LITMIR.BIZ

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a lot more to caring for the sick than acing a few tests, that was for sure. Everyone told her how good she was at her job and it just swelled her with pride. It sure did.

      And she’d wanted to be at Laurelton General. It was totally perfect! It wasn’t too far away from her apartment, and if she wanted some fun, it was a straight shot into Portland on Highway 26, the Sunset Highway, on that last stretch before Portland city center, and when she needed to go to her job, well, that was a cinch. She was thinking about heading into Portland tonight. Lately she’d been going to that new nightclub in the Pearl that played hot music and served Caribbean martinis. Whew, they were powerful. She’d had to take a taxi home a few times, and she’d gone home with friends a few times, too. Slept with a couple of guys she shouldn’t have. Fuck-buddies. She shrugged her small shoulders. What’cha gonna do.

      As the wheels of her car ate up the miles, Inga shrugged those thoughts aside. She didn’t dwell on past mistakes or less than perfect decision-making. Life was good. She had her own place and her own life. The apartment was small: a studio with a partition. The only honest-to-goodness room was the bathroom. It at least had a real door. But the space was all hers and now, as she drove through the dark toward home, she felt a smile cross her lips despite the sudden rain that was peppering hard against her windshield.

      She switched on the wipers. Jesus, what a downpour. You’d think it was the middle of winter.

      The couple in the front farmhouse—her landlords—were kind of out of it, but they left her to her own devices. It was a little creepy sometimes because they’d given up farming years earlier and the property was overgrown, with a barn of gray, broken wood, that listed heavily. Beyond the house was a pasture of Scotch broom and weeds with a stand of firs ringing the northern end. Nothing had been taken care of for years.

      But her apartment was the best. The absolute best. And cheap!

      She hummed to herself as she pulled into the drive that ran alongside the farmhouse, tucking her Honda into the space provided for her at the north end of her apartment. She hurried up her front steps and unlocked the door. Her ears caught the sound of another vehicle pulling into the gravel drive, somewhere behind her on the route she’d just traveled. The farmers? There’d been lights on in the main house and she’d just assumed they were inside. Huh.

      She hesitated for a moment, listening. She thought she heard an engine, but the crunch of wheels on gravel was gone. Was someone waiting inside a car around the front of the farmhouse where she couldn’t see? Or was it just roadway sounds she’d let enter her mind?

      Inga let half a minute pass, then lost interest. She had places to go, people to see, dances to dance, drinks to knock back. Quickly she dropped her purse and coat on the single chair in the main room and tossed her keys on the kitchen counter. She then headed to the bathroom, turned on the shower and stripped off her uniform, letting it pool on the floor.

      There was a guy she’d met. Daniel. He was so damn hot, with longish dark hair that