever thank you for repeating their secrets.”

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Gran hadn’t known very much about true seeing and hadn’t been able to help her with understanding her gift. So she had stumbled along on her own, only going to her Gran when she didn’t know what else to do or had seen something particularly disturbing. Susan knew that Jake wouldn’t thank her if she told him she knew what had happened between his parents. But the vision with the murderer was different, wasn’t it? This would solve a murder. No, it won’t. All you saw was a man in a yellow raincoat, Susan. That’s it. They can’t solve a murder from that. She lifted the lid of a box in the shape of a Christmas present and looked at the painted teddy bear on the inside of the lid. This box was her favorite out of all the ones her Gran had given her. “You’ve given me many things, Gran. But good advice was the best gift of them all. I’ll follow it and keep everyone’s secrets.” Peace came over her with her decision. She still wasn’t sure what she’d do about her mother’s marriage or about her attraction to Jake, but at least she had one thing settled. In a blaze of decisiveness, she decided to just avoid both her mother and Jake. That would take care of all her problems in one fell swoop, no matter how painful it was. God, it would hurt, but it was for the best. This thing between Jake and her wasn’t love, not yet, but if she wasn’t careful, it would be soon. Now was the time to run. Relieved at finally having a plan, she closed the lid of the box with a snap.

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Chapter Ten Jake and Gordon walked up to the Woodbridge Apartment complex together. Gordon had been waiting for Jake when he got out of his car.

The bastard. He lives ten miles further from here than I do. “Do you sleep in your clothes, Gordon? Is that how you do it? Just constantly stay in that suit?” Gordon smiled, his bald head reflecting the rising sun. “Now, Detective Matherly,” he replied in the fresh, singsong voice he used when he wanted to get on Jake’s nerves in the morning. “You know I would never treat my suits with such disrespect.” Jake growled at him as they walked around the building to the Dumpster area in back. They were latecomers to the scene, since they had been called in as a courtesy by dispatch. These apartments were more run-down than the ones Susan lived in, even though they were only a couple of miles away. Constructed in the seventies, they looked like they were made to fit into the woods surrounding them. That must have been a hip thing to do at the time, but by today’s standards, they were dark and ugly. The small windows alone meant that the apartments would have little natural lighting and moss seemed to be taking over parts of the dark brown siding. Jake and Gordon crossed what was left of the lawn to Detective Jerry Martel. “You catch this one?” Jake wasn’t a fan of Martel, but tried to keep his opinion to himself. As a detective, Martel was known around the station as average at best. In social situations, Jake avoided the fifty-something, born-again Christian whenever possible. Martel had once cornered him for thirty minutes at a funeral to talk about Jake’s eternal soul. Jake believed in God, but he also believed that people who pushed their religious views on others were a large pain in the ass.

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“Yep,” Martel replied, turning to face them. “I called you in so you could see it. Victim’s throat was cut.” Martel’s hands flapped when he talked, every other word or so punctuated with a wave, as if he was conducting an orchestra. “Describe the victim for me, Detective Martel, sir,” Gordon said, his voice still jovial since he’d succeeded in getting a rise out of Jake earlier. “White, female, mid-forties. Throat cut. She was found behind the Dumpster. Tenant found her body this morning when he was taking out his garbage.” His hands moved on the words “white,” “forties,” “cut,” “Dumpster.” Jake had to wrench his thoughts back to what he said, forcing himself to ignore Martel’s hands. “Any stab wounds to the body?” Gordon was all business now, his earlier joking gone. “Not that we’ve seen so far. Someone cut her neck all the way to the spine. She bled out in another location and was dumped here. She’s been dead since late last night or early this morning. ME puts it between eleven and three.” “She have any other wounds?” Jake asked. The person who killed Jim Daugherty had gone crazy with the knife, stabbing him long after he’d been dead. “Besides a wicked bruise on her cheek, the neck wound looks like the only one.” Martel only flapped his hand on “wicked” and “cheek.” “Shit.” Jake dropped his hands on his hips. “Yes, Detective Matherly, I believe you are correct.” Gordon took out his notebook and began to take notes. “What’s got you two all hot and bothered?” Martel was not the brightest guy on anyone’s block. Jake remembered an incident last year when Martel put a knife into a single paper evidence bag, instead of double bagging, and checked it into the property room without warning anyone what was inside. The results of his goof were a desk clerk with ten stitches and a knife too contaminated to use at trial. Martel had gotten a speech about how sharpedged items will often cut through paper. “What has gotten Detective Matherly all in a tizzy is that we didn’t release to the press that our vic had other stab wounds.” “So? Maybe this woman has some other wounds too, ones we can’t see with all the blood on her clothes.” “Forty others, Martel?” Jake let the sarcasm drip just a little. Even Martel would probably not miss forty other stab wounds, but he guessed anything was possible. “Forty she don’t have,” Martel answered, his head nodding a bit, hands looking like he was conducting the violin section through a difficult piece of music. Maybe it showed how nervous he was, depending on the speed. “But she could have a few.” The three men watched Crime Scene take pictures of the body before they moved her from behind the Dumpster into a body bag.

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“Different age, different sex, different wounds,” Jake said to Gordon. The woman was dressed in clothing a forty-year-old wouldn’t usually wear. Short denim skirt, fishnet hose and a tank top were not standard October fashion in Virginia. Her hair had the burnt-out, frazzled appearance that came from too many bleach treatments. Jake couldn’t see her face but noticed with a twist in his gut that she wore only one shoe. He hoped death treated him better than this. He didn’t want to die wearing only one shoe, and it gave him a punch to the gut that the woman had gone this way. “Not many people switch to gentler killing.” Gordon pitched his voice so no one else could hear it. “Still, we don’t know. Maybe he was interrupted and had to move her before he’d completed his ritual.” “Could be. We’ll know more about the knife, at least, when we get the ME’s report back.” Jake felt antsy and off center. Don Walters from Trace Evidence had told them the bad news this morning. Besides one hair stuck to the outside of Daugherty’s blood-soaked shirt, they hadn’t gotten a single hair or fiber from the scene that could give them a clue about their guy. They did know the general type of knife that had been used. It was most likely one of the large ones with a slight serrated edge bought to carve turkeys at Thanksgiving. And they knew from the wounds that the murderer was a little over six feet tall and strong. Unless Xena, Warrior Princess, had stepped off the TV screen, it was a sure bet it was a man. Of course, they had other bits and pieces they could rely on. The textbooks said he was almost certainly white, since the victim was white. People tend to kill within their own race, unless the murder was racially motivated, which was unlikely here. White people weren’t usually killed because of their color. And they knew from the wounds that their perp was one very, very angry guy. There hadn’t been any hesitation marks, which would have indicated that the murderer wasn’t convinced he wanted to kill the victim. Forty deep slashes and stabs meant the perp had some anger management issues. But they had nothing linking the dead man to anything that might have caused his early demise. Background on the vic had drawn a blank on bad habits and angry enemies, although they were still chasing that side of it. Maybe something would turn up, but Jake thought it would be a dead end. He had meant it when he told Susan that the guy could be Ward Cleaver. There was a chance it was one of the tenants in the building. Killing someone for unauthorized use of the building’s washers was a little over the top, but people had killed for less than that. They hadn’t found anyone who admitted to knowing Daugherty. The only tenants that had set off any bells were Robb Connors and Paul Parker, but Jake wasn’t sure he was being objective about either of them. He might be suspicious of Connors because he had scared Susan and lied during his statement. But many people who weren’t killers lied to the police or confused facts out of nervousness. Parker had acted strangely during their interview, but he might just be a nutcase. Sadly, there were no laws against that.

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“For now, we’ll play it as if this one was killed by the same guy,” Gordon said, his voice still pitched low so it didn’t carry to the rest of the people at the scene. “We’ll have to consider them related until we get the ME’s report and can conclusively find that they had different killers. It’s too much of a coincidence that we have two people dead with their throats cut in less than a week who lived in this same apartment complex.” Jake realized the three of them stood looking at the Dumpster mimicking each other, posed with their hands on their hips, their stances reflective. If they did have a serial killer running around Richmond, they were in trouble.

***** Susan picked up the phone in her office when it rang, her mind still on the conversation she’d had with one of her clients. He’d given her a hard time over how long it was taking to put together a contract for his small printing firm. It was standard boilerplate he could use with his clients for their printing jobs. She rarely did this kind of work anymore and now she remembered why. She preferred working with one or two big clients, helping them negotiate partnerships with other businesses and reviewing their contracts and even their Web site content. Interesting and big enough so people don’t get all petty on you. So she answered the phone with a bit more sharpness than she normally would, saying, “Wright.” “Susan love, you sound like you’re ready to take a bite out of someone.” Jake’s voice flowed over the line, making her shiver. “I’ll do the world a favor and volunteer.” “Nice, Jake. But I suggest you stay away from me. I’m having a hellish day.” Susan stared at the plaque hanging on her wall beside the door that Nicole had given her for her birthday. It said, “The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” It was tastefully done in dark wood with silver plating and most people thought it was some sort of civic award until they leaned close to read the writing. She was in the mood to agree with it today. “It’s only Thursday afternoon. Bet you wish it was Friday and you were going out on a date with me.” Jake’s voice curled around her, lifting her spirits. Susan smiled, despite herself. Be firm, her little voice warned, even as her stomach did a joyful jig. You will not have him again. Stick to the plan. You have sworn off him because

you know you will slip up and tell your secrets if you come within a mile of him. Either that or jump in bed with him. She rubbed her eyes and wished with all her heart that she was normal and could have him. “Sorry, I can’t go out with you Friday night.” “Busy?” Jake sounded annoyed, but maybe not. She was having trouble reading his mood without seeing his face. Not that it mattered, she hastily assured herself. “Very.” He sighed. “Why do I get the impression I’ve taken a giant step back?”

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“I have no idea. Did you call for a reason? Other than that one?” She realized, she really, really wanted to see him again. Just for ten minutes. Long enough to run her tongue all over his body. Susan closed her eyes, fisting the hand that wasn’t holding the phone. “Lord, you’re difficult. We need to chat about what exactly the problem is here. Soon.” She heard him cover the phone and say something to another person that sounded like “coffee, black” but she wasn’t sure. “Sorry. Actually, I did call for another reason.” He paused for a moment and Susan listened to the line hum while he seemed to debate what to tell her. “There was another murder, this time at Woodbridge Apartments.” A ripple of unease curled through her. “When?” “Last night, late.” “The same person killed them both?” “We’re not sure. I don’t think so, but if we were taking a poll around the station, I’d be outvoted. I’d offer to move in and keep you safe, but you’d just think it was an elaborate scheme on my part to sleep with you.” His voice was joking, but underneath Susan heard his concern. Real fear rode through her. She wondered if there was a high-security building she could move into. That was ridiculous. Why would anyone kill her? Still, she felt icy chill bumps rise on her arms. Opening her mouth, she almost voiced her fear and begged him to take her in for the night, but then she wondered if this was only an excuse to see him again. Yes and no. She wanted to see him badly and she’d grasp at just about any straw to make that happen. She shook her head. It had been less than twenty-four hours since she’d sworn off him and here she was, willing to play the helpless maiden to get him back into her clutches. No, she would take care of herself, like she always had. “I’ll be careful, Jake.” “Do. Keep your doors locked and don’t let anyone in without knowing who’s there first.” “Okay.” Susan glanced up to see one of the firm’s partners standing at the glass beside her office door. “Look, I need to go. I’ll talk to you later.” “I’m counting on it.” His voice was smooth and pitched to run along her skin in a caress. She was glad he couldn’t see her or he’d know how impacted she was by him. “Jake?” Susan waved to the man at the door, signaling him in. “Yes?” “Thanks for calling me.” As she hung up the phone, Susan saw the slight shake in her hand, which signaled nerves that had nothing to do with another murder.

***** Jake hung up his desk phone, staring at the handset for a moment. His cop’s sixth sense told him Susan had something that held her back from committing to him, something big. He needed to sit her down and force her to spill it. It would be hard to do, since he had no

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idea what she hid. She obviously didn’t trust him since she wouldn’t tell him what she saw Sunday night and tried to fight their relationship at every turn. They’d only been seeing each other for five days now, so if he was fair, he’d give her time. But he had no desire to do that. His instinct told him to pack his whole apartment and show up on her doorstep. That would force the issue for sure. He’d gone insane. He’d never felt anything this intense before. The need to claim her and make her his sat like a weight in his gut. He pinched the bridge of his nose in hope of relieving some of the pressure building in his brain. Maybe her secret was as simple as being hurt in a previous relationship. He could deal with that, he wouldn’t destroy her trust once he had it. You’ve only had a short time with her. Be patient, Matherly. She’ll come around. He needed to drop in on her again. Adding that to his mental to do list, he picked up the phone and called a number he’d underlined in the phone book in front of him. He introduced himself to the woman that answered and asked to speak with Margaret Jones. “This is she.” Her voice held that usual oh-shit-it’s-a-cop reluctance. “Ms. Jones, do you know Robb Connors?” She paused. “Yes, actually, I do.” “Did you speak to him Sunday night?” “Yes. He called me for about the hundredth time to ask me out on a date. The guy is completely annoying.” “Do you know him well?” “We work together.” “Where are you employed?” She paused again. It wasn’t unusual for people to worry about their answers. “Why? What’s this about?” “Someone was murdered at his apartment complex. This is just a routine alibi check.” “I work at The Copy Center on Broad Street. Robb’s the manager there.” She sighed. “I don’t know why I’m so reluctant to talk to you. I’ve considered turning him in for sexual harassment since he’s been such a pest.” “Out of curiosity, Ms. Jones, why haven’t you?” “Well…” She hesitated as if she gathered her thoughts. “I did go out on a date with him a couple months ago, but after that I’ve said no each time. I’ve told him to leave me alone, but he keeps calling, even after I said he wasn’t my type and that I wanted him to back off.” Jake wondered, not for the first time, why people rarely reported this type of harassment. Going out on one date didn’t mean she had given up her right to report his behavior. “Has he been physically threatening in any way? Or has he threatened you verbally?”

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“That’s just it, Detective. He hasn’t been threatening at all. It’s as if he doesn’t understand. He calls and asks me out as if he’s never heard me say no before.” “When was the last time you saw him?” “Saturday, at work. Did he murder someone?” Her voice said she hoped he had. “This is just routine, Ms. Jones. How long was your conversation?” “As short as I could make it, I promise you. No more than five minutes.” “When did he call?” “I guess around seven or so.” Jake thought for a second. That meant Connors had between seven and nine to go down to the basement. It was enough time for him to be the murderer. Jake jotted a note to pull Connors’s phone records. Jake gave her his phone number in case she wanted to reach him again and thanked her for her time. He made notes on the call and stuffed them into the file. Picking up the phone again, he called Susan’s neighbor, Ellie, to see if she was a little calmer than she had been on Sunday. He ended up leaving a message on her machine. Connors had alarm bells ringing in Jake’s head. He was an odd duck, definitely, but he was involved somehow. Jake could sense he was connected to the first murder. And Susan lived just a couple doors down from him. A bad feeling ran up Jake’s spine.

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Chapter Eleven “Susan!” a voice called to her across the parking lot. Susan turned to see Georgia Witherspoon walking down the stairwell. Her tall, slim next-door neighbor had an aura about her that said she was together, confident, going places. She and Susan hadn’t become friends, although Susan had made overtures when Georgia first moved into the apartments. Her neighbor had been too busy working long hours and volunteering for everything under the sun to go out for fun. The blonde beauty had more things happening in a week than Susan did in a month. The only odd part was that she was busy with everything but dating. In the months they’d lived next to each other, Susan had never seen her with a man. Then again, Susan hadn’t had a date the whole time either, so what did she know? “Hey, Georgia.” Susan crossed over to her. “I’m surprised to see you here during the day.” Susan came home to eat lunch once or twice a week. This week, she had come home every day. She was tired of answering people’s questions about the murders. It was as if she was suddenly an expert on stabbings because she had found the first victim. Since the newspapers were full of news linking the two murders, she had been everyone’s favorite person to corner and chat about the “Apartment Slasher.” Thank God it’s Friday. Let’s hope they all forget about it over the weekend. “Ever since my brother came to live with me, I’ve been dying for some alone time.” She might be complaining, but Georgia’s perky smile was still in place. “You know, I don’t think I’ve met your brother.” “My brother’s mentally challenged so I can’t leave him by himself for very long. Samuel’s only living with me temporarily. This is going to sound horrible, but I’m hoping he’ll be out of here within the next week or so. He’s in adult daycare during the day, so I’ve got to get him up early and have him at the Center.” She tucked a stray blonde lock behind

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her ear. “You must be working late hours to miss us in the evenings. I’m home almost every night since he moved in. I’ve had to cut out all my volunteer work.” Georgia stared into the parking lot, not meeting Susan’s gaze. Susan’s heart went out to her neighbor. To have to look after a mentally handicapped brother at the age of twenty-four would be more than a challenge. It sounded as if caring for her brother had rearranged Georgia’s life. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do? I could look after him while you go out one night, if you’d like.” “Thanks, Susan. That’s truly sweet. I’m hoping to have him in a group home within the next week or two. The insurance ran out so quickly when my father died that I didn’t have time to find something new before they released him from the last program. The state has a ton of paperwork I have to file before I can get him into a home and it’s a six-week process at best.” Georgia’s serious face turned lighter. “But it’s almost over, God forgive me for saying it. I never thought I’d be taking care of my brother like this.” Georgia’s gaze roamed the parking lot without settling on any one thing. “If you’re really serious about coming over to watch him for me, I would be indebted to you forever. Especially if you would come over Sunday night and spell me for an hour or two while I go grocery shopping.” “Sure. I’m free starting around six.” Susan was glad she could help. Even if they weren’t close, Susan really liked her neighbor and wanted to give her any support she could. “Seven o’clock too late for you?” When Susan shook her head, Georgia said, “This is fantastic. You’re a complete lifesaver.” She sounded tired beneath her bouncy tone. “Ellie told me you were in the laundry room with her the other night.” Susan winced. “Oh, Georgia, please don’t ask about it. I’ve had to discuss it so much in the last week that I’m completely sick of the subject. I’ve been hiding out during my lunch break so I won’t have to rehash the whole thing.” “I’ll keep mum then, but I told the police it was Robb Connors.” “Georgia!” Susan felt inappropriate laughter bubble up. “He showed up Sunday afternoon to ask me out again and I had to get bitchy with him to get him to leave.” Susan couldn’t help but grin. “Let me guess -- tickets to a concert Monday night?” Georgia gave a smile in return. “You, too?” “Yeah, but I must be slipping, because he didn’t ask me until after he’d asked you. Next time I see him, I’ll point out that you love him more so he can forget about me.” “Do it and die.” Georgia’s voice held a tone that sounded only half joking. “That guy is such an asshole. He had my brother all riled up on Sunday when he wouldn’t leave my apartment until I threatened to call the police. Samuel was so upset that he sat and rocked for hours after he left.” “That’s horrible! What a jerk.” Jake might be right. Robb had become more aggressive. “Did you tell that to the police?” Susan would never look at Robb the same way again.

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“They acted completely uninterested and haven’t talked to me since Sunday.” “Really?” Susan was irritated that Jake had given her a big guilt trip when they hadn’t even questioned all her neighbors again since they’d learned more about the case. She was tempted to call him and give him a little lecture. Maybe she would tonight. She hoped she wasn’t making up an excuse to hear his voice again. “Did they even ask you any questions?” “They asked me where I was, so I said out with a date.” “You were?” Susan didn’t think Georgia went on dates. “Of course not. Like I’d need an alibi? According to the papers, the guy was twice my weight if he was a pound. As if I’d kill some stranger in the laundry room.” Georgia looked offended. “Then they asked if I’d seen anything suspicious so I said that yes I had. I told them that I’d seen Robb wandering around looking like he was up to something. I had to go out of my way to slip it into the conversation but it was worth it if someone questioned him.” Georgia laughed a little evilly at the thought of Robb facing the police, then glanced at her watch. “God, where does lunch time go? Too bad we don’t follow the Mexican custom of siesta. I could use about three more hours to myself.” Susan said good-bye. She wasn’t at all sure she thought it was a good idea to implicate your neighbor in a murder, even if he was an ass, but it was starting to sound like Robb was out of control. Maybe even dangerous. She got into her car and started the short drive back to her office. She only had to make it through four more hours at work before she was free for the weekend. Free to show up at Jake’s place and jump his body. Susan stomped on the brakes reflexively. Where had that thought come from? God, she was losing it. “No more Jake Matherly, Susan Wright. That boy is poison. Skull and crossbones. Keep off. No touching. Period.” She repeated it for the rest of the drive, desperately trying to convince herself. The problem was that she didn’t just want Jake’s body, she wanted all of him. But she couldn’t have that type of relationship with her true seeing standing like a secret wall between them. Still, she rationalized as she parked her car, she’d call him and at least tell him about her conversation with Georgia. She sighed, disgusted with herself. You’re making this into a

bigger deal than it is because you want to hear the sound of his voice. Pathetic, Susan, really pathetic.

***** After work, Susan turned down her friends’ invitation to go dancing. Nicole and Courtney were concerned for her and wanted to help take her mind off things, but she was beat. She hadn’t been sleeping well in the last week and she wanted to go home and curl up with a good book and a bottle of wine. It was one of the things on her list of normal person

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activities. Drinking had been off limits, since it tended to drop her shielding, but she was finished with being so conservative. She realized with a groan she still hadn’t done her laundry. The thought of facing the laundry room had her deciding to call Nicole tomorrow and see if she could wash her clothes over there. For a moment, she considered hauling her clothes to another building, but then ditched the idea. All the basements probably looked the same and that would be way too creepy for her. She also had a little niggling thought that Jim Daugherty’s memories might be floating around down in the basement, almost as if his ghost hovered, waiting for her. She knew it was ridiculous to feel that way, but she still couldn’t get it out of her mind. She would rather not have another peek at the end of Jim’s life.

***** Jake watched Susan’s two friends as they walked into Buddy’s later that night and spent the next ten minutes waiting for Susan to show up. He looked at his watch for the seventh time. A little after ten o’clock. Where was she? “Hey Jake, want to give me an introduction?” “What?” Jake glanced at the rest of the men at the table. Except for Gordon, they were all on the prowl. Gordon was happily married to a nurse who would soon give birth to their second child. Gordon’s wife was wonderful. She had Jake over to supper every couple weeks and was very patient with Gordon’s intensity and love for his job. Every time he visited, Jake felt a stab of jealousy. Growing up in his aunt’s house hadn’t been bad, but he had still been an outsider -- someone thrust upon her without a choice. He had always longed for a normal family. He wanted to marry someone wonderful and settle down in a house with a white picket fence. He didn’t care that most men would laugh at him. Jake couldn’t understand why so many of his friends were scared of commitment. He always thought it was because they didn’t understand what it felt like to grow up without a family. Most people didn’t appreciate what they had. Jake had made a promise to himself long ago that he would always be grateful if he ever had a real home. And he knew who he would like to see across the dinner table every night, if she would quit fighting him every step of the way. He was done going slow with her. Although he’d left without the answers he needed the other night and hadn’t pushed her for a date on the phone yesterday. So maybe he was still going a little slow. It disturbed him more than he liked to admit that he had let his feelings for her get in the way of doing his job, even though he didn’t think it had impacted the case. Yet. “Earth to Jake,” one of the guys said, waving his hand in Jake’s face. “Introduce me to the two hotties over at the next table.”

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Jake looked over at Susan’s friends warily. “I don’t think I can remember their names.” “You left with their friend the other night, Matherly. Surely you can get us an introduction?” “You’re on your own with those two. Just walk up and introduce yourself. That should be enough.” He watched as two of the guys took his advice and went over. Gordon cleared his throat. “I thought you were sweet on the woman from the first murder scene.” His eyebrows were arched, his face interested. It was the look Gordon gave when he was trying to be friendly during an interrogation. “Gordon, no one uses the word ‘sweet’ anymore.” Jake grinned, taking a swig from his beer. “It’s like the word ‘courting.’ That’s not used either.” “I don’t know why. Courting is very descriptive. I would have said you were courting Miss Wright, but I guess I was wrong.” “What’s your definition of courting?” Jake had a niggling suspicion Gordon’s definition might be different from his own. “Between dating and getting married. Going steady, if you will.” “Whoa, now. That’s extreme.” Not that extreme. He’d been having similar thoughts, but to have Gordon voice them aloud made Jake cautious. Susan was withholding something from him and backed away from him every time he got close. That wasn’t going steady or even healthy dating. He took a more cautious sip from his beer bottle. “Actually, it was Miss Wright I escorted home.” Jake flashed another grin, pleased he had worked in the oldfashioned word “escorted.” Gordon’s eyes sharpened a tad into an expression Jake had seen many times before. This was the first time it had been used with him, though. “And why did you do that, Jake? Did it have anything to do with this case?” Jake suddenly had the impression that Gordon knew something was up, that possibly he knew Susan’s statement was off. Gordon wasn’t the type of detective to let something like that drop. He sighed, glad that the two other guys at the table suddenly left them alone to investigate the apparent success the first two were having with Susan’s friends. He took a long, bracing drag of his beer. “I had another round with her about her statement.” Gordon’s shock was real, so real that Jake cursed himself up, down, and sideways. His partner hadn’t suspected something was off on her statement. But now, thanks to his big mouth, he did. “Shit. You prying bastard.” Jake knew he’d been manipulated. “What’s wrong with her statement?” Gordon’s voice was low and patient. And angry. “Shit.” Jake took another gulp of his beer. Full confession time. “Something’s up there. I know her well enough to know she’s holding back.”

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“Any idea what?” “I have no clue.” Jake shrugged. “I almost had her the other night before she kicked me out of her apartment.” That wasn’t exactly true, but when he’d decided to give Gordon a full confession, it didn’t include what had happened on the sofa. That was none of Gordon’s business. “This is what happens when you date people involved in your cases, Jake,” Gordon said piously. Anger slithered inside his gut. “How in the hell was I supposed to know she’d leave my place and go find a dead body in her apartment laundry room? It’s the same as if your wife found him.” Gordon’s mouth dropped open in very un-Gordon-like surprise. “You are comparing her to my wife?” Jake’s gaze locked onto his. “I guess I am, Miles.” He sighed. “I guess I am.” Gordon grinned. “Courting, Jake.” “Shit,” Jake said, this time with a sad undertone. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be courting someone who withheld information from him. He didn’t want to date someone with secrets, even though he felt somewhat like a hypocrite because he had a few secrets of his own. Every time he got close to her, she took a giant step away. He didn’t want to play that game for the rest of his life. Gordon’s face turned serious. “Any idea what she’s holding back?” Jake was glad Gordon returned them to solid ground. “I don’t know. I could be wrong about it, I guess.” Jake mulled it over for a second. “But I don’t think so. Her reaction was off. And she reacted with guilt when I said that we were out of leads and a murderer could go free.” “It’s true that we are out of leads.” Gordon took a polite sip of his red wine. Gordon knew quite a bit about wine, but somehow never came across as wimpy. Prim, almost fussy, but wimpy Gordon was not. “She’s stubborn as hell, though. If I push her too hard, she won’t give me jack.” “You sound like you know that from experience.” “Eleven months of striking out for a date is experience enough. The lady has stubborn down to a science. But she’ll do the right thing eventually.” Jake drank the last of his beer. “She takes too long to come to a decision, though. All I can do is be patient and keep nudging her in the right direction.” “If it comes down to it, maybe I should give it a try,” Gordon suggested in his mildest voice. Jake looked at his empty bottle to hide his reaction. He didn’t want Gordon near her. “Let’s give it a couple of days and see what I can get from her.”

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“If we’re right, we may have a couple of days. But if we’re wrong and the same perp did both murders, then we might have another body on our hands soon.” “Gordon, you know the same person didn’t do both victims. My God, who ever heard of someone switching MOs that much? They like to kill people the same way when it’s as violent as the first vic. They weren’t even killed using the same knives.” The ME’s report said the woman was killed with a hunting knife, the type with huge serrated jags on both sides of the blade. “The papers think it’s the same guy.” Gordon loved to play devil’s advocate. “The first guy was butchered. Someone really went after him, but the second only had her throat cut. What are the chances it’s the same perp?” “About ninety-nine to one. We better hope the one doesn’t win. Both victims being from Woodbridge Apartments is a huge coincidence.” “It is, but I like the woman’s boyfriend for her murder. That guy could kill someone and not think about it.” “He did have that air about him.” Gordon tapped the table. “And we haven’t found a connection between Jim Daugherty and the boyfriend.” Jake nodded. “Speaking of which, I had an interesting conversation with yet another woman Robb Connors has been harassing. That guy really gets around. He’s without an alibi for the hours during the first murder and he lied to me. I think maybe we should both pay him a visit tomorrow so you can let me know what you think.” “I hate liars. They make everything take ten times longer when you question them.” Jake glanced at his watch. Ten fifteen. Where was Susan? “The best part is that every time I challenged him on something he’d lied about, he rearranged his story.” “Harassing women doesn’t mean he’s a murderer.” “True. But he’s got so many issues, I don’t think we can rule him out. And he was there that night, right in his apartment.” “Any connection between Connors and the victim?” “Besides both shopping at the same grocery store? Nope. Not a thing. Daugherty’s girlfriend told me he switched buildings every other week when he did his laundry, too. Which makes me think that Connors and our victim hadn’t met in the basement. The thing that bothers me is that no one had any motive to kill Jim Daugherty.” “So we start from the beginning again. Reread the file. Re-canvass.” Gordon paused to take the last sip of his wine. “But first, we’ll go talk to Connors.” “What about Paul Parker?” “Him, too.” Jake thought about Gordon’s threat to talk with Susan as he pulled out his wallet to pay the tab. He wasn’t about to let Susan face Gordon unless he had to. Gordon might never raise

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his voice or lose his temper but he could bring a giant to tears and a sociopath to a confession. Jake knew he had to work a little harder to uncap the lid holding down all her secrets. Gordon wouldn’t wait much longer.

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Chapter Twelve Susan heard the knock right as she poured the last of the chardonnay into her glass. Company now would not be a good idea. In an effort to mitigate her previously uptight and boring behavior, she had opened a bottle of wine, but the alcohol had faster results than she’d anticipated. She was three sheets, or maybe even four, to the wind and she demonstrated that by knocking into the coffee table as she went to answer the door. She had to concentrate a little to undo the lock, but only a little, so she swung the door open with a sense of triumph. This isn’t that hard! Her triumph was immediately squashed by Jake’s furious voice as he charged past her into the apartment. “You didn’t even check to see who it was.” He swung around and glared at her as she stood in mild shock at the whirling dervish that had exploded into her apartment. “A man gets killed in your building last weekend and you don’t even check to see who you’re letting in your apartment. I should make you take Safety for Idiots.” Susan slammed the door, fear slithering down her skin and making her irritated. She was not going to beg him to be her knight in shining armor. “You’re ruining what had been a very nice wine buzz.” She crossed to the couch and sat down, picking up her wine glass in hopes of salvaging her evening. With a concerted effort, she ignored the excitement tumbling in her belly and the sharp bite of joy at his appearance. Jake picked up the empty bottle. “Having a little party for one, huh?” He raised an eyebrow at her, his mouth turning up, then down, as if he couldn’t decide whether he was amused or not. “Looks like you weren’t kidding when you said you had a buzz.” Susan peered at him over the rim of her glass as she took another sip and then said primly, “There’s only four and a half glasses to each bottle. I’m not toasted, just a little brown on the edges.” She felt mellow, relaxed, and floating. At least, she had until he walked in.

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“Go away if you can’t be civil. I’m in too good a mood for you to spoil it right now.” An odd thought glided through her mind. What would his skin taste like with wine poured over it? “Looks like it.” Jake sat down on the coffee table in front of her. Irritation flared up immediately, combining with her irrational urge to fling herself into his arms and beg for him to stay the night so the creepy crawlies wouldn’t get her. Instead, she said, “Don’t sit on my coffee table, you heathen! People sit in chairs and on sofas, not on tables.” “My, you do get school-teacherish when you get loaded, don’t you?” Jake didn’t seem worried by her show of temper. Susan drew herself up. “I am not school-teacherish! I just wasn’t raised in a barn, like others I know.” Jake caught a wisp of her hair that had fallen across her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “My aunt would be aghast to know you think my manners are lacking. She tried hard to raise me right. But since I’m already in trouble for my manners, I think I’ll go ahead and earn your bad opinion of me.” Jake grasped the back of her head and kissed her, a soft brush of lips that immediately made her want more.

Stop this, Susan. Don’t give in to this. You need space from this man, not more intimacy. Jake’s tongue slid into her mouth to touch hers and she tasted malt and man. The mellow, floating sensation the wine had given her flooded back with a vengeance and Susan gave herself up to it, pulling him down on the sofa with her.

***** They made their way steadily across the room and into her bedroom, shedding clothes along the way. Pinning her against the wall beside the bathroom door, Jake pulled her legs around his body. With one hand, he checked to make sure she was ready. His fingers slid in her wetness, making him moan. She wanted him as much as he wanted her and the thought made his blood pound, stiffening his cock to an almost painful erection. He needed her now. Immediately. Without any slow teasing or foreplay. “Ready?” he asked, meeting her green gaze. It shimmered with a desire that matched his. She nodded, digging her nails into his back, the sharp bite of pain only adding to his need. He rammed deep inside her. Moisture poured off their bodies as they came together. Susan twisted her hand in his hair, her mouth eating his. He slammed home, making her mew with the impact. The pace was fast, deep, and mutual. “Come,” he whispered. “Jake.” Her head tossed against the wall as her body tightened at the edge of orgasm.

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Finding her clitoris, he pinned the button with his thumb, hoping to bring her with him over the edge. She clenched her legs around his waist and a tremor of orgasm ripped through her. Then he came, pumping inside her with triumph roaring through him. He wasn’t finished, not by a long shot. “Shower,” he said, when he raised his head to take a breath. “I want to see you wet.” Carrying her into the bathroom, he turned on the tap without putting her down, his shaft still semierect inside of her. He released her slowly, sliding her along his body to the floor, not wanting them to part. This is what he wanted. Susan, open and giving of herself to him, with no walls between them. She leaned over to light the big candle on the back of the commode, then flipped off the light. Catching his hand, she stepped into the shower, watching his body as he followed. “You have wonderful shoulders,” she murmured, her voice so soft he knew she’d spoken out loud without meaning to. He felt a spark of triumph. Her body wanted his and he had no problem exploiting that to bring her closer. Everything felt amazing, both more intense and less in focus. He leaned back with his eyes closed to wet his hair, enjoying the brush of warm water across his skin. Then he pulled her under the spray with him, watching her in the candlelight. He ran his hands over her breasts, down her ribcage to rest on her waist. Perfect. Her breasts were palm-sized and gorgeous, the tips dusky in the dark room. He had to taste, wanting the foreplay now that the edge had been taken off and his patience partially restored. Ducking his head, he licked water from her nipples, then suckled. “Oh, that feels amazing.” Her fingers cupped his buttocks and massaged, then stroked. He stroked across her stomach, then dropped to his knees to nuzzle between the lips of her sex. “Later, I’ll bring you like this, but right now, I want you again.” “Yes,” she whispered. He didn’t wait for her to change her mind. Turning her to face the wall of the shower, he leaned his fully aroused body into her, enjoying the feel of her skin against his. Then he ran his hands to her wrists and placed her palms on the wall to balance them. Brushing his fingers up her arms, then across over her breasts, he realized he wanted more glide than the water was giving them. Picking up the soap, he washed her back, then buttocks. Her rear end was heart-shaped and tight. She worked out a lot if the lean muscles he felt below his hands were any indication. He realized he didn’t know what her hobbies were or how she spent her free time. He barely knew her at all, and he wanted to, badly. Tomorrow, he’d find out what he wanted to know. Tonight he was too distracted to think clearly.

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He ran his hands down to the top of her thighs, then rotated inward. She gasped as his soapy fingers touched her core from behind. One thumb dipped into her channel and her body jerked around him. Moving away, he grabbed her hips to hold her still, while he worked his bare cock inside her. Dammit. They hadn’t used protection. Stupid, but the damage had already been done and he wasn’t stopping now, no matter what the consequences. They had something here between them, something that felt so right he could lose himself in her, forgetting his usual control and patience. He slid into her smoothly, opening her, feeling her stretch to accommodate him in her warm, slick center. One of his hands stayed supporting them, the other slipped around them to rest a finger on her clitoris. He didn’t move it, just left it holding her down, trapping her with pleasure. He closed his eyes so tightly, stars burst behind his lids. Setting a pace as slow as he could, he widened her legs and bent her at the waist to take her deeper. He was a mass of pulsing nerve endings as his cock moved in and out of her tight sheath. She jumped as he hit some place inside her that felt extra good, so he readjusted to make every thrust hit her there. It took four strokes before she climaxed, her head falling back onto his shoulder. With one more stroke, he came, the force of it rocking his whole body with great shudders. For a moment, he laid his forehead against her back, unable to move, covering her like a blanket. Aftershocks still sang through him until he noticed the rapid cooling of the shower. “We’re losing the hot water. You’d better rinse all the soap off quick.” His voice was deeper than usual, tight from their lovemaking. He moved away, reluctant to go, switching places to help clean her. Just as the water went cold, he shut off the spray. Then he closed his arms around her and kissed her neck. She felt so wonderful. He didn’t plan to let her go. Gordon was right. This was definitely courting.

***** It was the headache that woke her up, although the sun would have done it sooner or later. Yellow beams streamed through the window. She’d forgotten to pull the shades last night. Moving her head gingerly, she gazed at the man beside her. She’d known who it was before she opened her eyes, just from the smell of him. He was tangled in the bedding, one arm flung above his head, the other under her neck. Somehow, the sheet had fallen across his lap but otherwise he was naked. Desire flooded through her. She was so turned on, she woke him with a kiss, ignoring her headache. At that instant, reality crashed down and she realized they hadn’t used protection last night. Her headache turned into a vicious stabbing pain. You wine guzzling moron! Forcing

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herself not to panic, Susan stared at her ceiling and started counting days. She relaxed a bit when she figured out that she was in the clear. Probably. Twenty-five years old and she made a slip most high school students knew better than to make. As if he read her mind, Jake spoke from beside her. “I’m thinking you should go on birth control.” She whipped her head around to find him grinning boyishly. Pain burst through her brain at the quick motion, intensifying her anger at both herself and at him. “What if I’m pregnant, you grinning ape?” She rolled from the bed, dragging the sheet with her. What if she was pregnant? She was never supposed to have children. Freaks of nature should not reproduce. She only got one step before she pulled up short. His body was still on one end of the sheet and he wasn’t moving. “Then we’ll have to get married, Susan love.” His reasonable tone pushed her further over the edge. He reclined lazily across the bed, showing her his luscious body. A zing of desire hummed through her, but she refused to be distracted. “Get married? Get married! What is this, the nineteenth century?” Susan tugged at the end of the sheet. “I’m not marrying you!” Jake sat up, his eyes narrowing. “The hell you won’t.” Muscles bulged in his chest and forearms. “You’re not running around with my baby without being married to me.” Her mouth dropped open. “Who are you, Conan the Barbarian? Get into the twentyfirst century, Matherly! People don’t get married because one of the parties happens to be pregnant.” But even as she said the words, her heart tightened at the thought he was this kind of man. The kind who would do what was right. The kind who would marry her. She reminded herself that he didn’t know her secret. His fingers tightened into fists. “They do if they’re carrying my child.” “Are you nuts? I wouldn’t marry you. I don’t even know you. You’re just some guy I’ve slept with.” Instantly, Susan knew she’d made a tactical error. The anger on Jake’s face turned into rage and he was up from the bed standing naked before her in seconds, a tremor running through the muscles in his chest. “Really. Just some guy you’ve slept with.” Susan began to back up as he advanced toward her, tripping on the sheet. His hand shot out to steady her before she fell. “And how many other men have you slept with, Susan?” he asked, his tone too controlled for comfort. Something in his face made her answer honestly. “Two.” Her back hit the wall. She had never seen him in this mood before. He’d always been laughing or teasing her, never angry like this.

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“Two. So a total of three.” Jake put his hands on either side of her to cage her in. “Sounds like you sleep around a bunch, Susan. Sounds to me like you take sex casually.” “No! I…” She knew she would be hard pressed to win this battle. “You what, Susan?” He lowered his face within inches of her. “I’ll tell you what. You’re full of it. That’s what. I am not just some guy you’re sleeping with.” His nose pressed to hers, his gaze snapping. Susan panicked. “I’m not getting married, Jake. And I’m not having any children.” His eyes weren’t brown, they were deadly amber. “You should have thought about that before you dragged me into bed last night, shouldn’t you?” “That’s not fair.” Susan felt like crying but stamped it down. She wasn’t a crier. She hadn’t even cried the day her own mother declared her a freak. Pulling in a steadying breath, she straightened her shoulders. Jake’s tension drained from him all at once, and he dropped his forehead to hers. “You’re right, it isn’t. I’m as much to blame as you are.” Susan stood still, wondering at his mood change. She had a sudden urge to comfort him and couldn’t resist touching his shoulder. He studied her. “Why aren’t you planning on having kids?” Susan blinked for a second, trying to catch her thoughts. He deserved at least a version of the truth. “I have a hereditary condition I can pass on. I wouldn’t put anyone through what I’ve lived with, so I’m not going to have any children. Why get married if you aren’t going to have kids?” For the first time, she realized just what she would be giving up. Before it had only been theory, but now, standing here beside Jake, she had a flash of pain and loss so strong she had to glance at her feet to hide it. He frowned. “What kind of condition?” “Don’t worry. I can’t give it to you.” Her tone was clipped as she tried to cover the ache of loss that still swam through her body. She was already regretting that she’d said anything, regretting she’d ever even brought it up in her own mind. “Just forget I mentioned it.” “I want to know what it is.” Susan leaned her face into his. “None. Of. Your. Business.” Jake drew up to tower over her at his full height but Susan wasn’t buying it. “Nice intimidation tactic but it won’t work, big guy.” He rolled his eyes, but his natural good humor seemed to be returning. “Fine. But sooner or later you’ll tell me, Susan love. I give you my word you will.” His endearment twisted the already burning sensation in her stomach. What would it be like to wake up every morning beside this man? “I doubt it,” Susan said with spunk that she didn’t feel. She grasped at straws, trying to come up with something to change the subject. “And another thing -- don’t try to make me feel guilty by telling me you guys are out

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of leads. Georgia Witherspoon said the police hardly asked her any questions. She told me she had to force one of you to listen to her about Robb Connors.” Jake’s gaze sharpened, became more like the cop mask he sometimes wore. “What about Connors?” “She had an incident with him Sunday afternoon where he wouldn’t leave her apartment. It really shook up her brother.” “Her brother was in her apartment on Sunday?” Jake’s body went utterly still, complete concentration on his face as if he mentally flipped through his notes. “He moved in with her temporarily until he can get into another managed care facility.” Every time she thought of Robb, she had a bad feeling about him. “I’m starting to think Robb might be dangerous.” Jake nodded slowly. “Gordon and I are going to have a talk with him today. I’ll need to go into the office later on tonight and check on some things.” He glanced at his watch. “But I wouldn’t mind spending the morning with you if you have time for me.” Susan knew things weren’t resolved between them and she knew he wouldn’t let up until he knew her secret. She knew he circled back to things relentlessly. It must be some sort of cop tactic. For now, he was distracted with other problems. At least they had both calmed down. The thing to do was not worry about something that hadn’t happened yet in the pregnancy department. It wasn’t the time of month when she was most likely to become pregnant and panicking wouldn’t get her anywhere. This is what happens when you think with your libido. She had a flash of pity for the males of the species, since they thought with the guy in their pants most of the time. For once, she understood how they could let it happen.

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Chapter Thirteen The phone rang right as Susan stepped from the shower. Alone. Despite Jake’s offer to join her. Emotions had been threatening to burst from her any moment and she’d really needed to get herself together. This was rapidly spiraling out of control. She had a little chat with herself as she washed her hair, realizing again how much danger she was in with Jake. Danger she hadn’t faced since her boyfriend in college. Except this time was worse. She was old enough to know their attraction wasn’t a passing fancy. He had proved earlier in her bedroom that he wasn’t interested in casual sex. He would marry her if she were pregnant. That spoke volumes about his commitment level. But she wasn’t sure she wanted a relationship where she hid who she was, even if it was the only way she could keep him. One of the best ways she knew to get rid of someone was to tell them her secret. Her own mother couldn’t handle her ability to true see. Maybe she should tell him and watch him run? That would take care of everything. God, she already didn’t want to lose him, though. Her stomach twisted in the face of being alone now that she’d had him in her life. Now she knew what it was like with him here, the thought of him never sitting on her coffee table again had her nose tingling and tears swimming in her eyes.

Oh, stop being melodramatic, Susan. She would take today and enjoy it. Just for one day, she would be normal. She hadn’t had any visions with him since the first one. Maybe that was a sign that she would have one day with him to act like a regular couple. “Susan,” Jake called from the other room. “Are you going to get the phone?” Susan shook her head to clear her thoughts. “Yes, I’ve got it.” She crossed to her nightstand, grabbing the handset. “Hello?” “Susan,” said a breathy voice on the other end. “It’s Nicole. I need you to come get me.” “Where are you?”

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Nicole sounded like she was in trouble. That meant she was in deep. Nicole didn’t panic until the cops or venereal disease were involved. “I’m down in the Bottom at Millie’s Diner. Come get me as fast as you can, okay?” She hung up with a click. “Damn.” Susan threw the phone onto the base and ran for her dresser. Jake lounged in the doorway looking curious but she ignored him. Throwing off her robe, she put on underwear, jeans, and a shirt as fast as she could, disregarding the twist of self-consciousness she felt at being naked in front of him. “Are we going somewhere?” He didn’t bother to hide his interest in watching her dress. “Nicole is in trouble. I’ve got to pick her up.” Susan fumbled through a drawer for her socks. Why did she only have pairs that didn’t match? “I’ll get my shoes.” “Wait. I’m not sure you should come.” Why couldn’t she ever just buy the same athletic socks? Every pair had a different ribbing at the top. He turned back to her, calm in her storm. “Do you know what’s wrong?” “No, but knowing Nicole, it’s probably guy-related.” She picked two socks out that were almost alike and dragged them on. “If you don’t know what’s wrong, I’m coming.” He turned back into the living room. “You never know when you might need a cop with you.” Susan didn’t have time to fight him and it would be nice not to have to go alone for once. She stepped into her tennis shoes without bothering to untie them and ran into the kitchen to get her keys. “I’ll drive,” Jake said, standing with the door already open. Bolting from the apartment, they jogged to the car and got in. “Where to?” “Millie’s in the Bottom.” Jake pulled the car out of the parking lot. “That’s kind of a strange place to have an emergency, don’t you think? Did she have too many Bloody Marys with breakfast?” Millie’s was one of the trendiest places to eat brunch in Richmond. “I’m trying not to think what trouble she’s in. I’ll deal with it when I get there.” “No. We’ll both deal with it when we get there.” It was an odd thought. Having someone to rely on wasn’t something she’d experienced a lot in her life. It was, well, nice. Pushing the thought from her mind, she watched as the monuments Richmond was famous for passed by. Arthur Ashe, JEB Stuart, Jefferson Davis, Matthew Fontaine Maury, Robert E. Lee, then Stonewall, facing North to keep an eye on the Yankees.

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They rode the rest of the way in silence. When Jake pulled into the parking lot, she jumped out of the car before he had a chance to turn off the engine. Nicole came out of Millie’s when she was halfway to the front door. “Get me into the car,” Nicole whispered, grabbing Susan’s arm and hauling her back to Jake’s car. Nicole climbed in and slammed the door, leaving her staring at Jake. He raised an eyebrow. “Same clothes as she had on last night.” “You saw her last night?” “At Buddy’s without you, which is why I came looking.” She was glad he’d come looking, but pushed the vision of them in the shower away and concentrated on her friend. Susan had guessed her clothes were from the night before, but was impressed Jake had noticed. Of course, he was a cop. Her friend’s hair wasn’t styled and perfect, either. She’d obviously run her fingers through it to comb it out and she still wore the remains of her going-out makeup. Susan didn’t get it. Nicole always carried a brush and makeup in her purse. Why hadn’t she fixed herself? Because she’s lost her purse. Could it be that simple? “Let’s see what the problem is.” She’d known bringing Jake wasn’t the wisest thing she could have done. If the guy Nicole had gone out with was trouble, Jake was about to get an earful. Nicole was acting too bizarre to have only lost her purse with no keys to drive home. Susan got into the car and turned to her friend, who sat holding her head in her hands. “What happened?” “I keep making the same mistakes. I don’t know why I do it. I’m not an idiot. I’m not.” “Did you lose your purse?” “No. It’s at Benny’s place.” Nicole dropped her hands and turned her worried gaze to Susan’s. “I left it when I woke up this morning with him.” Benny was the same loser Nicole had gone out with over and over again. She left him when he disrespected her, but within a few months, she went back. Nicole tugged her long, blonde hair with shaking fingers. “I can’t get him out of my life. Every time I see him, it’s like my IQ drops forty points and if I’ve been drinking, that’s it. I’m toast.” “Don’t beat yourself up about this.” Susan reached over the seat back and took her friend’s cold fingers in her own. “We all make mistakes.” “Yeah, well, I’ve been making this mistake for two years now. That’s beyond a simple slip up.” Susan felt Jake shift on the seat beside her, but ignored him. He’d insisted on being here so he could lump it. “At least you know he’s a mistake. That’s a start.” It had always puzzled Susan why Nicole had this huge weakness. It was as if she had self-destructive tendencies. Usually with

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men, Nicole was in charge, but when it came to Benny, she folded at the drop of a hat. Susan would bet it had to do with her friend’s secrets. “Oh, great.” Her friend rolled her eyes up to try to prevent the gathering tears from slipping free. “I’ve known he was a mistake for a year. I’m a complete loser, Susan.” “Saying stuff like that won’t help anything.” “Please.” Nicole wiped tears away. “It’s just that the sex is so damn good and he always says the right thing when I see him. When I’m away from him, I’m fine. But the minute I’m ten feet near him, all my good intentions go to hell.” She wiped at more tears and met Susan’s gaze. “This morning, he told me that I always was a good lay. I flipped and ran out without my purse. I had to borrow the quarter I used to call you with.” She flopped her head back against the seat. “Now I’ll have to cancel all my credit cards. Dammit!” She slammed her fist against the seat. Jake spoke for the first time. “Tell me where he lives and I’ll go get your purse for you.” Nicole opened her eyes, her mouth dropping open. “Would you?” “This isn’t the best idea, Jake,” Susan warned. She didn’t want him involved in this. She didn’t want him getting hurt. Benny was rough. “Worried about me?” His voice slid like warm honey along her skin. “No,” she whispered, but even to her own ears, she could hear the lie. “I’ll be fine.” He dropped a hand onto her leg. “Where does he live, Nicole?” “In that house down the street.” She pointed to the only one of the row houses that hadn’t been refinished on the block. Jake put the car in gear and drove over to it. “The yellow one?” Nicole nodded. “You two stay here,” he said, giving Susan a wink. The moment he left the car, Nicole leaned over to the front seat. “Why did you bring him?” She blinked at the concern in friend’s face. “He offered to come.” “You never date, Susan, but I’ve seen you with this guy a lot. Are you dating him?” “I…I don’t know.” She watched Jake walk up to the house. All at once, she realized that she trusted him to take care of this. She hadn’t once thought about telling him she would handle it. Jake could take care of himself. It was a weird feeling to trust someone else to deal with a situation she would normally be stuck with. “You need to be careful, okay?” Susan smiled. “I will be. I promise.” But she didn’t feel like being careful. She felt like throwing all her best intentions into the wind.

*****

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Jake banged on Benny’s door hard enough to rattle it in the frame. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” someone yelled, the voice rough from years of smoking. He got out his badge and held it up in case Benny decided to check who was at his door through the peephole. He was betting Benny wasn’t a cautious type of guy. The door swung open without a pause. “Are you Benny?” Jake stared at the hulking man standing before him. Benny hadn’t dressed this morning, preferring the lounge-in-your-boxers-on-aSaturday look. He had the feel of a mechanic or someone who did a lot of work with his upper body. Weights wouldn’t give the general bulk Jake saw standing in the doorway. Tattoos and a face only his mother could love completed the picture. Jake wondered, not for the first time, what caused attractive women to fall for these kinds of guys. “Yeah, that’s me. What’s this about, officer?” “I’m here to collect property left behind by…” Shit, I don’t know her last name. “Nicole. She claims she left her purse here?” He made it a question. “Yeah, the bitch left her purse here. Are you telling me she called the cops to come get it from me? Why the hell didn’t she come herself?” “You tell me, Benny. Why do you think she’s scared of you?” Benny’s brow pulled down, indicating he was truly perplexed. Jesus, this guy doesn’t even know what a dick he is. He has no idea what his impact is on her. “Doesn’t make sense to me.” Benny scratched his chest, his concern fading quickly enough to let Jake know he wasn’t too worked up about it. “How about we leave it a mystery and you get her purse for me?” “Okay.” Benny lumbered off inside the house, then returned almost immediately. “You know,” he said, looking ridiculous with the small black clutch in his hand. “I always wanted to be a cop.” Jake took the purse. “Yeah,” he said, noncommittally. Just what we need, another asshole in uniform. “Thanks for cooperating.” He was two steps down the stoop when he felt Benny move behind him. Instinctively, he grabbed the big man by the arm as he went by, using Benny’s momentum to swing him around and slap him to the ground face down. “Benny.” Jake made sure his voice was calm and reasonable. “Don’t make this bad for yourself. Right now it’s no big deal.” “I want to ask her why she called the cops,” Benny growled, but he wasn’t fighting. Somewhere in his past, he’d learned to respect the police, or maybe just fear them since he was in the down position. “Pick up the phone and call her, Benny. Right now, you’re going to get up and go back into your house and shut the door. You do not want to end up in jail.” “Fine. Okay, you’re right. Let me up.”

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Jake cautiously released his hand and watched him as he stood and walked up his front steps. He wouldn’t have been shocked if old Benny was stupid enough to take a swing at him. He could pack a punch with all that bulk behind him. Benny surprised him by shutting his door without another word and Jake got into his car, passing Nicole the purse. “Thanks,” Nicole said, her voice tiny and vulnerable. She didn’t seem like the same woman he’d met in Buddy’s. Everyone remained silent as they drove to Nicole’s small house in the Fan. Pulling up before her brick row house, Nicole stopped them from coming with her. “I’m just going to hop out. Thanks for coming to get me, Susan.” “Do you want me to come in with you?” Jake thought for sure Susan would push her company on her friend. Women tended to do that to each other. “No, I’m okay.” And then Nicole was gone, slamming the car door behind her. “Shouldn’t you stay with her?” He didn’t understand the three women’s relationship and had the sudden urge to poke at it. “Not if she asked me to leave.” Susan seemed to debate her next words. “We have a pact to be here unconditionally for each other, but not to push. When we’re asked to back off, we do.” “Seems kind of unusual.” He thought women shared every facet of their lives as a rule, but he suddenly realized that Susan didn’t just conceal her feelings from him, she withheld whatever her secrets were from even her best friends. “I’m here for her whenever she needs me.” She sighed. “Look, we’re a Survivors Club, okay? Survivors support, they don’t judge.” “What did you all survive?” He tried to ask the question casually, but knew he’d blown it when she narrowed her eyes. “Part of being in the club means you don’t have to tell.” He got the message loud and clear. She didn’t want him prying. Well, too bad. “Susan, how can I trust you if I don’t know who you really are?” He shook his head and started the car, purposely changing the subject. “Do you mind if I stop at my place on the way back? I need to pick something up.”

***** Susan stared out of the car window, hurt even though she shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t trust her. Thieves weren’t trustworthy. But she still wished he would want her even if he knew her secret. She thought about telling him, just blurting it out, but they pulled in to his apartment complex and her momentary madness receded.

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She’d spent her life trying to regain her mother’s trust since her dad spent his time traveling for work, and where had it gotten her? Her mother hadn’t even told Susan about her wedding, let alone invited her. Her mother didn’t have faith in her not to ruin even that with her so-called gift. It was even more tragic, because this worked both ways. Susan had trusted her mother would someday forgive her. She hadn’t. What was the point in trusting others if they just took that trust and stomped on it?

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Chapter Fourteen He’d tried to sound casual when he invited her in. She had been all fired up this morning and he didn’t want a reprise. Slow and steady would win this race. He had to be careful -- she was tricky. But he figured the closer they became physically, the sooner she would open to him mentally. He realized when they hadn’t used protection that she was it for him. His instincts told him something large sat between them, and they had to deal with it before she’d commit. “Do you want something to eat?” He locked the door behind her, then walked into the kitchen. “I’m starving after this morning’s excitement.” She touched his arm as he reached to open the fridge. “Thanks for helping Nicole out like that. I really appreciate you coming along today.” He gazed at her as seriously as he could. “I know exactly how you can make it up to me.” He hid his grin at her surprised expression by leaning down to peruse what was in his refrigerator. The view made him wince. Pizza a few days old sat beside some take-out boxes of ancient Chinese. He needed to clean this out, but the fact was he usually ate leftovers that should have been thrown out long beforehand. He couldn’t serve them to her, though. The kitchen might be spotless, but the food was definitely below par. He wondered if she cooked. “Make it up to you how?” she asked from behind him, her voice laced with suspicion. “What about grilled cheese and soup?” He wondered if he had any bread that wasn’t moldy. “Make it up to you by doing what?” Jake shut the fridge and walked over to his pantry. “Ha! This is your lucky day, Ms. Wright. I am a master chef at grilled cheese.” He threw the bread onto the counter and grabbed a can of chicken noodle.

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“I’m on to you, Matherly. You’re hoping to cash in my debts for sex.” She followed him back to the fridge. “Of course I am.” He got out a block of cheddar, butter, and mayonnaise. Thank God cheese took forever to go bad. “How many do you want?” “How many what?” He found a pot and frying pan, then glanced at her. “Grilled cheeses.” “Oh, one’s fine.” She watched him dump in the soup, set the pot on the burner, and then pull out six slices of bread. He started buttering them on both sides of the bread. “Wait a second. Are you buttering your bread?” “One generally does when one is fixing grilled cheese.” “No one doesn’t.” “You don’t put butter on your grilled cheese?” She shook her head. “I’m not too big on spreads.” “What about mayo?” “Ewww, that is so gross! Mayonnaise on grilled cheese.” She shivered. “You are truly missing out, Ms. Picky.” He kept buttering, careful to leave two slices of bread condiment free. “I take it you don’t like fried baloney sandwiches either?” He grinned at her distressed look. “That is so your loss.” After lunch, as they did dishes, he found he liked the casual way she moved around his kitchen. “Okay,” she said, handing him another plate to put into the washer. “What did you mean when you said I could make it up to you earlier?” “I thought maybe we could delve into the kind of sex that doesn’t require protection.” He caught the bowl that flew out of her hand and placed it into the dishwasher. “Jake,” she said sternly. “Hmmm?” He tried to seem innocent. She surprised him by simply turning the sink hose on him, soaking his shirt. He yelled and jumped back. “I cannot believe you just did that.” She laughed and did it again. Instead of trying to evade her, this time he waded forward, glad he had a closet full of clothes to change into. Grabbing the hose, he turned it on her, catching her when she tried to get away. He stopped only when she said mercy four times, then kissed her with a deep, soulsearching kiss that made his own knees go weak. “Come on.” He dragged her away from the kitchen. “Let’s throw your clothes into the dryer.”

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“Wait a second,” she said, trying to dig in her heels but sliding instead on the slick floor. He hauled her along as if she wasn’t protesting. “You did this on purpose, to get me out of my clothes.” “Actually, I believe you started this.” He stopped in front of the dryer and began stripping her. When she started to protest, he held a finger over her lips. “I would be a terrible host if I let you hang out at my house in wet clothes.” “You could drive me back to my place.” “I could.” He pulled off her shirt, unhooked her bra and slid down her jeans with efficient motions. Then he stripped his own clothes off and threw them in. “I cannot believe you did that.” He grinned and closed the dryer door. Turning it on, he caught her hand. “Come on. Let’s get you dry.” Tugging her into his bedroom, he actually felt his mouth watering. Even though it had only been hours since they’d last made love, he couldn’t wait to sink into her. Picking her up, he threw her onto his bed. She landed with a gasp and he dove after her. “Welcome to my bedroom.” He nibbled her lips. “It’s been waiting for you.” “You are absolutely bonkers, you know that?” She threaded her hands behind his neck. He bit her shoulder. “Only for you, Susan love.” His body already wanted hers badly. His cock was hard and throbbing and he hadn’t even really touched her yet. Dragging his engorged shaft along her stomach, he circled back to the triangle of hair between her legs. Then he rolled them both over so she blanketed him. Sexually, they were well matched. It made him bolder than he’d ever been before with a partner. “Any interest in sixty-nine?” Her eyes flashed wide. “Umm…” Heat rose up her cheeks. He took that as a yes and helped her turn to face his feet. Not the easiest way to do it, but he wasn’t taking any chances that she’d spook and try to run. “Umm, Jake, this, um, feels weird.” “Only because you haven’t done it before. Believe me, it won’t feel weird once I do this.” He raised his head and ran his tongue from the top of her slit to the back, smiling when he heard her moan. God, she was so hot. They were more compatible in bed than he’d thought possible. He loved her response to him, loved the way touching her made him feel. Everything inside him bunched up and trembled when his skin touched hers. He moved her legs further apart, then worked his tongue up to her clit and stroked it. She hummed, her body shivering, the fine tremble all the encouragement he needed. He lost his concentration for a second when she tentatively licked his cock from base to tip. The small gesture had him ready to beg for more, but he returned to his task. Her

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mouth was warm and wet as she covered his head, running her tongue around the rim. He moaned into her clitoris, holding her down when she jumped at the sensation. He caught her sensitive bud between his lips and hummed to see if she liked it. She responded by whimpering his name, his cock lodged in her mouth. Now he knew why she’d jumped. It felt amazing. He licked up to delve his tongue inside her then returned to her clit. She was wet, soaking his face with her desire. He loved every second of her honeyed taste. Pushing a finger inside her, he waiting patiently for her core to loosen, then added another. She reared back against his hand, her mouth pulling at his cock. Keeping his fingers deep, the movement steady, Jake battled the desire to stop and enjoy his own pleasure. The whole action was excruciatingly intense. She rolled his balls between her fingers, destroying his good intentions. Jesus, it felt so good, her mouth working over him while her hands played below. He felt his climax building and wanted to take her with him. Sliding one of his fingers out, he pressed it against her tight back entrance. She moaned and he increased the pressure, while his tongue picked up speed. “Oh, God,” she screamed as she climaxed. “I’m coming,” he warned, unable to stop. He moaned her name when her lips cupped his head, kicking him over the edge. He came, his tongue still moving over her clitoris, even as he pumped into her waiting mouth. And with blinding clarity, he realized he wanted her, not just for now, but forever. Baby or not, he made up his mind she would be his.

***** Susan got slowly out of Jake’s car at her apartment complex. Her legs weren’t functioning as well as they should. He had given her an education on lovemaking options that didn’t require protection at his apartment and she still felt the effects. She enjoyed the new sensation of sated contentment she now experienced, taking her time to walk up the path, leaving Jake behind on his cell phone talking to Gordon. She groaned silently when she saw Paul Parker strolling across the lawn toward her. In ten seconds, she would have been in her apartment but now she was stuck talking to a guy Georgia had nicknamed Mr. Divorce. Mr. Divorce had left his wife six months ago for his secretary. He had moved into the apartments with a flourish, obviously on a huge high. “Freedom after thirty years,” he’d told Susan on more than one occasion. But then Susan heard from another tenant that his twenty-something secretary had dumped him and he was no longer Happy-Divorce-Man but Bitter-and-Evil-Divorce-Man. Susan had always felt sorry for him. Getting dumped by someone with half your IQ and half your age had to be a major blow, especially after you changed your life for that person. The rest of the building’s women thought she was crazy. They all believed he’d gotten what he deserved.

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“I’ve seen you with a guy a couple times over the last week, Susan,” Paul Parker said without any opening salutations. “Mr. Parker,” Susan said in her cheery voice she usually reserved for small, grumpy children. “It’s good to see you! I haven’t run into you in weeks.” “You going to marry him?” This was said with a growl, spittle flying on the word “to.” Susan stifled the urge to tell him to mind his own business and picked up her pace to the stairs, Mr. Parker walking beside her. “Wow! Mr. Parker, I wouldn’t go that far. This is only our first week of …dating.” She wondered if they were in the dating realm yet, or if they were still in the “thing” stage, as Courtney called it. Maybe she should break down and ask Jake. She could go back to the car and say, “Jake, do we have a thing going here or are we dating?” Yeah, right. “I thought he was the guy Prissy left me for when I first saw him.” Mr. Parker stared at his hands, obviously thinking about his lost love. He looked about ten years older than he had last month. “But then I realized his hair was brown, not black like that asshole’s.” Mr. Parker’s behavior was even more bizarre than usual. The long piece of hair that usually covered his bald spot had fallen on the wrong side, giving him an off-center appearance. Susan began to worry about being alone with him. She glanced back at Jake in his car, but since they’d pulled into the guest parking that faced away from the building, he wouldn’t be able to see her. Maybe she was being paranoid, but the guy who died in the laundry room had black hair, too. “Yeah, actually Mr. Parker, Jake’s taking a phone call in his car. He should be here any minute.” At Mr. Parker’s sharp look, Susan’s nervousness increased. “You know, he’s a cop.” Parker held out his hand as if to stop her and she jumped away. She wasn’t going to touch him and see little Prissy break his heart. “Don’t ever marry anyone. He’ll run around on you, lie to you, and break your heart!” “Umm, I’ve got to go, Mr. Parker. Right now.” Susan dashed around him, taking the stairs two at a time. Mr. Parker was in weirdo-ville these days. Poor guy. He needed help. Big time. Susan slowed her pace, realizing she still hadn’t done her laundry in all the excitement of the week. She decided she would go to Nicole’s place later and keep her friend company. Nicole probably didn’t want to talk about Benny, but they could rent a movie. Preferably a movie that didn’t have any dead bodies in it. Of course, she’d seen plenty of dead bodies before she’d learned to shield correctly. Her high school class had taken a trip to the prison as penance for being “the worst bunch of tenth graders to ever attend Sanderson High School” according to the principal, Mrs. Rogers. Susan had passed out after the third true seeing episode, when the old man cleaning the floor touched her shoe. The punishment may not have worked for everyone, but it did with her.

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The thought of being locked away with people who could pass on those types of memories made her into the most law-abiding citizen she knew. She was so in her own world that she stepped on the body that lay facedown in front of her apartment door. “Oh God!” she screamed, and backpedaled all the way to the railing behind her. The vision hit her almost immediately.

The man in the green shirt walked toward the stairs when a guy in a yellow raincoat with the hood up stepped from the shadow in the stairwell. “You’ve been a bad piggy,” he said in a sing-song voice. A knife flashed from under the raincoat and cut the neck above the green shirt deeply, from side to side. Blood gushed from what looked like a second mouth. The cut man collapsed slowly, laughter following him down. “Oink, oink, oink.” It was several seconds before Susan really saw the scene before her. When she did, she realized immediately who the dead man was. Robb Connors. He lay on his stomach, wearing a green windbreaker to fight off the October chill. Not a green shirt, a green windbreaker. Jeans and tan shoes completed his outfit. And he was dead. No question about that. Blood had splattered over the wall that marked the division between Robb’s apartment and his next door neighbor’s. It was all over the concrete, pooling around his head, which was face down on the landing. Susan could see her own footprints walking up to him and then back to the railing. Move. Get to Jake. The person who did this might still be here. Run! Susan slid along the railing, giving the body a wide berth, then ran down the stairs. She stumbled on the gentle slope to the parking lot, almost losing her balance, before she righted herself, grabbing onto the railing to take the few steps into the parking lot and finally to Jake’s car. He saw her as she came into his peripheral vision and climbed out, still talking to Gordon on his cell. She heard him say, “Hold on a sec, Gordon. Susan’s running like she’s seen another dead body.” “Jake,” she said, her voice cracking. “What is it?” He caught her arm with his left hand. “Tell me what’s wrong.” His voice was calm and sure and it got through to her. “Upstairs,” she gasped. “There’s a dead man out on the landing.” “Did you see anyone else?” He scanned the parking lot and empty lawn. “No, no.” She shook her head, then nodded. “Wait. Mr. Parker spoke to me before I got to the stairs.” Jake’s hand forced her face up so that they could make eye contact and he spoke into his phone. “Gordon, no joke, looks like I was right. Susan found another body on the landing near her apartment. Can you call it in for me?” His voice was cool and in control. He clicked his cell shut and put it into his pocket, then drew his gun out of his shoulder holster.

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“Wait!” Susan grabbed his arm, not wanting him to go. “It’s going to be okay.” He kissed her, just a quick press of lips, before stepping back, handing her his keys. “Stay in the car until I return. Lock the doors.” Susan watched him stride to the stairs, then got into his car. A red smudge smeared the door handle. Staring at her hand, she saw it was covered in slick cherry red. When had she touched blood? She hadn’t, had she?

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Chapter Fifteen Jake climbed the stairs, keeping a look out in case the perp had decided to hang around, but he sensed he was alone. When he got to the top, he saw the body face down in the middle of the landing. Blood had pooled under the victim, out from around his stomach. The body had fallen with the head pointing toward the stairs. Susan had tracked through the blood, all the way up to the victim. Jake wondered why she had walked through something she should have seen from the top of the stairs. The footprints went straight to the body before they twisted back to the railing. The blood held the outline of her shoes, which meant the victim had been here long enough for the blood to begin to dry. When he heard sirens, Jake went down to meet the squad cars pulling into the parking lot, clipping his badge onto his belt. The first two uniforms on the scene had been part of the group at Buddy’s the night before. “Hey, Matherly. We were right around the corner. How did you beat us here?” “I was visiting a friend.” Jake didn’t try to hide the fact that he knew someone in the building. It would only look suspicious if he didn’t own up right away. “Whoever did this isn’t in the immediate area. Set up a police line so we can try to save the scene and then start a larger search. Circle the building and check the basement. The body is located at the top of the right stairwell.” A car door slammed and Jake looked out to the parking lot to see Gordon walking toward them. Jake couldn’t stop himself from a little unprofessional gloating. “Ahhh, Detective Gordon. How nice of you to join us.” The two uniforms chuckled, in on the joke. “I see we stayed at Miss Wright’s place last night,” Gordon said to let Jake know that he didn’t count this in Jake’s win column. “Your run is up, Gordon. I got here first. This point’s mine.”

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Gordon nodded. “Matherly one, Gordon one thousand.” A wide smile showed very white teeth against his dark skin, making him look like the Cheshire Cat. Jake shook his head. “At least I’m on the board.” He turned to walk beside Gordon across the lawn, mimicking the same route they had taken only days before. “The victim is at the top of the right stairwell. I haven’t gotten near him yet. I figured I’d wait for you to show up.” “Tell me what you know.” “Susan went up to the apartment while I finished talking to you and came back down hysterical.” “So, she found another one.” Gordon’s voice held a note of something that made Jake’s eyes narrow. “Since he’s on the landing near her apartment, she didn’t have much of a choice.” He didn’t like the defensive sound in his voice but he couldn’t keep it out. “When did you two get here?” “We pulled in while I spoke to you on the phone.” Gordon glanced at his watch. “How long have you been gone?” Jake looked at his own watch. “Probably two and a half to three hours. One of Susan’s friends had an emergency.” “Hmm. You see anyone when you got here?” “Susan said our friend Paul Parker spoke to her when she got out of the car. I don’t know what he had to say.” Gordon paused, then said, “Let’s go up.” When he got to the top of the stairs, he asked what Jake knew he would. “Who walked through the blood?” “I guess it was Susan. I haven’t spoken with her since she came to get me.” Jake wanted to circle the body to see his face, but crime scene would need to take photos before he touched the body. “No weapon left at the scene.” Gordon stared at Robb, his eyes narrowing. “Disorganized criminals, the ones who stab victims repeatedly, leave their weapons as a rule, but this one took his. I don’t like it.” Organized criminals tended to bring only one weapon and take it with them when they went. They didn’t leave a lot of evidence behind and they didn’t stab people forty times. The fact the knife had been removed from both scenes didn’t fit the profile. “Could there be two of them working together? That would account for why there are both organized and disorganized behaviors at the two scenes.” “Or maybe after he kills, he becomes cold and methodical. I read an FBI report once that said it was possible.”

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There was a void in the blood splatter on the wall where the killer must have stood. The killer should be covered in blood, yet he didn’t see any blood tracking away from the body. It was as if the killer shed his clothes and packaged them before he left. That was the very definition of organized, yet all the stabbing indicated uncontrolled rage. He shook his head. “It means he’s smart.” “Let’s hope he’s not too smart, or we’re in trouble.” Gordon went back down to Jake’s car to talk to Susan. Jake said nothing, trailing in his wake. “What happened?” Gordon asked her through the window, his voice as steady as always. He pulled his notebook from his jacket pocket. Susan shuddered. “I didn’t see him until I stepped on him.” “Why not?” At this question, Gordon gaze sharpened. Jake waited for an answer himself. She should have seen the body. “I’m afraid I was in my own world. I” -- Susan swallowed and looked nervous -- “have a lot of things on my mind right now. I only noticed him when I stepped on his arm.” A tremor raced through her body and Jake had to fight the urge to comfort her. “Did you see anyone else around?” “Only Paul Parker.” “Older gentleman who lives on the first floor?” Susan nodded, her glassy eyes showing the beginnings of shock. “He cornered me when I got out of Jake’s car. He said that he thought Jake was Prissy’s new boyfriend but then realized he had brown hair instead of black.” “Who’s Prissy?” Gordon glanced up from his notebook long enough to exchange a loaded look with Jake. “His girlfriend. His ex-girlfriend, I guess I should say.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “He was acting very strangely.” “Do you recognize the man who was killed?” “I, I think so. I can’t tell for sure, because he’s face down, but I think it’s Robb Connors.” “Damn,” Jake murmured. There went one of their suspects. They would have to talk to Parker again but if it wasn’t him, they really didn’t have anywhere else to go. Jake’s spine tingled as he thought about the implications of that. They were missing someone else. Someone they should know about. Jake’s intuition screamed at him. He needed to go spend some time rereading the entire file. “We’re talking about the guy who lives here on the second floor?” Gordon flipped through his notebook to a page Jake would bet was titled “Robb Connors.” “The apartment right where he was killed.” Susan pointed to it. “Apartment twentyone. Jake asked me about him the other night and we were talking about him earlier.” Jake

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was glad he had caught Gordon up on the first conversation they’d had. “He said he thought Robb was a repressed homosexual.” Gordon looked at Jake as if he’d lost his marbles and detoured the conversation in another direction. “Jake told me he has problems with other tenants.” Taking a deep breath, she clasped her hands together as if to steady herself. “He didn’t get along with the women in the building very well.” “Elaborate for me on how he didn’t get along.” Gordon never stopped taking notes. Susan sighed. “I told Jake. He flirted with all of us. Or at least Ellie, Georgia, and me.” “Ellie lives next door to you in twenty-six?” Gordon’s technique when questioning someone was to take nothing for granted. He also liked to mirror back what someone said when he pumped them for more information. Susan nodded, glancing around the parking lot with a dazed expression. “What about you? Did you have trouble with him?” “No more than any of us did. Georgia said she set you guys on his trail for the first murder.” Gordon raised an eyebrow, which had Jake shrugging in return. He hadn’t had time to tell Gordon about this one. “Explain, please.” Susan hummed for a second, clearly debating what to tell him. “I don’t think she meant anything by it, but Robb was a big jerk to her last Sunday and so when the police asked her about the murder, she told them she thought Robb had done it. She said her brother was really upset by him.” “Brother.” Gordon flipped through his book some more. “I don’t have a brother in the list the apartment manager gave me.” “He’s only staying with her for six weeks or so. He’s mentally handicapped so he’s going back into a home of some sort. He’s in adult daycare.” “We’ll talk again later.” Gordon signaled that he was ready to leave. Jake leaned into his car. “Stay here until we clear the body.” He paused, then said, “I can have someone run you over to my place if you’d rather stay there.” “I’m fine.” She didn’t look fine to him but he’d leave her there for now, leaning into the car to give her a fierce, protective kiss before returning to the landing. He’d come back in thirty minutes to check on her.

***** Jake left Susan at her apartment with extreme reluctance, but she’d promised to call her friends to keep her company. Rushing through everything, he wanted desperately to go back to her place and check on her.

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It wasn’t until nine o’clock that night that Gordon pulled Jake into an interrogation room at the station to have a talk. Jake leaned up against the wall to let Gordon open the conversation. He thought he knew what was coming. “Three bodies, Jake, and no leads.” “Two bodies. I still don’t buy the one in between.” “Okay, so let’s say two bodies, and leave out the woman. What makes those two the same, except for the fact that they both were in Building Six?” Jake thought for a second. “Hair coloring. Both have short black hair. Both are around six feet tall. Both are male. I’m not sure what else. Maybe they knew each other, but right now nothing is pointing to that.” “So you think it might be someone killing because of location?” Jake was certain Gordon had something in mind, but he played along. “Someone’s killing black-haired, six-foot tall males who wander into Building Six?” It sounded farfetched but he’d been around long enough to know anything was possible. “And you are convinced the same person killed both men, but not the woman?” “The Medical Examiner can confirm it, but both had their necks cut and both were stabbed multiple times. The woman’s killer didn’t have any fury behind what he was doing. The men’s killer was an angry, angry fellow.” “The stab wounds were excessive,” Gordon agreed. “The first one was up over forty. This one should be close to that.” “So it’s the same killer for the two men at least?” “At first glance? Yes.” “And we agree there is a possibility that the woman’s death could be the same guy?” Jake sighed. “A possibility. I still don’t like it. It doesn’t feel right.” “But it could be the same guy. It seems like a coincidence that the first two victims were from Woodbridge Apartments. You know how I feel about coincidences.” “But the second body was killed elsewhere and dumped, and the method of the murder was different. Plus this woman has a boyfriend who is so shady, even Martel is looking at him as a suspect.” “All that is true.” “I think it’s a copycat.” Gordon nodded, holding Jake’s gaze with his own. “It could be.” “We won’t have the DNA results from the hair for another few weeks. Maybe CSI found something we can use from this scene.” Gordon kept Jake’s gaze for another thirty seconds, which seemed much longer, before he nodded. “To be honest, I’m inclined to agree with you that the second killing doesn’t feel

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like the first, even if you go with the explanation that the perp was interrupted midway through.” Jake nodded, then went back to the only person left on their suspect list. “We need to take another run at Parker again tomorrow, this time here at the station. If he did it, he would have been covered in blood. That means he had to shower and change clothes before he spoke with Susan. The timing would be tight but not impossible. I think we could get him to let us search his place.” “Agreed.” Gordon’s foot tapped a quick beat on the floor. “Another coincidence I don’t like is that the same person found both bodies.” “She didn’t find the first one. Ellie did. It was bad luck she stumbled on both scenes, Gordon.” Jake tried to keep the warning out of his voice. Gordon was doing his job. “You don’t believe in luck, Jake.” Jake’s whole body tightened. “I do in this situation. She was with me, Gordon. Both times she was with me.” “You and I both know she didn’t kill him, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know something useful. What do we know about the killer, what he looks like?” Here it comes. “Jack shit, Gordon. We don’t know Jack.” “That’s right. We don’t. But you and I both think someone else has that knowledge.” “Yeah we do.” Gordon stood. “Do you want me along?” “No, I’ll page you if I need you.” His partner patted him on the shoulder. “Good. Now get the hell out of here.” Jake shook his head. “I believe that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you cuss, Gordon. How shocking.” “Get going,” Gordon said, opening the door. “And bring back something we can use.” Jake saluted but his eyes were hard and his shoulders set as he walked out of the station. He was not looking forward to putting the screws on the woman he had chosen to spend his life with, but he would do it. He had to. They needed to find the killer before another man lost his life.

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Chapter Sixteen Susan huddled on the sofa in her apartment, oblivious to the fact that it was too dark, the only light coming from the kitchen doorway. She had been sitting on her sofa since Jake had walked her up two hours ago, unable to move even to call her friends as she had promised. Blocking out Robb’s body on the concrete balcony floor had turned out to be impossible. The only way she seemed able to take her mind from his death was to think about her vision. Robb had been killed. She didn’t like him and he’d been annoying, but that didn’t mean he deserved to die. As his neighbor, she had an obligation to help find his killer. But the thought of telling Jake about what she saw had her mind stuttering in fear and doubt. This person had killed two, possibly three people and she had information that might help the police capture him. It all seemed to circle back to the fact that the police --and Jake -- weren’t going to believe her when she told them about her true seeing. But in this last vision, she had seen his face, the face of the man in the yellow raincoat. Susan closed her eyes and pictured him again. The raincoat was the same one her stuffed Paddington Bear had worn when she was a child, only man-sized. It even had the same wooden buttons that buttoned up with great big loops. Shiny yellow, very shiny and stiff, as if the raincoat could stand on its own when it wasn’t worn. She had been so caught up in the raincoat that she hadn’t seen what type of pants he was wearing. Something dark. There had only been a flash of his face. Blue eyes dominated to the point that she really couldn’t remember anything else. Clear blue, like a mountain stream. The rest of his face was forgettable. She struggled to recall it, but only hours after the vision, it faded from her mind. What remained were crystal blue eyes staring out from Paddington’s coat. She shivered. What a mess.

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The pounding on her door scared her so badly that she screamed. It was one of those female yips she absolutely hated. She strode to the door and opened it, too upset to think about who could be on the other side. “What in the hell are you doing opening the door without knowing who’s there?” Jake pushed past her, irritation flowing from him in waves. “Jesus, woman! I’m starting to get on my own nerves with the number of times I’ve told you about this.” Fear slithered through her. What if the Piggy Man had been on the other side of the door? She gathered the anger she had at herself and threw it at him. “I’m not in the mood for a speech right now, Jake. Please turn right around and leave. I’ve got some things on my mind and I don’t want company.” She had to figure this out, had to get together a plan. He looked around at the dark apartment. “Saving money on your electricity bill?” He clicked on the two side lamps that flanked the sofa. “What were you doing sitting here in the dark?” Susan still held the open door. “Go away.” Jake crossed to her, took the door and gently closed it. “If you’re trying to save money on electricity, Susan, then you shouldn’t let out all the heat.” The lock made a loud click as the bolt slid home. Taking her hand, he tugged her to the sofa and pushed her onto it, then took what was becoming his assigned seat on the coffee table. “Jake, don’t sit on my coffee table.” His gentleness made her want to curl into him. “It’s a nice piece of furniture.” She dropped her head into her hands and ground her fingers into her temples to try to relieve some of the tension. Strong hands pulled them down. “Susan, I want you tell me what you left out of your first statement.” The moment had finally come. She stared at him for ten heartbeats, then two more. She’d said over and over that she wanted to put distance between them. Admitting the truth about the visions would put distance between them all right. As in Game Over. It’s what she told herself she wanted. So why was she so reluctant to tell him? Because you’re a big, fat liar, Susan. Why not ’fess up and help his case if she could? That’s if he believed her. Which he wouldn’t. He’d think she was nuts. Even worse would be if he believed her and hated her for it. Even her own mother had been appalled. If you can’t have unconditional love from

your parents, who could you have it from? “I don’t know what’s got you so scared you feel like you can’t tell me, but I’ll protect you. I promise, Susan.” His body language showed his sincerity. The intensity of his gaze, the open hands, the amber glint in his eyes. He really thought he could protect her. Susan started laughing. It wasn’t a nice laugh, but she couldn’t help herself. Jake jerked as if she’d slapped him. Unable to take a single second more of being so close to him, Susan climbed over the back of the sofa to get some space before he could recover. “Protect me.” She shook her head.

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“You could no sooner protect me than stop the earth from spinning.” She paced behind the couch in the area that served as her foyer. “You don’t understand, Jake. You don’t want to know what my secret is.” His face had settled into its cop mask. “Tell me anyway.” Susan blew out her breath. “Fine. But you’ll either think I’m crazy or you’ll hate me for it.” She tried to think where to start, still hoping in some small part of her that Jake would prove her wrong and like her in spite of her true seeing. “When I was little, I found out I had a hereditary condition, which had jumped generations from my Aunt Ida down to me.” Susan gazed around her apartment but she didn’t see anything in the room. “My great-greatgrandmother also had this condition, according to my grandmother. Gran called it a gift, but if it’s a gift, then the joke’s on me, because I have spent my entire life trying to hide from it.” Jake moved restlessly but didn’t speak. She got the hint. “I know I’m rambling, but it’s hard to talk about. I haven’t told anyone for ten years, so you’ll have to be patient with me.” Susan paced to the heavy oil painting of a white horse head. She’d found it at a flea market and bought it, liking the simplicity, even though she wasn’t exactly a heavy oils kind of gal. She traced the horse with her fingers while she spoke. “This so-called gift is essentially the ability to steal people’s memories.” She turned to look at Jake, who still sat on her coffee table. “I usually only see the visions when I touch people, but more rarely it can happen when I’m standing in the room with someone and the emotional energy’s very high. It can be dangerously misleading at times, since I only get a flash of a scene, just a snippet of feelings and thirty seconds or so of picture.” She stared at Jake, trying to gauge his reaction but it was impossible. His face was a mask. In that moment, she realized she didn’t want to lose him. She couldn’t bear it, she just couldn’t. The way he touched her, the way he looked at her as they made love. She’d been special to him, important. She would die if she had to give him up. She had to fight the desire to take it all back and hide under all the lies again. Instead, she plunged ahead, accepting the fact that she had an obligation to the dead that superseded the possibilities for her future. “So that night, when I found Ellie staring at the guy in the laundry room, I came in and without even touching the man who was killed, I began to see.” “What was in the vision?” His voice sounded slow and overly controlled, as if he was afraid of her answer. Well, he should be. “A man in a yellow raincoat.” She backed to the wall and slid down it. From this position, she didn’t have to stare at his face. Jake stood and rounded the sofa, squatting before her. Unable to deal with his blank face, she stopped looking at him and looked inside herself instead. “I can’t see him.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s such a strange

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raincoat. He comes into the laundry room and says, ‘Hello Piggy,’ to Jim Daugherty, who’s standing in the corner putting his laundry in the washer. The hood to the yellow raincoat is up, shading his face.” She shivered. “You couldn’t see his face?” Jake’s voice sounded very, very careful to her. Susan wondered how hard he had to fight his disbelief. She couldn’t tell anything from his voice, his face or his body. Jake put his hands on her upper arms to get her attention and said again, “You couldn’t see his face?” “No, not that time.” “That time?” He paused and then said, “You had another vision when you found the second body?” His voice was strained, the lines of his face tense. Susan thought he was controlling himself from calling her a liar. “Yes.” She shrugged. What did it matter? He was just like her mother after all. “I know you don’t believe me.” He shook his head but didn’t deny it. “Just tell me about the second vision.” She looked up at the wood beams that ran through the apartment ceiling. If he left her, she’d be okay. It wasn’t as if he’d been a huge part of her life. She barely knew him. “He’s still wearing the yellow raincoat. He’s hiding in the stairwell, waiting for the man in the green jacket. He has the hood up. I can’t see very much of his face, except his eyes. Blue, blue eyes in the darkness of the hood. He cuts the other man’s neck. It looks like a second mouth.” “Did you see anything else but his eyes?” “All that laughing,” she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “And the sound.” She started rocking back and forth with the surge of the extra energy pouring through her. “What sound?” Jake didn’t touch her and there was no comfort in his words. “Pig sounds. He’s laughing and saying ‘oink’ over and over again.” They were both silent for a second. Then the cop kneeling before her asked, “What makes you call the raincoat strange?” Susan shook her head to clear the memories she had been reliving for hours now. “Do you know who Paddington Bear is?” “What?” “He’s this bear that goes on all sorts of adventures in children’s books. Anyway, he wears this raincoat, I think it’s blue in the books but someone gave me a stuffed Paddington when I was little with a yellow raincoat on and the one he was wearing looked just like it.” “Describe it.” Susan got the impression that he had an easier time believing her about the true seeing than the raincoat. Maybe he was only hearing her out before he slammed her down.

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“The coat had oblong wooden buttons.” She held up her hand. “About as big as my pinkie. It buttoned up with great big loops and was shiny and stiff, like it was brand new. He must have cleaned it off since last weekend, because it didn’t have any blood on it the second time.” She paused. “I mean, it didn’t have any blood on it the second time until he slashed Robb’s throat.” She glanced at her hands, wondering again how she’d gotten blood on them. She’d washed them, but she still felt dirty. “Then it had a lot of blood on it.” Jake sat with a thump. “Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight. The murderer is a guy wearing a yellow raincoat that looks like something out of a children’s book, who runs around making pig noises. Is that about right?” She started laughing, but this time without bitterness. “And you asked why I didn’t want to tell you.” Jake ran a hand through his hair. “It does sound a bit farfetched.” “Fine, don’t believe me.” Susan was ready to take the easy way out. Jake would leave and she’d be alone, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Really, it wouldn’t. “You could have told me all this before. I would have listened.” His voice softened but she didn’t bother to meet his gaze. “Yeah, sure. You would have thought I needed to be locked up in a mental ward. I don’t talk about my so-called gift to anyone.” Jake tipped her chin up with one finger. “You’ve never talked about it?” “I’ve only told my mother and grandmother.” She sighed. “And an old boyfriend who didn’t believe me.” She wouldn’t think about that. It was the past and needed to stay there. The muscle in his jaw worked. “This is why you aren’t having children?” She was startled by the change of subject. “Of course. Surely you understand now?” “No, I don’t. What’s wrong with what you just told me?” Susan leaned away. “I’m stealing people’s memories. Stealing!” He couldn’t really be okay with her power, could he? A tiny spark of hope flickered. “Is it stealing, if they’re dead?” Then it hit her. He didn’t understand. “It doesn’t only happen with dead people.” He went still as the implications hit him. “Have you done it with me?” Here it comes, she thought. She prepared herself for his rejection. “Yes.” The pain flooded her body, tugging on her soul before he even had a chance to speak, but she met his stare without flinching. “How many times?” “Once.” He raised one knee and rested his forearm across it. “The first night. When you left so abruptly. I thought you looked like you’d seen a ghost.” His eyes hardened. “What ghost of mine did you see?”

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Even though she knew he’d leave anyway, she was reluctant to hurt him. His hands snaked around her wrists and he gave her a little shake. “What was it you said? ‘My God, how could you have survived it’? I was so sidetracked I’d forgotten until now. What did you see that you wondered how I could survive, Susan?” He shook her again. “Tell me.” “Jake…” “Tell me,” he ground out, but he knew. She could tell by the pain deep in his brown gaze. She closed her eyes to shut out his fury. “Your mother, standing over your father. She’s wearing a blue robe. Your father is still and you don’t know what’s wrong with him. She turns toward you, his blood down the front of her, and a gun in her hand. She tells you to leave the room.” She kept her voice emotionless during the recital, only opening her eyes to look at him after she was done. His face was still with shock, his biggest secret revealed. She’d hurt him and she hadn’t meant to. Her hand started to lift to comfort him, but she kept it by her side instead. She’d lost the right to that when she’d betrayed him by talking about his secrets. “God,” he said, struggling to swallow, the hands holding her wrists gone slack. “I don’t think I really believed you…” “Now do you understand?” Susan pushed up from the wall, shaking his hands off easily, stumbling several steps away. “And you were ready to blow it off, weren’t you? As if it was nothing.” She swung toward him. “But now that I stole one of your memories, one of your secrets, it’s more than a big deal, isn’t it, Jake? It’s the end.” She’d known it would be and now it was. Her heart cracked into shards of glass that cut her from the inside out, making her want to double over with the pain.

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Chapter Seventeen Jake swung around to rest against the wall still warm from Susan’s body. He struggled to think, to understand what she’d told him. Concentrate on the case. Think about the rest

later. You need distance, space, to decide what to do. What does all this mean to the case? “So let me get all this straight. You saw the murderer?” “Jake, please. Let’s talk about this.” His thoughts scattered and darted away from the fact she knew about his mother. No one in Richmond had ever spoken to him about it and he hadn’t told a soul. So how did she know? Think about the case, Matherly. “We are talking about this.” “You know what I mean.” He did, or thought he did, but he wasn’t going there right now. He couldn’t. “Can you do it now?” “What?” “Steal a memory?” “I don’t do it on purpose.” She paced across the room and back. “I don’t do it because I want to. Why does everyone always assume I’m doing it because I want to? It just comes over me.” “When? How?” He wanted all the details so he could understand what he was dealing with. He recognized that part of him still didn’t believe that she could do what she said she could. Maybe she had found out about his parents another way. But his mother had been wearing a blue robe that night. And she had told him to get out. Those things hadn’t been in the newspapers or in the police reports. They had stayed trapped in his own mind. She sighed. “I told you before.”

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“Tell me again.” His voice came out as a growl. He felt betrayed, even though he would have eventually told her. Wouldn’t he? Yes. She’d need to understand his family history to understand him. But this way… God help him, it did feel like she’d stolen something from him. Susan threw up her hands. “It has to be something upsetting or highly emotional. It’s almost like the memory is so big, so supercharged that it’s hovering around and by standing in it, I set the movie clip to play.” “Is that how it feels to you? Like a movie?” “It’s the easiest way I can explain it. Like a movie clip, but more. There are emotions, too, and I seem to be able to know what the person is feeling.” “How was Robb Connors feeling?” She flinched at the question and Jake wondered why he had deliberately hurt her, even as he felt guilty satisfaction that he had. Susan stared at the horse head painting. “He was confused. He was wondering why the guy in the raincoat was laughing. He didn’t feel pain yet. He didn’t think about the fact that he was dying.” “What about Jim Daugherty?” Jake wanted to push her. He’d never felt so close to the edge before. Susan traced the horse with one finger. “I don’t know.” “No?” “The impressions are vague sometimes, if I’m not touching the person.” Jake stood up and stalked to where she stood. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he turned her around. “Can you have a vision now?” She blinked in confusion. “Maybe. You’d have to think about something very upsetting, something terrible to create an emotional response.” Susan’s voice was as clipped and clinical as his had been with her. For a moment, he struggled for a memory, then thought about his first murder scene. He’d only been a rookie. A mother had drowned her two kids in the bathtub and hacked at them with a knife. He never allowed himself to think about it because the memory still tore at his gut to this day. “Okay, I’ve got it. Can you see the vision?” “I have to drop my shields to do it.” “Shields?” His hands clinched tight on her arms. She flinched and he relaxed his hold. “I’ve managed to build shielding to protect myself from stealing people’s memories. I only saw yours because I was so overwhelmed by what had happened between us that I accidentally dropped them. I didn’t do it on purpose, I was just…” She didn’t finish the sentence.

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Jake knew what she’d felt because he’d felt it, too. Blinding passion, the need to possess, the desire to sink inside her and become one. He tightened his hands again on her arms. “Drop your shielding, Susan.” “No. This is a bad idea.” She shook her head back and forth in denial. “Do it.” He had to know for sure, had to understand. “No,” she whispered. Their gazes locked in a battle of wills. He wanted to believe her, but couldn’t bring himself to take her word. He couldn’t allow himself to accept that she could see his soul. “Please.” “This isn’t a good idea,” she said, but closed her eyes and went stock still in his hands. Jake kept thinking about the woman and her kids, over and over, thinking about the first glimpse he’d caught of them. The blood all over the bathroom, along the walls, the water turned into a red soup. Susan hissed in a breath, then opened her eyes and looked around, confused and vulnerable. Hollows seemed to have formed in her cheeks and tears dropped from her eyelashes. Instantly, regret ate through him for what he’d done. Pulling her into his arms, he kicked himself for forcing her to have a vision. The desire to punish her drained from him as fast as it had come. She’d told him she’d spent her life running from this. Then he’d made her do it on command. Jake knew he had to stop hurting her, but betrayal still coursed through him, as much as he’d like to push it away. He sat on the floor, taking her with him, her body weak from her vision. Arranging her in his lap, he asked, “Are you okay?” She seemed fragile, almost as if she was made of glass and would at any moment fracture into a million pieces. He was mad as hell at her, but couldn’t stop the need to make sure she stayed in one piece. “God, Jake, what that woman did.” Susan slid from his lap to sit before him on the floor. “Do you have nightmares about it?” “What did you see?” He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know, but he’d made her do it, the least he could do was listen. And part of him really did want to know what she saw. He needed that last bit of confirmation. “You’re looking at another cop putting the cuffs on a woman. There are two children, dead, on the floor. Blood everywhere. You run outside and throw up in the bushes. The other cops laugh at you.” He jerked, banging his head against the wall. “That’s not what I was thinking about.” “It isn’t?” Her eyes flashed wide. “It was but it wasn’t. I only thought about walking into the room. It’s almost as if you saw what was next in the sequence. I didn’t particularly want you to watch me throwing up in the bushes.” As the shock faded, he couldn’t help but be slightly embarrassed. He had

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subconsciously chosen the first part so that she wouldn’t see him act like the complete rookie he’d been. “I bet you didn’t, but maybe your reaction was the most upsetting part for you.” Susan’s face turned serious. Her eyes searched his face for…something. “This is the first time I’ve deliberately done this. I don’t know if I should be angry with you for wanting me to or if I should thank you.” He sighed and dropped his forehead to hers. “I’m struggling to believe this, Susan.” Hugging him, she gave him the comfort he hadn’t known he needed. “I’m sure you are. It’s unbelievable.” She pulled back to meet his gaze, still obviously interested in what they’d done. “I think I saw what you wanted me to see, but maybe not exactly as you thought I would. Maybe I saw the part that was most charged with your emotions. More important, though, is I can drop my shielding on purpose. I guess it makes sense that since I put them up, I should be able to take them down at will. But I’ve spent so much time with my shields constantly in place that I’ve always wondered if I could just drop them like that.” Jake blew out a breath. “All right. So there’s no doubt about your ability. First the scene with my mother, now this.” He rubbed his eyes as exhaustion swept over him. “I think it means you can do what you say you can.” He decided to give her an explanation he’d never given anyone. He wanted her to understand, wanted someone to finally know. “My mother killed my father because he was going to leave her.” She held up a hand. “You don’t have to tell me this.” “No, I want to. It’s something that I would have shared with you anyway. My mother served thirteen years in prison for killing him. I haven’t seen her since.” The ache that rode in his chest blossomed into full pain as he hauled his childhood terrors out of the place he’d hidden them. She blinked. “Don’t you want to?” He jerked away, even though she hadn’t tried to reach for him. “No.” There was no doubt in his mind and he was surprised there was some in hers. “I have no desire to see her or have a relationship with her. She ruined three people’s lives that day and I don’t ever want to talk to her again. She calls me once a month and I hang up when I hear her voice on the phone.” “Don’t you want to forgive her?” Her green eyes held sadness. Old rage filled him, making his hands curl into fists. “Forgive her? What she did was unforgivable. I won’t help her sleep at night by giving her the absolution she’s looking for.” She was silent for a long moment, her eyes narrowed and intense. “You’re right, I guess. But if I had a mother who cared enough to call me every month, I would be ecstatic.” “You’re mother doesn’t call you?” “She hasn’t talked to me since my college graduation, which she didn’t attend.” “Why?”

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She leaned toward him to make her point. “Because I’m a thief, Jake. Because I steal people’s memories. Because I’m a freak, a little witch, and she doesn’t want a damned thing to do with me. She hasn’t touched me since I was fifteen.” “Why not?” Jake could hear the pain and bitterness in her words. He fought down the desire to pull her close and comfort her. He wasn’t ready for that yet. “Because she had warned me before not to steal her memories, but I made the mistake of telling her that I’d seen them again.” “She believed you had visions?” “Of course. You tell your mother these kinds of things when you’re young and stupid. Gran warned me I shouldn’t tell her, that I should keep my mouth shut after the first time. But I was too stupid to listen. I was mad at her when she didn’t allow me to go to Pam Hardell’s birthday sleepover. I wanted to get my mother back, so I opened my big mouth and told her I knew she had slept with Mr. Johnson again. That’s what we argued over the first time. She’d cheated on my father with my choir teacher. Then my father left her for another woman, so I guess he was cheating on her, too, but I didn’t know that at the time. I should have felt sorry for her. Instead, I slapped her in the face with it.” Susan was silent for a full minute and Jake groped for something to say. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was, to tell her he was glad she’d shared her secrets with him finally. But then she continued, “She never physically touched me again.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “She just married Mr. Johnson and didn’t even invite me to the wedding.” His heart went out to her. “God, Susan. I can’t believe it. What a bitch.” “Oh, come on Jake, admit it! You don’t want to touch me either.” He laughed but not because he thought it was funny. “You’re wrong, Susan. I do want to touch you.” He locked his hand around hers to prove it. He struggled to give her an answer that made sense, but then settled for truth. “You’re going to have to give me some time to think about this. I’m not sure I can work this out tonight. Three bodies in less than a week means that I need to concentrate on solving these crimes.” He dropped her hand and stood up, putting distance between them so he could think about something that didn’t tear him up inside. The case needed his full attention. “Give me some time. Then we can talk about this again.” He picked up her phone and dialed a number. “Gordon, it’s Jake. I’m at Susan Wright’s apartment. Can you come here? Fine.” He hung up the phone with a snap. She held up both her hands palms out. “Wait a second. I’m not going through this again tonight.” “It won’t be as painful, Susan, but we need to tell Gordon.” He met her stare and steeled himself for her anger. “I made the mistake of telling him I thought you were withholding something from your statement.” She dropped her gaze to her hands and said, “Jake,” in a panicked whisper.

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“This is a murder investigation. The more time that passes, the less likely we are to catch whoever did this. We need all the leads we can get right now.” He wasn’t going to feel guilty for telling Gordon. He just wasn’t. This was his job, dammit.

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Chapter Eighteen Susan shut the door on Jake and Gordon, glad to be by herself. It was past one in the morning and she wanted to go to bed. Watching the two men work together had been an education. Gordon was obviously the senior of the two, but when Jake told him to accept that she could true see, he had asked no questions. Jake had stepped in several times so she wouldn’t have to give another lengthy explanation of her gift. She knew the two men would have a long talk about what they had learned here and Gordon would probably have doubts about her ability, but at this point, she didn’t care. She was too tired to worry about it. Her senses, her body, were on overload. Two dead bodies and the beginnings of a relationship/thing with Jake had her emotions in a tailspin. On top of it all, she’d had more true seeing episodes this week than she’d had in the last year. They exhausted her. Strangely, making love with Jake restored her energy, but then she’d seen Robb’s murder this afternoon and Jake’s memory as a rookie tonight. She felt like the walking dead. It didn’t help that she was pretty sure Jake hated her for stealing his memory about his mother. He’d kept a large distance between them from the moment Gordon stepped through the door. God, she wished so much that she could have continued to lie, just for a little longer, so she could hold him again. She needed his arms around her. Instead, she was destined to be alone forever. A loud banging made her jump. Again. She jumped at everything lately. Her heart accelerated at the hope that maybe Jake had returned, that maybe he’d come back to say he didn’t care about her true seeing. She crossed to the door and stopped herself right before she opened it. She looked through the peephole and groaned. Could her night get any worse?

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When she opened the door, Nicole breezed by her, obviously fully recovered from her earlier episode with Benny. Courtney came in on her heels and stood in the doorway with two bottles of champagne. “Darling!” she said, her mouth set in a dramatic line. “We have come to save you from a life of boredom!” Her pose was eerily similar to the St. Paulie’s girl with champagne bottles instead of steins. She was dressed in her standard all black going-out clothes. This time she wore a long, black skirt split up to the top of her thigh and a black tank top with the word Angel written in white across her breasts. Men couldn’t help but comment on the shirt. It was an instant conversation starter. “I can assure you I have not been bored tonight.” Susan ducked her head outside, but the crime scene tape had been taken down and the bloodstain was only a shadow on the other end of the landing. She almost wished it was still there to warn her friends off. In her kitchen, Nicole rummaged around in her cabinets. “Hey, you in there! Don’t do anything, because you’re both turning right around and going home.” Courtney sauntered by her. “Of course we’re not going. What an absurd notion.” She disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Susan to close and lock the door. She ran in after them. “Hey, I’ve had a hard day. You two don’t know how badly I want to go to sleep right now.” Susan knew her voice sounded desperate. She was desperate. Nicole poured the champagne into the three flutes she’d washed. Next to Courtney, she was a splash of color in a red dress that hit her mid-thigh. A small slash of skin showed before her boots took over, hiding the rest of her leg. “How long has it been since you used these glasses, girl? There had to have been an inch of dust in them.” She handed Susan and Courtney a glass each. “To the three of us. May we find true love this month.” It was Nicole’s standard toast. “Or at least someone who’s good in bed,” Courtney added with a snicker. That was Courtney’s standard toast. Susan sighed and raised her glass. With them here she wouldn’t have to think about Jake or dead bodies for a little while. “Or at least someone who can carry on an intelligent conversation,” she said, completing the ritual with a clink of glasses. They all sank down into the chairs around the kitchen table to take a long sip. Courtney cleared her voice dramatically. “I am here to claim the Idiot of the Month Award for October.” Nicole laughed. “Don’t tell me you can beat my little caper?” For a second, Susan thought Nicole meant her episode with Benny this morning, but then she remembered that her friend had been top contender when she’d called her brother’s wife his ex-wife’s name not once, but four times at her parents’ dinner party.

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Susan had only won Idiot of the Month once in the year or so they had been giving the award to each other. She had walked across a crowded bar with her skirt hung up in her pantyhose, showing off her rather unimpressive rear end to a hundred plus people. Now she only wore pants out at night as a rule. Forget about showing off her legs, even if they were her best feature. And Jake thought she wasn’t safety conscious. Courtney smiled a superior smile. “Darling, your little incident does not touch what I did yesterday. I’ve been waiting for us all to be together to tell you.” She took a sip of champagne to heighten the suspense. “So Friday, I get this e-mail from this little twerp with the Baldwin Agency who took me out for drinks on Thursday night. He’s asked if I wanted to go out with him again for happy hour next Tuesday.” “Which little twerp?” Nicole always had to know details. “That guy Tom. The one that’s about a foot shorter than me with sandy-blond hair.” “He’s not shorter than you.” Nicole had told Susan that she thought Courtney was a little too superior about her height. “Well, he looks like it to me.” “Did you wear heels?” Nicole looked pointedly down at Courtney’s two-inch black mules, which Susan thought were a bad choice for dancing. But what did she know? “Of course you did. Why do you always do that? Wear flats when you date men close to your height. That’s, like, basic middle school stuff.” “My legs look good in heels, for your information. Anyway, I wasn’t going to sleep with him, I just wanted him to buy me a couple of drinks. And he’s amusing company.” “Courtney,” Susan said, joining in for the first time. “You shouldn’t get their hopes up then ditch them. It’s rude.” Courtney turned serious for a moment. “Who said I was planning to ditch him?” Susan couldn’t stop her mouth from dropping open. Courtney, serious about a man? Had her sarcasm really just been a shield to keep from being hurt? “Anyway, so I forward the e-mail to Nicole and asked her if she wanted to come, telling her I’m pretty sure he’ll spring for some drinks and be amusing company. Then I add that David and I will be breaking up soon, since he fell asleep right in the middle of sex the other night.” “Oh my God! He did?” Susan said, right as Nicole said, “Wait, I never got an e-mail from you…” “Yes, well that’s why I win the Idiot of the Month Award. You see I hit reply instead of forward.” Dead silence reigned in Susan’s kitchen as they all sipped their drinks and contemplated the ramifications of that. And then they all burst out laughing. “Oh, oh, God, I’m going to wet my pants if I don’t stop laughing so hard,” Nicole gasped. “Courtney,” Susan said, wiping tears, “you idiot!”

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“I propose that Courtney wins the Idiot Award for the Month of October,” Nicole said, holding out her glass. “I second it,” Susan said, tapping her glass to Nicole’s. Courtney lifted her glass and completed the circle. She waited for the other two to drink before she said, “What really sucks is that I found out what I’d done because Sue Kessler forwarded me the e-mail when she got it. Turns out the little twerp thought it was so funny, he sent it to all his friends and Sue ended up with it from her cousin, who didn’t even realize that Sue knew me.” Susan and Nicole both choked on their champagne, all fun suddenly draining from the room. Despite referring to him as a little twerp, Courtney had liked him, and he’d forwarded the e-mail. Susan’s heart turned over. “That’s terrible.” “I am so, so sorry!” Nicole rubbed her friend’s shoulder in sympathy. Courtney sighed. “Yeah, well it serves me right for being such a pure-D-bitch all the time.” She looked at Susan with a grin. “Miss Goody Two-shoes over here has been warning me for years that something like this could happen but I wouldn’t listen.” “I am not a Goody Two-shoes!” Susan always protested this and did so now to try to take away her friend’s pain by changing the subject. Being the Idiot-of-the-Month was funny, but not if everyone in the city -- and probably in Taiwan by now given the way people forward e-mails these days -- knew of your gaffe. “Of course you are!” Both her friends chorused, but their smiles held sadness. In a bid to raise their spirits, Susan decided to share her own news. “For your information, I slept with someone today so you guys can forget about me entering the nunnery.” Susan couldn’t help but be pleased with her announcement. This was the first time she had slept with anyone since they had known her. She’d only had sex with one guy in college and one guy in law school, both of whom were experiments that had gone drastically wrong. Knowing someone’s darkest secrets wasn’t always a good thing. She’d found out the hard way that some men weren’t good inside. Sex was an emotional commitment leading to emotional entanglements. Like it had with Jake. Emotional entanglements led to marriage and children and all the things she could never have. Courtney gave Susan’s hair a tug of affection. “We are so pleased for you.” She looked at Nicole and said, “Our little baby, all grown up,” as she dashed away a fake tear from her cheek. Susan rolled her eyes and laughed. “You guys are so stupid.” “So who is Mr. Lucky?” Courtney asked. Susan nodded her thanks as her glass was refilled. “The detective I introduced you guys to at the bar.” Susan didn’t mention his involvement with getting Nicole’s purse back, since she didn’t know if Nicole had told Courtney about Benny. She decided the safest bet would

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be to avoid the subject if possible. Nicole was up front about stuff but, when it came to Benny, all bets were off. There was a large chance that she was counting on Susan to keep it secret. Susan watched her friends exchange a glance of concern. “You need to watch yourself with that one, girl.” Courtney laid a mothering hand on her shoulder. Nicole nodded. “You don’t want to get all confused with needing someone to help you through finding a body last Sunday night with love or anything crazy like that.” Susan smiled at her friends and felt a tightening in her chest. For as much as they treated men lightly, they were obviously very concerned for her. “Don’t worry. I slept with him before I found the body in the laundry room.” She took a sip of her champagne and stared at her friends innocently. “Before when?” “Last Sunday night. That’s why I was doing laundry so late.” Susan couldn’t control the urge she had to get another rise out of her friends. “Come to think of it, I had sex with him before I found the body this afternoon, too. Wonder if there’s a correlation there?” Being with her friends had made it possible for her to finally tease, allowing her to push away the horror, tension, and emotion of the experience. She knew it would come back the minute they left, but for now, she could see the humor of it, even if the humor was a little bit off. “You found another body?” Courtney’s face went white as a sheet. Susan felt bad for her teasing now. “Yes. This one right on the landing.” “You shouldn’t be staying here alone.” Nicole was dead serious. “Why don’t you move into my place until they find whoever did this?” Susan made a T with her hands. “Okay, time out here guys. I’m not moving out of my apartment. I like my own space. You know that.” “Then one of us will have to stay with you.” Courtney turned to Nicole. “Nicole, go home and pack your bag. You can stay with Susan for a couple days.” Nicole stood up from the kitchen table and leaned toward Courtney. “If you’re so hot for someone to stay with her, you move in here, Courtney. I think it’s crazy for anyone to be within a mile of this place.” “Some friend you are, Nicole,” Courtney shot back, in a snit. “Ladies,” Susan said, crossing her fingers under the table. “I’ll call Jake and have him stay with me. How much safer can I get than with a police officer sleeping in my bed? Okay? As soon as you two leave.” She stood up, too. “Which should be now, because I am about to fall down, I’m so tired.” “I don’t know.” Courtney didn’t rise from her seat at the kitchen table. “Nicole and I aren’t sure you can handle this guy. Maybe having him here isn’t a good idea.”

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“Why can’t I handle him?” Sure, she wasn’t that experienced with men but she was an attorney, for God’s sake. She handled people for a living. She watched as her friends exchanged a speaking look. “Well…” Nicole looked uncomfortable. “He’s not really the type of guy for a fling, Susan. He didn’t even react when we were teasing him at the bar.” “And he was all possessive of you,” Courtney chimed in. “We think he might be interested in more than you’re willing to give.”

You have no idea what I’m willing to give. “Don’t worry about my thing with Jake. It’s only a week old. Who knows what will happen in the future?” The thought depressed her. In a week, she’d managed to find a man, fall in love with him, and lose him. She grabbed up the three champagne flutes before they could refill, and deposited them in the sink, then turned to her friends with a forced smile. “We’ll worry about it next week. I’m too tired tonight.” Courtney rose from the table and Susan knew she had won this battle. After air kisses were exchanged, Susan locked the door behind them and fell into bed more exhausted than she’d been in her life. But her dreams haunted her, populated with dead bodies, yellow raincoats, startling, horrible blue eyes, and Jake’s face when he found out she’d stolen his memories.

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Chapter Nineteen The next morning, Jake had to suck in his gut to fit inside the crowded outer room that contained the back of the one-way mirror for Interrogation Room One. In the interrogation room itself, a fifty-something-year-old man puffed away on his cigarette, which was a big no-no in the nonsmoking police headquarters. The brass constantly sent out memos that warned of disciplinary measures for anyone who allowed suspects to smoke in the interrogation rooms. It had become a bit of a joke to let suspects smoke in there, the logic being that if everyone did it, no one person could be singled out to be made an example of by the brass. It had worked so far and threatening memos had been the only consequence. Jake and Gordon were the exception to this because Gordon claimed that the smoke ruined his expensive suits. While Jake took a lot of ribbing about not playing along, he had never seen anyone confront Gordon, not even to the point of gentle teasing. The smoking man drew so heavily on his cigarette his cheeks hollowed out and his eyes squinted with concentration. He was big without the muscle of a weight lifter. His belly bulged as if he spent his time with a Stroh beer in one hand and the remote control in the other. Dressed in standard biker fare, he wore jeans, a black T-shirt and a black leather jacket with studs across his collarbone. The worn, battered jacket looked as if it was a part of him, as if he slept in it. He snarled something at Martel, shaking his greasy head. He looked mean enough to kill someone, but so did most of the people in this building, including the cops. He certainly had the strength to slash someone’s throat. But he didn’t seem like the kind of guy to go around killing people unless they tripped over the trash on his apartment floor and landed on his lap. He might murder someone, but Jake thought he wouldn’t waste the effort to keep stabbing them over and over once they were dead. If Susan’s vision was true, he was definitely not the kind of guy who wore a teddy bear’s raincoat. There were two murderers to catch. He was now positive about it.

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“So how long have you lived in Woodbridge Apartments, Dwaine?” Dwaine blew a long stream of smoke into Martel’s face. Jake caught Gordon’s wince in his peripheral vision and tried not to smile. “Couple years now, I guess.” “How do you know Louise Johnson?” “I already told you this like five times. She was my girlfriend.” Martel nodded his head, writing something on a pad of paper on the table before him. He’s probably drawing pictures of crosses, Jake thought. He knew Martel wasn’t writing down that the victim was Dwaine’s girlfriend. They’d known that since the day her body was found. “So she lived with you?” Dwaine blew out a stream of smoke, this time from his nostrils into his lap. “Yeah, she lived with me. How many times do I have to tell you the same shit?” “Why did you kill her, Dwaine?” “Who said I killed her?” A bead of sweat rolled down Dwaine’s face and dropped onto his hand. He wiped it on his jeans. The leather jacket must be making his discomfort worse, but Jake didn’t see him make a move to take it off. Maybe it was his security blanket. “We searched your apartment and found the knife. It’s got your fingerprints all over it.” “How do you know they were my prints? You haven’t fingerprinted me.” Dwaine shifted around in his chair. “Your prints are on file from that little scuffle you had at the Naked Lady a couple years ago.” “That wasn’t my fault. You can ask anyone. I was defending myself.” “Yeah. With a knife.” Martel glanced up from the pad on which he was pretending to take notes. “You’re a big fan of using a knife on people, aren’t you Dwaine? You’ve been busy with it this week. We figure you’ve killed three people.” Dwaine rose out of the chair. “Wait a second, now. I might've slit that bitch’s throat, but I didn’t do those other two.” “Three people with their throats cut, Dwaine. Why should we believe you?” “Look, I was only trying to get Louise to shut the fuck up. She kept nagging me about what a dump we live in and I wanted her to stop. It was an accident.” “You slit her throat all the way to her spine by accident?” Martel asked in a mild voice. Jake realized that during the whole interview, Martel’s hands had been still. He wondered if Martel had to concentrate on not conducting the conversation, which would mean his whole attention wasn’t on the suspect. “Yeah, I did. It was an accident. I didn’t kill those other two. No way did I kill them.” “We think you did.” Martel’s left hand snuck up for a quick wave on the word “did.”

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Dwaine looked completely panicked. “I want an attorney.” Martel and his partner threw down their pens. Jake learned that the interview had gone on for hours. He couldn’t believe it had taken Dwaine that long to ask for a lawyer. The guy must be a complete fool. Everyone trooped out of the observation room with a relieved sigh. It was hot in there. Martel marched into the hall, triumph written on every line in his face. “Looks like we can put the Apartment Slasher to bed.” He rubbed his hands together like a man about to be paid five hundred dollar bills from Bob Barker. Jake crossed the room to him. “Martel, the same person did not commit all three of these murders.” He detoured to his desk and picked up the ME’s report. “The two guys were done with the same knife but not the woman.” “So he changed knives.” Martel shrugged it off. “Maybe for the next one, he was planning to use the knife he used on the woman.” Gordon moved into the conversation. “You think this guy is smart enough to set all this up? If he did it, he had to kill Daugherty before his girlfriend. That takes more pre-planning then he seems capable of.” “How much planning does it take to drive to another apartment complex and stab someone?” “So you think he would kill his girlfriend with less passion than he would kill two strangers?” Gordon asked patiently. Now, Martel’s hands began to move. “Come on, he lived in the next building over from Daugherty. They had to have known each other. Maybe Daugherty and Dwaine’s woman were having a little on the side.” He punctuated every name with a wave. “Use your head, Martel. Daugherty was twenty years her junior and from a different world. It doesn’t ring true.” Jake felt his frustration level climbing. Could Martel not see that all these things added up to two different murderers? “No accounting for love, boys. We all know God works in mysterious ways.” “And Robb Connors? He is perhaps Dwaine’s cousin?” Gordon’s voice held no trace of sarcasm. “Look, the Lieutenant agrees with me on this.” Martel threw both hands up. “I know you two don’t like to be one-upped since you are the biggest case closers on the force, but I’ve got this one for the history books.” Gordon asked a question that he and Jake had been tossing around for days now. “What’s his motive for killing the two guys?” Martel nodded. “Struggled with that one myself, then it came to me. He did the two men to throw us off his trail. He really wanted to kill her so he killed the other two to conceal his crimes. Same thing happened in New York last year.”

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He was right, the same thing had happened in New York last year. “But Martel.” Jake kept his voice calm and even. “Why isn’t it as likely that he killed the woman to match what he read in the papers about the first murder to throw us off of him?” Martel’s eyes narrowed. “He did all three. I can smell it.” Jake caught his arm as he stormed by. “What color are his eyes?” “Is this some sort of How-Good-A-Cop-Are-You game? You’re such a jerk, Matherly. You’ve always been a jerk.” Martel shook with anger, and Jake could tell he honestly believed Jake was playing with him. Jake couldn’t tell him why he asked the question without going into Susan’s true seeing, so he took his hand off Martel’s arm and said, “I’m sorry I came across that way. Congratulations on your collar.” Martel stormed off without a backwards glance. Jake and Gordon shared a look and turned as one to go back into the interrogation room. Jake threw himself into a chair across from Dwaine and sat staring at him until the man said, “You can’t speak to me. I’ve asked for an attorney!” Jake leaned over to study Dwaine’s eyes before pushing back from the table with force. He shook his head once at Gordon, and they both left the room. They had worked too long together to have to talk about the fact that they would continue to look for the Apartment Slasher, because old Dwaine had mud brown eyes and a motive to kill his girlfriend, but not two other strangers. They stopped in to talk to the Lieutenant on their way out. He agreed to keep them on the case and admitted there was a possibility that someone else had murdered the two men. “But both of you had better keep this quiet. If I read in the newspapers that we are still looking for the Apartment Slasher, I’ll have you directing traffic at car accidents for the rest of your careers.” He glanced down at a report on his desk. “Now get the fuck out of my office and go figure out if we’ve got the right guy for all three murders.” He stopped them before they were out the door when he added, “And if we don’t, bring me whoever it is, pronto. We need to put this to bed.”

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Chapter Twenty Susan glanced at her watch. If she left now, she had time for an extra long run before she went to Georgia’s to babysit at seven. Grabbing her iPod and her spare key, she jogged out the door and down the steps. She ran slowly to warm up, saving her stretching until the end, even though she knew that wasn’t the way the experts said she should do it. But she hated working out and took shortcuts where she could. At least three days a week she did some sort of activity --racquetball, aerobics, running, power yoga. And she hated them all. She had been an overweight teenager and knew that only exercise stood between her and the next size up in clothes. She started this run like she did all the others. Painfully. Her body groaned and her legs begged her to stop. It wasn’t pleasant. But after the first fifteen minutes, her second wind kicked in and she felt the rush of new energy that always filled her if she made it past the beginning. When this happened, her thoughts turned to Jake. Their relationship was in shambles. While he seemed okay with her “gift” when it came to his case, he hadn’t asked to stay over last night, or kissed her goodnight, or touched her in any way. Nor had he called her all day. He’d withdrawn, she’d bet forever. There was a possibility he just needed some time to think about it all like he’d said. They had never gotten past the “thing” stage and into a true we-are-dating-each-other gig. Why would he deal with all this? He should run. She would if their places were reversed. Okay, no, she wouldn’t. She’d fight for him, because she loved him. Dammit. He had gone into detective mode halfway through their conversation and hadn’t even truly believed she could true see. Detective Matherly would use the information to help solve his case if he could, but she didn’t know how Jake felt about all this.

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She should prepare for the worst. She wouldn’t be one of those females who made an ass out of herself when her guy gave her the boot. She was a strong, independent woman who had lived through other heartaches and rejection and would get through this. For the first time, she understood why Nicole kept going back to Benny, even when she knew they weren’t going to be together. Maybe sometimes a taste of something was better than nothing. Susan tried to tell herself that a taste of Jake was better than never being with him, but couldn’t help thinking that that was just so much bullshit people said to make the rejected person feel better. She added a bit of speed to her run when she realized she had slowed down. If Jake didn’t want to date her because of the true seeing, she would cut herself off completely. She wouldn’t see him again if she could help it. It would be too painful. The worst thought she had as she ran was that Jake could be thinking that a couple of times in the sack -- or the kitchen or shower, as the case may be -- didn’t mean a whole lot to him. Sure, he’d said and done things that made her feel like he wanted more than just casual sex, but it might be a bunch of garbage. Maybe he would dump her and it had nothing to do with the true seeing.

This is ridiculous. You need answers. Get them and stop whining. She would call him when she got home, before she went to babysit Georgia’s brother. She would ask him out to dinner Monday night, at a public place where they would have a nice, mature, adult discussion about their relationship. Because knowing had to be better than this. Her heart constricted at the thought of losing him. God, she loved him so much. How in the hell had that happened so quickly? She pushed herself into a faster run. If she were going to be dumped, at least she would have a nice body. Not that anyone but her would see it. She groaned. When she neared her apartment, she sprinted until she reached the sidewalk that bisected the front lawn. For a few minutes, she walked back and forth, trying to catch her breath and cool down. She’d overdone it. Susan bent over, hands to her knees, and tried very hard not to throw up.

***** Jake left the station with a sense of total frustration. They were no closer to finding the answers they needed after a full day of working the case. He had known when Parker gave in much too easily that nothing would turn up when they tossed his apartment. Parker had been at work until right before the second murder, making it tight time-wise for him to have gotten back to Malvern Manor. Without physical evidence, it would be hard to link him to the crimes. They went through the Dumpster in back of the apartment but they hadn’t turned up anything there, either. He could have thrown away the clothes he was wearing in another location, though.

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He and Gordon had agreed the best thing they could do now would be to re-canvass the apartment complex again. Starting tomorrow, they would methodically talk to every tenant, including a chat with Georgia and her brother, who had been gone every time they’d called or dropped by. Georgia, according to the cop who’d done the original interview, didn’t have the strength and height required to be their murderer and the organized aspects of the crimes made it almost impossible for a mentally handicapped person to have committed them. But at this point, they needed to speak to everyone. Something would shake free. It had to. Right now, he wanted to find Susan. He’d tried to call her to let her know he was on his way, but had only reached her answering machine. He made a mental note to ask her for her cell phone number. He wanted someone to stay with her until the murders were solved. He thought he was the ideal candidate for the job, but they needed to talk. As Jake drove to Susan’s place, he thought for the first time about how her “gift” would relate to him. It was the worst possible condition a woman dating a cop could have. He thought about coming home at night, after some crazy chopped his wife to bits or some drug dealer killed a kid or some hooker ended up with the wrong John. “Honey, I’m home,” he’d say, reaching out to embrace her. And then she’d see it all. And he’d be responsible for her nightmares. The car behind him honked and he realized he sat at a green light. He put his car in gear and drove. For over eleven months now, he had wanted this woman more than he had ever wanted anything. Yeah, the sex was great. Fantastic, actually. In fact, just touching her lit him up like a Christmas tree. But that wasn’t the only thing that made him want something long-term with her. He wanted to come in every night and give her a welcome home hug. He wanted to fix her breakfast and cuddle up to watch a movie with her on the couch. He just plain wanted her. All day, every day, in his life. And that meant they were going to have to figure out a way to deal with her “gift” so he didn’t accidentally cause her to need counseling. She had been able to see on command. It was possible there were many things she didn’t know about her visions that they could figure out together. He thought it was strange she could only see bad things. Other emotions could be as strong as fear or anger or guilt or horror or whatever it was that made her pick up people’s memories. Lust, for example, could be as strong an emotion as fear. It was something to think about. He would bring it up tonight, as he held her on the sofa. Jake grinned and increased his speed.

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Susan bent over again to grab her knees as she tried to breathe normally. Thank God it was October, or she would have passed out from the heat. “You okay?” Georgia’s voice called from the landing on the second floor. Susan waved and tried to smile. “Yeah. I pushed myself a little too hard on my run.” Georgia and another person came down the stairs. Susan watched them emerge around the corner of the stairwell, still holding onto her knees, fighting waves of nausea. “Are you going out? I need to get a shower. Then I’ll be over to stay with your brother.” “We’re running to the McDonald’s to get Samuel some dinner. I heard they caught the Apartment Slasher.” Georgia veered in her direction, and a large man studying the ground shadowed her. When Georgia stopped in front of Susan, he automatically stopped, too, acting as if he were on autopilot. The hood on his green and black Eagles sports jacket was pulled up, and he stared at the sidewalk which dissected the front yard, seemingly unaware of his surroundings. Susan forced herself to stand up straight and again had to fight for a moment not to be sick. Her head pounded. God, she had overdone it, all week in fact, putting her body through the mill. Maybe she needed a vacation. “One of the detectives on the case told me that he wasn’t sure the guy they have in custody murdered all three of those people, so be careful.” Georgia’s eyes flared wide, then something else filtered through them. “I thought they all had their throats cut?” “They did, but the two guys they found here had been stabbed repeatedly and there were other similarities that the woman’s murder didn’t have.” She watched Georgia’s face transform into something like fear. Fear mixed with knowledge. Even though part of her warned her not to do it, Susan had to push. “They have a witness who told them the guy who killed those two men here was wearing a yellow raincoat.” Georgia’s gaze sharpened. “I thought you were the only person who found both people after they were murdered?” She stepped forward and Susan fought the urge to stumble back. Something in Georgia’s face twisted Susan’s stomach. Lie, her mind screamed. “Actually, someone else told the police about the guy in the raincoat. I think it was an anonymous tip.” She knew she was the world’s worst liar and, from the look on her face, Georgia knew it too. Without meaning to, her gaze flicked to Samuel, sealing her fate. “Nice try, Susan.” The other woman’s lips turned down in what might have been regret. “But I know you’re making that up.” She shook her head sadly. “The worst part about this is I really liked you.” She looked around the deserted yard, then down into the empty parking lot, then at Susan. “You know what they say -- blood is thicker than water. I can’t have Samuel going to jail. He’s been abused too often in his life to be treated that way.” Susan inched backward toward the parking lot as the other woman spoke, away from Georgia and her brother.

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“He’s sick and needs help.” Georgia followed Susan, and Samuel shuffled behind her. “He won’t get help if he’s in jail.” “Georgia, don’t do anything stupid.” Susan tried to sound authoritative, but her voice came out as a squeak. Georgia smiled sadly, then turned to Samuel. “Samuel,” she said, “this woman is a little piggy.” The man in the Eagles jacket looked up from the ground, raising his head in exaggerated slowness that seemed to be done for effect. Blue, blue eyes stared out of the hood at her. “Hello, Piggy.” Susan gasped, her feet stuck to the sidewalk. Her mind shut down and she could do nothing. She could not move, talk, or even walk away. He stared at her and smiled. Georgia stepped off the sidewalk into the grass, out of Samuel’s way. Samuel shuffled toward Susan. He reached his hand out to touch her, breaking the spell that held her immobile. No way was she letting this man touch her. No way was she going to share his memories. Because whatever abuse created him would be something she did not want to know about. Not to mention the murders he committed. Tripping, she fell onto the concrete. Hard. Sucking in air, she fought back pain and the nausea that returned in full force. “Georgia! Stop him! Please!” she screamed, unable to do anything about the panic in her voice. Georgia held up her hands in a gesture that said she was out of it now. “You should have kept your mouth shut to the police. There’s nothing I can do now.” Samuel looked at Susan, watching calmly as she struggled to regain her feet. “Hello, Piggy,” he said merrily.

Run, run, run, run, run! Her flight instinct was in overdrive but all Susan could do was back down the sidewalk. “Why did you kill those two men, Samuel?” She asked the question, not even caring about the answer. She was an attorney who specialized in negotiations. The first rule in a negotiation was that everyone had to be talking. If the people weren’t talking, the negotiation was over before it even started. Dialogue was the key. “Oink,” Samuel answered. Susan didn’t think that counted as dialogue. You couldn’t negotiate with a loony-tune. She glanced at Georgia, but the woman stayed motionless in the grass. When she looked back at Samuel, he pulled a long carving knife from an inside pocket in his jacket and launched himself at her, all his apparent slowness suddenly vanishing. Susan needed to cross the parking lot and get through the trees into the street to have any chance of survival. Scrambling away as quickly as she could, her left foot came down on air as she made it to the two steps that marked the descent into the parking lot. Then her whole body was flying, almost in slow motion, before landing hard against the asphalt.

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Samuel stopped at the top of the steps and seemed to debate his next move. Susan looked frantically around the lot. Where was everyone? Why was the damned parking lot deserted? She could hear cars passing by on the street, but the trees blocked them from her view. Samuel took the first step down, his eyes glowing blue from the darkness of his hood. “Heeeellllpppp!” Susan screamed as loud as she could. “Help, help, help!” She regained her feet. “I’ll help you, Piggy,” Samuel said solemnly. Susan scrambled around a car as Samuel followed. Samuel started one way, so she went the other. Then he turned to intercept her, giggling at the game. “Round and round we go, where we stop, nobody knows,” he sang in an off-key child’s voice as they circled the car three times. He wasn’t even close to her. Susan comforted herself that she could go around the car for the rest of her life if she had to. Someone was bound to see them out here soon. Samuel jumped onto the hood, still giggling joyously. “Oh, no,” she heard herself whisper. Turning to run, she took half a step before he landed on her back. She skidded across the lot, both knees shredding painfully. The asphalt stopped her with a jolt, but Samuel’s momentum kept him going, and he rolled to a halt several feet from her. Scrambling to her feet, she dashed behind another car. She had been exhausted from her earlier run but now her body was filled with energy, even as her fear had her breathing in huge gasps of air. Think, Susan, she urged herself. What did the self-defense class teach her about these kinds of situations? Call for help. Check. Done that. Give him your purse. Okay, that one was not all that applicable. Samuel started singing something that sounded like a perverted version of duck, duck, goose, circling her around the car once more. Susan braced herself for him to come over the top again. Then she saw Georgia running toward them with a tree branch clutched in her hands. “Samuel, we must hurry,” Georgia called. “Someone could come along any minute. We don’t have time for games.” She jogged down the two steps into the parking lot and Susan knew she would soon be trapped between them. She needed to take the initiative and go for one or the other. In a burst of speed, she ran toward Georgia, ducking when the woman brought the branch down, taking the blow on her shoulder. It hurt but didn’t stop her. Her shoulder slammed into Georgia with enough momentum that Georgia fell back, her feet flying out from under her. Her head hit the stairs with a sickly crack, but Susan didn’t stop to check on her. She scrambled over the other woman’s body, one foot pushing off from her chest, and took the two steps in one bound.

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“What is Piggy doing?” Samuel asked the question from behind her in a tone a child might use to ask their parent why the sky was blue. With Samuel now blocking her escape to the street, Susan took off in a sprint across the lawn. She clutched her house key in her right hand, wanting to have it out and ready once she got to her door. Rounding the corner to take the stairs to the second floor, she saw that Samuel was right behind her. Catching her looking at him, he grinned and said, “Hello, Piggy!” A scream poured from her mouth and she redoubled her efforts to climb the stairs.

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Chapter Twenty-One Jake jumped out of his car, suddenly anxious to see Susan. Someone moaned, drawing him around another parked car to see one of Susan’s neighbors lying on the steps from the parking lot to the front lawn leading to Susan’s apartment, clutching a stick. “What happened?” His body filled with an eerie warning that told him he wasn’t going to like her answer. Georgia caught his hand. “My brother can’t go to jail. He’s sick. He needs help.” Jake didn’t even think twice about leaving her when he heard Susan’s scream. Grabbing his gun from his shoulder holster, he took off running across the lawn. “Hello, Piggy!” someone said merrily from the stairwell and Susan screamed again. Jake’s gut tightened and he picked up his speed. Charging into the stairwell, he didn’t think or act like a policeman. Screw waiting for backup. He had to get to her now. She was on the landing above him. He scrambled to the second floor and everything seemed to go forward in slow-motion. Susan turned and something silver flashed in her hand as she brought her arm straight into her attacker’s head. The man’s body jerked as if he had been shot and he collapsed into the hallway, holding his face. With a look of pure horror, Susan fell against her door. “Get into your apartment and call the police,” Jake yelled, holding his gun pointed at the man on the landing. Jake still couldn’t see his face. “I…” Susan’s face took on an ashen color. “I can’t, Jake. I can’t.” Her body trembled so hard her voice shook with it. A man appeared on the landing a few apartments down. “Call the police,” Jake yelled and the man disappeared again. “Susan, you need to get into your apartment.”

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“I can’t. I can’t get into my apartment.” She was breathing too hard and he knew that if she didn’t slow down, she would start to hyperventilate. “Why not?” Jake wanted to shake her, but kept his focus on the man still moaning on the landing. “My key. My key is in his eye!” Jake kept the gun trained on the injured man. Susan was covered in tears and sweat. Her knees bled down into her white running socks, and her hair stuck out in all directions. Jake reached with his left hand into his right pocket, a gesture that twisted his body, careful to keep the gun covering the suspect, then held out his keys to her. “Go get the pair of handcuffs in my glove compartment.” Susan’s hand paused when she met his gaze, her eyes scared. “Handcuffs, Susan,” he reminded her gently. Susan rose, using her door for leverage, carefully avoiding the man before her. Turning, she took the far stairwell down to the parking lot. Jake glanced back just as his perp pulled the key out of his eye with a horrible, hushed sucking sound. “Don’t move,” Jake said in his cop voice. He was sure the doctors weren’t going to be able to salvage the man’s eye. The socket looked like it held a mass of bloody pulp. Jake took a steadying breath. “Hello, Piggy!” The man’s childlike and high voice dipped as he struggled to sit up, although he didn’t seem fazed by the fact that one of his eyes had been torn apart. “Stay where you are,” Jake ordered. This guy is going to keep trying to get up. He didn’t want to shoot him if he could help it. The man worked himself onto his knees. “Where’s the other piggy? Where did the girl piggy go?”

***** Susan ran down the steps, her legs shaking. She clutched the railing to keep herself upright, concentrating on moving so she didn’t fall. Her body felt used up, each step an effort. As she rounded the corner, she heard the sirens at the same time she saw Georgia stagger to her feet. Susan had forgotten about her but now she had to go past her neighbor to get to Jake’s car. Susan shuffled closer. Talk, Susan. Talk to her. That’s what you do, that’s what you’re good at. “Did you know, Georgia?” Susan watched a car pull into the parking lot. “Did you know he’d killed them?” Georgia lurched up the two stairs, the stick still clutched in her hands. “He didn’t mean to, Susan. He’s sick. It was Robb’s fault. Robb got him all riled up last Sunday.” “Then why did he kill Jim Daugherty? He had nothing to do with Robb.”

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Gordon jumped from his unmarked police car with his gun drawn, but Georgia didn’t even seem to notice him. She kept coming, stick half raised. “He didn’t mean to, Susan. It was a mistake. He was confused. He thought Jim was Robb. I had to clean up after him. He’s my brother. It was an accident.” Her face hardened. “But then Robb came back to my apartment and Samuel followed him out onto the landing and killed him. He was trying to protect me from our uncle, so I had to protect him by cleaning up afterwards. He can’t go to jail, Susan. He’s very sick.” “Put down the stick,” Gordon said, fanning out into the grass so that he made a triangle out of the three of them. Georgia’s head turned slowly to Gordon. “Robb was a very bad man. He tried to attack me. He’s always touched me, especially when he babysits after I get home from school.” Her voice had turned lighter, her eyes glassy and focused on the past. Gordon and Susan exchanged a glance. They didn’t know what she was talking about now. “He had to die. He’s the one that’s the piggy, not us.” The branch slipped from her grasp. Gordon sprinted forward, taking her roughly to the ground and cuffing her hands behind her back. Susan moved past him toward Jake’s car. “Jake needs his handcuffs,” she told Gordon in a breathy voice that didn’t sound like her own. “Take my extra ones.” She grabbed them from his hands and bolted back up the stairs. Her legs felt like they were attached to lead weights.

***** Jake could hear Susan coming up the stairs behind him. He made an executive decision that he would probably have to answer to his Lieutenant for later, but he wasn’t losing control of the Piggy Man and risk Susan being hurt. He kicked him in the face as hard as he could. Piggy Man went down in a heap. Susan handed him the handcuffs, her eyes still glazed over. He rolled Piggy and put the cuffs on. Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder as police cars turned into the parking lot. “It’s okay now, Susan. It’s over.” He kept repeating the words, trying to calm her. The sun had sunk below the horizon, its brilliant shades of reds, yellows, and oranges lighting the sky behind her. Putting an arm around Susan’s shoulders, he turned her from Piggy. “Look, the sun is setting. Everything’s going to be okay.” Susan blinked, then turned to look at Jake. And screamed.

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Samuel fell into her, his arms still cuffed behind his back. Off guard, Jake jumped away in reflex. Diving forward, he smashed into Samuel, wrestling him down to the ground. It was too late. Susan had grabbed Samuel as he fell, and there wasn’t a thing Jake could do as she was swept into another of her visions. “I’m telling. This time I’m telling. I mean it!” The boy backed into the living room wall,

his whole body trembling uncontrollably. Laughter followed him. “Oh, come on, Sammy, you say that every time.” Samuel shook his head as hard as he could. “This time I’m going to. It’s going to stop.” “What’s going to stop, Sammy boy?” The tall, black-haired man got up and sauntered around the couch. “You, touching me.” Samuel’s lips were trembling so hard that spit began to stream down the side of his mouth. “I’m telling mother.” His hands splayed out in front of himself as if to ward off the man, but he knew he could never stop him. “I’m telling mother, I’m telling mother.” The man mimicked in a high, whiney voice. “You are so pathetic, Sammy. So damned pathetic. Your parents think so, too, or they wouldn’t leave you home every day with me, now would they?” The man took another step forward to tower over the ten-year-old boy. “You’re such a little piggy, Sammy. Oink, oink, oink.” The man’s face leaned into the boy’s, his good-looking features a twisted mask. “Oink for me, Sammy the Piggy.” The man laid his hands on the wall on either side of the boy’s head. Samuel whispered, “No,” with the last bit of his willpower. The man’s hand, quick as a snake, grabbed Samuel’s scrotum and gave it a vicious tug. “Oink, or you’ll pay.” Samuel knew the price, had paid it before, so he did what he was told. But from somewhere hidden came a powerful calm, a new Samuel rising up. This Samuel knew what to do, would stop this man who was supposed to be his uncle, but had never treated him with anything but hatred. Samuel felt power well up within him, felt his strength doubling, tripling. And he knew what to do with a clarity of mind that he had never had before. So the new Samuel waited until it was over, doing what he was told for the last time, then went into the kitchen. Taking his mother’s biggest knife out of the block, he walked back into the living room, where his uncle was on the phone with one of his many women. “Yeah, babe, I’d love to come over tonight. You know I love watching you dance. You going to dance for me tonight?” He said it in the same voice he sometimes talked to Sammythe-Piggy in. His uncle had a date most nights of the week. The new Samuel knew his mother would never again have to worry about his uncle settling down, would never have to worry about him reaching his twenty-sixth birthday without finding that special someone. Because the new Samuel grabbed his uncle’s black

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hair, pulled his head to the back of the sofa with superhuman force, and slit his neck from one side to the other. The new Samuel paced slowly around the couch to smile at his uncle. “Oink,” new Samuel said. And then, watching the horror in his uncle’s eyes as he died, new Samuel said, “Oink,” thirty-nine more times, each time driving the knife into his chest to the hilt. His only thought to protect Susan, Jake punched the Pig Man in the face as hard as he could. He dragged him away, breaking his contact with Susan’s now motionless body. “Susan,” he said calmly, shaking her, trying to get some response. God only knew what she was seeing. Something terrible that would come back in her dreams. His heart turned over for her. Susan blinked as she regained consciousness and he lowered her to sit on the landing. After touching the pulse in her neck and finding it strong and steady, he squatted by the reviving Pig Man. Where in the hell did this guy get the strength? Putting a knee in his back where Jake knew it would hurt, he pinned the struggling man. “Jesus, this guy is like the Energizer Bunny,” he said to no one in particular. “Having problems, Detective Matherly?” Gordon’s voice drawled from behind him. “This seems to happen whenever you get to the scene before me.” “Shut up, Miles.” Jake looked over at Susan. “Are you okay?” “His uncle.” Her voice was dreamy and far away. “Jake, their uncle abused them when they were kids. They were alone with him after school and he abused them. He molested them both.” She shuddered. “Don’t think about it.” Jake’s only concern was for her. Screw the case. “Georgia told her brother that Robb was their uncle,” Susan went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “She’s sick, too, but she’s hiding it better than he is. She wanted Robb to leave her alone permanently.” “Why kill Daugherty then?” Gordon asked. He had taken out his notebook and started writing. “Georgia said it was a mistake. That Samuel thought he was Robb.” “That was one hell of a mistake,” Jake said, still pinning Samuel down with his knee. “Let’s get a search warrant for the apartment before we enter it.” Gordon flipped open his cell phone. “We want to do this one by the book.”

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Chapter Twenty-Two Days had passed since they’d caught the Apartment Slasher, but now it was Thursday evening, and Jake was coming over for a talk. Susan wasn’t sure how she felt about the word talk. It sounded ominous. She hadn’t seen him since three a.m. on Monday morning when he’d taken her home from the hospital, although he’d called her every day to see how she was doing. Their conversations had been reserved and short. He had seemed distracted, working on wrapping up his case, and she hadn’t helped matters by being all kinds of internally stressed about losing him. Every time she worked up the nerve to bring up their relationship, she chickened out. She just didn’t want it to be over. Not that they’d ever been officially dating, she reminded herself. They had only really had a string of the hottest sex known to man. Susan sighed. She wished it was as simple as just sex for her, but of course, she couldn’t do anything simple. She didn’t even know how he felt about her and she had to go and fall in love with him. Right now, she wished he’d arrive so whatever was going to happen, would happen. Picking up her phone, she dialed Nicole. “Nic, I need some cheering up.” “Sweetie! What’s wrong? Tell Nicole all.” Nicole’s voice was melodramatic on the other end of the phone. “I think my love interest is on his way over to give me the let’s-be-friends blow off.” “The detective?” Nicole’s voice became fierce. “How dare he! You’re the best thing for him, the asshole.” Susan laughed. “You don’t know that!” “I know you’re the best thing for any man, once you decide you want a man, that is.” Susan gave an over exaggerated sigh. “His loss, I guess.”

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“Damn straight, his loss!” Nicole’s voice became calm. “Still, you sound a lot more upset than you were when things went down the tubes with John Walters six months ago.” “John was an ass. I had to control myself from singing a round of ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’ when he dumped me that night.” “Guess I knew it wasn’t the real thing when you two never did the beast with two backs. How are you really doing with this?” Susan let the joking go out of her voice. “Like shit.” “That bad?” Sympathy poured over the phone line from her friend. “Yep. I’ve got it bad for him. I don’t honestly know if he’s going to show up here tonight to dump me or to ask me to be the mother of his children.” This got a laugh out of Nicole as Susan had known it would. “I wouldn’t write him off yet. He was amazing when he dealt with the whole Benny mess. He didn’t do that for me.” “He’s a cop. He did it because it’s his job.” “To get my purse back from Benny? Come on, Susan, use your head. He did it for you. By the way, thanks for keeping that to yourself. I don’t want anyone else to know I made a jerk out of myself again.” “You know I can keep a secret.” Susan paused, then made the offer she’d always held back. It took more courage than she’d expected, since she knew she could only make this offer if she was willing to share some of her own past, too. “If you ever want to talk about secrets, I’m here for you. You know that, don’t you?” Nicole paused. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that.” “I’m a good listener and whatever is said will be kept just between us.” “I trust you.” Nicole hummed. “On the very off chance that the detective does give you the old heave-ho, you want to get together for a good cry tonight?” “That would be just what the doctor ordered. Thanks, Nicole.” “Hey, what are friends for? And I can give you the latest installment of my crush on Charles Morton. His wife left him last weekend.” Charles Morton was one of the married partners in the firm. Nicole thought he was cute. Susan thought any new guy was an improvement over Benny. Charles might just be a good way to break her bad cycle. “So he’s up for grabs, huh?” “Oh, yes. Guess who got a phone call? You’ll have to wait until tonight for all the details, though.” “Now that will be worth waiting for. About seven o’clock? We can meet over here if you want.”

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“Sounds good. Call me to confirm if he decides to make the dumbest decision of his life.” Nicole paused before she hung up. “And Susan, it really is his loss if he does break up with you. Don’t forget that.” “I won’t,” Susan lied, and hung up the phone. She felt better having talked to Nicole. With an hour to go before Jake was supposed to arrive, Susan dumped out the sock drawer on her bed and began to match up pairs. She might as well do something useful while she waited for him. Picking up two white athletic socks that almost matched, she paused, feeling a presence at her back. He’d come early. She closed her eyes, everything inside her shivering just from standing across the room from him. “You’re never going to learn to lock your door, are you?” Jake asked from behind her. “Probably not.” She sighed softly, opening her eyes. It was true she wanted this relationship, but she would have him on her terms. Folding the socks in her hands, she turned, realizing her terms were that they would be equal in their feelings. He had to love her as much as she loved him or it wouldn’t work between them. Not with her visions lurking around, waiting to cause trouble. Just because she’d spent her life alone and isolated, didn’t mean she’d enter into a relationship if he wasn’t totally committed. He shook his head, giving her a put out look. “You’re in need of a keeper.” Hope bloomed in her chest. This didn’t sound like a man who planned to walk away. “And you are in need of a manners lesson. People don’t walk in uninvited to other people’s houses.” She raised her chin, willing to push him until he declared his true feelings. “Last time I looked, this was an apartment and when people are dating, they don’t have to knock.” His lips tipped into a teasing smile. Susan drew herself up, unwilling to let him take the easy way out. They were going to talk about this, all of this. Truth, no matter what the consequences. “I wasn’t aware that we were dating.” He rolled his eyes. “Oh God, don’t start this again.” “Start what?” “This ‘I’m not dating you’ thing. Of course we’re dating.” “Really? I thought dating meant seeing one another. You’ve been MIA this whole week.” She tried to keep the hurt out of her voice, but it was still there. Jake’s mouth dropped open. “I called you every night!” He strode across the room to loom over her. “And you were completely cold on the phone.” She liked that his instinct was to draw closer, not pull away, but he’d put distance between them this week and she had to know why.

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“I’ve been finishing up a murder case.” He paused, his face twisting as if he didn’t want to talk about what he planned to say next. “And I had something else I needed to take care of.” Gathering her courage, she laid it all out on the table. “We’ve never spoken about my gift and how you feel about it.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about your visions. It’s going to have to be something we work on because what I do for a living means that I see things that would give the average person nightmares. I don’t want to come home from work and pass that onto you by accident.” Susan’s mind was stuck in a circle. Why wasn’t he more upset about this? “Why aren’t you running from me?” He actually sounded like he was more worried about her visions effect on her, then the fact that she had them in the first place. He shrugged. “Why would I? I’ve been trying to date you for almost a year now. I just got you and as far as I’m concerned, I’m keeping you. We can work through all the issues if we both want this badly enough.” He didn’t understand the full ramifications of her gift. He couldn’t to be so flip. “You’re not going to be able to keep things from me.” “I don’t want to keep secrets.” Jake placed his hands on her shoulders and she felt a jolt. “Feel that? Every time, the electricity jumps like that between us.” He leaned down to meet her gaze without her having to strain her neck to look up at him. “What we have is so damned rare, Susan. It’s once in a lifetime. Your ability to true see is a minor bump in the road for us, compared to the upside.” Doubt flattened her happiness. “You say that now, but when I steal a memory from you that you don’t want me to have, you’ll change your tune.” “No, I won’t.” His voice held a finality in it that didn’t leave her any room to argue. “I want you to share it all. I only want to be careful I don’t hurt you in the process.” Could he really want her, visions and all? Doubt and hope swirled and fought within her. Suddenly, it was too much. She had to kiss him, had to press her lips to his, needing the contact so badly, it was like an ache riding inside her. Rising up on tiptoes, she balanced on his shoulders while placing her lips to his. He reacted instantly, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her tight against his chest. Deepening the kiss, his tongue brushed hers and she melted into him, loving the feel of him.

Answers! You need answers, not kisses. She tore herself away, pushing his shoulders to gain some space. “Stop. This thing between us can’t be only about sex.” “It’s not.” He sounded insulted. Well, let him be. She wasn’t going to keep sleeping with him instead of resolving their problems. “What did you have to take care of?”

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He took a giant step back, running his fingers through his hair, staring down at the socks scattered all over her bed. “You said no secrets.” He nodded. “I went to see my mother.” “Really!” Unable to help herself, she touched his arm and smiled, even though she knew he wasn’t happy about it. “That’s wonderful. How did things go?” He made a face and tipped his head from side to side. “Fair. It wasn’t one of those Oprah reunions, but we were civil to one another.” Happiness for him flooded through her. “Why did you change your mind about seeing her?” He met her gaze for the first time since they started talking about his mother. “I guess it was our conversation last weekend that did it. You made me realize that I had someone who cared about me that would be a part of my life if I’d just let her. So when she called for her monthly check-in, I didn’t hang up the phone. I took the day off yesterday and drove up to New York to have lunch with her.” “It’s a start.” Her heart soared. She felt sure his mother loved him and could offer some healing for what had happened. “Will you be spending the holidays with her?” He held up a hand, panic flitting through his gaze. “Whoa now. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Just because I met her for lunch does not mean I’ve forgiven her.” She caught his hand. “But holidays are times you spend with family. You know. Christmas? Thanksgiving? I haven’t spent Christmas with family since I went to college.” Maybe if things worked out with Jake, she’d have someone to spend them with this year. Jake disengaged himself from her grasp. “Susan. I’m not going to change my life over one lunch we had together. I’m only exploring possibilities right now.” He looked around, obviously dying for a subject change. “What are you doing? Cleaning out your sock drawer?” “Yes.” The loss of his touch hurt her. He didn’t do it on purpose. He’s on overload and needs some space from the subject of his mother. She understood that. Dealing with the past was a painful and slow process. She needed to bring them back on point. “We’re not talking about my socks right now. We were talking about our relationship -- or lack thereof.” Jake looked up from his sock musings, his gaze sharpening. “I’m not going there again with you. We are dating. Period. End of story.” “I’m not going to be bullied by you.” Even if he was saying what she wanted to hear. “You can’t just decree something and have it be law.” He closed the gap between them. “Susan, I’m sick of you ducking me. I’m sick of you trying to distance yourself from me.” In one fluid motion, he lay down on the bed and pulled her off balance so she toppled beside him.

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“I’m not trying to distance myself.” She had been, but not anymore. Rolling on top of her, he framed her face with his hands and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “From the moment I met you, you’ve been running,” he said, his words gentle. “Well, you caught me. You know my greatest secrets, there’s nothing left to hide. But I want a partnership, Jake, not just great sex. Friends and lovers.” His deep brown eyes studied her face, searching for something, she wasn’t sure what. Then he kissed her again, running his hand down her side. Her breath caught, desire zipping along all her nerve endings. An ache started deep in her core. Just that fast, she wanted him badly. “We should finish our conversation,” she whispered, but her voice was weak. “You can’t fight it,” he warned. “Believe me, I’ve tried. Let’s give in. We have the rest of the night to talk, but I need you now.” “Yes,” she heard herself say. “Let’s.” He grinned as he sat up and stripped off his shirt. She reached for him but he caught her hand before she could touch his chest. “Don’t touch me or I’ll lose my mind. I’m in the mood to see all of you and not rush.” Her thoughts hazed with desire as he stripped off her clothes, then turned her onto her stomach. Then he propped himself onto his side and used his free hand to caress down her back. Dropping her head onto the pillow, she shut her eyes and, for the first time in her life, just let herself experience the moment. It was amazing, the feel of the rough skin of his hand working down her back. Tingles raced along her body, ripping a soft moan from her. He smoothed down her back, over her buttocks, down her thighs, all the way to her toes. “So beautiful,” he murmured. She’d never felt beautiful with anyone else. With other men, she’d spent the time worried about her gift, shutting herself up so tightly, she felt almost nothing. His lips followed, working down her spine in small kisses. “I love the dimples in your lower back.” He kissed them, then licked, sending shivers all along her body. Lethargy stole over her, draining her energy so that she was only a mass of feelings. His lips traveled along the side of her hip, before he pulled away. In a haze of desire, she watched him shed the rest of his clothes through half-lidded eyes. Then he covered her body with his, rubbing along her skin as he moved behind her. “All this touching, all the electricity between us. I knew it would feel this amazing.” His voice fell into a deep murmur, the pressure of his body light, since he held himself in a semi-pushup.

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With his body covering hers, she felt loved and sheltered. As he rolled her over, she smiled lazily, every muscle relaxed, even with the desire running through her with an intensity she’d never felt before. “Feel good?” he asked, ducking his head to place a whisper-kiss on her nipple. “Oh yes.” She hummed in pleasure, smoothing her fingers through his hair. “God, I love you.” The words left her mouth before she could stop them. She froze. He lifted his head, meeting her gaze, his brown eyes deep and almost fierce. “I’m glad, because I’ve loved you for a long time. We can make this work, Susan love. Just trust me not to hurt you. I’m not your mother.” She took a deep breath, then let it out, before nodding. He was right. She had to let go of her past betrayals if she’d ever truly trust him. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.” And with that promise, he kissed her, sealing his words. The declarations seemed to free them from their slow exploration. Twining her arms around his neck, she grabbed his hips with her legs, pulling his body tight into hers. He moaned and said something that sounded like, “Slow.” “Too late. Now, now, I need you now.” She had to connect them together and release some of the emotion rising inside her. Shifting, she slid his cock into place, tilting her hips so his head entered her. “Can’t fight it,” he said, his words an apology. Then he thrust deep, bringing them together almost violently. “Look at me,” he ordered. “I want to see your face when you climax.” She met his gaze, feeling off-kilter and exposed. But then his rhythm caught her up and she was meeting every thrust with her hips, building higher and higher, staring into the depths of his soul.

He loves me. He loves me. Here was a man who was worth risking herself for. And with that thought, she climaxed, the pleasure shuddering through her so intense and right, he toppled over the edge with her, jerking with the intensity of his own release. “He loves me,” she whispered to herself as she tried to catch her breath. “I’m crushing you.” “No,” she said, not wanting him to leave her. He rolled off her and pulled her onto his chest anyway. “The next time I catch you forgetting to lock your door, I’m moving in to keep a better eye on you.” Susan’s stomach did a flip. “You want to move in with me?” He tipped his head for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I think I do.”

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“You can’t be serious.” Joy had her stomach turning cartwheels, but she cautioned herself as she rose up on an elbow to study his face. “Of course I’m being serious. Scratch that. I want you to move in with me.” He scowled, glancing around as if he found her apartment distasteful. “This place is tiny.” “My apartment has character.” She hummed, then admitted her recent decision. “But there are ghosts here. I was planning on moving, but I’d rather not go to your apartment. It’s all white walls and boring carpet.” Hardwoods and brick were more her taste. “When’s your lease up?” Susan thought about living with Jake. Waking up every day to see him there beside her. Sharing meals. Talking about mundane things such as what happened at work. Making love. Having his stuff all over her apartment. And she knew, in that moment, that it would be wonderful. It sounded perfect and she wanted it more than she had wanted anything in her life. “Not until March,” she answered him with a smile. “Mine’s up in December, so it looks like we live here until March and then we’ll go looking for a bigger place.” He’d said he loved her and wanted to live with her. All the lonely nights of her life dominated her past, but this could be her future if she took a chance. “You’re crazy, you know that?” Laughter bubbled up amongst the joy. He grinned. “Yep.” Then he turned serious. “Are you pregnant?” “No.” A strange pang of loss filtered through her. She hadn’t known just how much she wanted children until that moment. Maybe she wouldn’t have them, because she might pass on her gift, but just the possibility filled her with hope. Jake nodded to himself. “We’ll have kids later, then.” He reached beneath him and pulled out a bunch of socks with a grin, tossing them off the bed. Susan made herself blink a couple times to make sure she hadn’t dozed off and was dreaming. “I shouldn’t pass my visions to another person.” She had to warn him, even if she didn’t want to bring them down from their high. “You grew up with no one to help you, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s up to you to figure out how to control your gift so our children will have you to guide them.” He raised an eyebrow. “So I was thinking we could experiment with it.” “Experiment?” The man was insane. He wanted to play around with something she had tried to deny for ten years. He wanted her to use her gift on purpose. Again. “Jake, this isn’t some toy you can play with.” “Of course it isn’t. But I don’t know how you can write it off as all bad if you haven’t even explored fully what it is.” He pulled her back on top of him. “Why is it that you only see things that are bad? Don’t you think you could see good things, too?” Her mind started churning through the possibilities. “Like what?”

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“Like lust, for example. Couldn’t you see a really highly charged sex scene? I mean, let’s say I thought about that little episode we had last Friday right here in this bed. Could you see it?” Susan looked down at her hands, thinking about the secrets she’d stolen from her mother. What if she saw them, not because of her mother’s guilt as she had thought, but because her mother’s emotions were charged with desire? How crazy would that be? The thought creeped her out. She wasn’t sure she wanted to think about her mother lusting after anyone. “It would make sense that I could, I guess.” He pulled her into a seated position. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m thinking about a little scene that is way sexy. You touch me and drop your shields.” He stared at her, all expectation. She took his hands in hers. Closing her eyes so she wouldn’t see his face, since he was starting to embarrass her, she dropped her shields and saw.

They were in her bedroom, the only light streaming in from the living room. He wanted the woman on the bed more than he had ever wanted anyone else in his life. He wanted to spread her legs and ram into her as hard as he could. He wanted to feel her come around his cock, hear her scream his name again and again. He kissed her stomach, thinking about their child that might even now be growing there. It made him hard and heavy but he ignored his own needs, glancing up at her face to see her reaction. God, she was beautiful. As his mouth traveled over her hips, he could tell she was completely aroused. He widened her legs and breathed in her scent, loving the fact that she smelled slightly of him now -- that their scents were beginning to become one. As if he had marked her as his. He lowered his mouth to run his tongue inside the folds of her most feminine place, loving that she arched for him. He kept the pace deliberately slow as he began to lick her clitoris, holding off her climax as long as he could, wanting to bring her maximum satisfaction. He was so turned on, he almost climaxed when she did, surprising himself with his lack of control. Holding her hips still, he ran his tongue across her one last time, reveling in her taste and the involuntary jump her body gave as it remembered the pleasure he had just given it. Then he crawled up her body and rammed himself home. His. She was his. Susan had never seen a vision in which she was a participant and that alone made the experience different from any other that she had ever had. She experienced all the things Jake felt, intertwined with her own emotions. Opening her eyes slowly, she was fully turned on by knowing that he found her beautiful and had been aroused from giving her pleasure. “God, I love you,” she said, the words escaping without her even being aware she had said them. They felt right on her lips.

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Jake leaned over, his brown eyes turning amber with his desire. “Good, because I love you.” His lips brushed hers. “I want you to sleep every night curled up beside me. I want you to love me forever. You are the woman for me, Susan. I knew it eleven months ago when we first met.” Her stomach flip-flopped, her mind bouncing with joy. He loved her, all of her, including her so-called gift. He loved her so much that he had given her the first positive experience she’d ever had with her true seeing. She felt like he’d released her from a curse. Only Jake had ever cared enough to try. “Want to move in tonight?” she asked, still not sure if he’d been serious. Jake nodded. “Okay.” “It’s official then. We have graduated from a thing, to dating.” She needed to hear him say the words. “No, Susan. We passed dating and are now officially courting.” “What?” Jake grinned. “That’s Gordon’s word. I think it’s in between dating and marriage.” Susan thought about it for a few minutes and knew he was right. They had something here that was more than mere dating. “Courting sounds good to me.” “Come on.” Jake pulled her out of bed. “You can help me pack up my stuff at my place.” “Tonight?” “I’m not having you change your mind. We’re bringing the first load over here tonight. I can take the drawer you emptied out for me.” He grinned at her, delighted by her startled reaction. “Get dressed. We’ve got work to do.” “Wait,” she said, reaching for the phone beside her bed. “I need to call Nicole.” “Why?” Susan felt her face turn red, but tried to hide it. “We had plans tonight.” Jake looked exasperated. “You already had plans with me.” “I had backup plans with her, in case you dumped me.” She grinned at him as he threw up his hands. “What am I going to do with you?” Her face grew serious as their gazes locked. “Love me?” “Count on it,” Jake said.

Leigh Wyndfield Leigh Wyndfield spends her free time reading, working out (well, she did yesterday, anyway), and avoiding the prying eyes of her outrageously nosy neighbors. Unable to find romances that take place on other worlds, she started writing her own. Her books have won awards and finaled in Golden Quill, the Passionate Plume, More Than Magic, the Holt Medallion, and the Dream Realm Award. Her novel, In Ice, was nominated by RT Magazine for Best Erotic Romance, won a PRISM award, and the Write Touch Readers Award!

Romantic Times calls her work, “Engrossing, enthralling and entrancing.” Check out Leigh’s website at www.leighwyndfield.com.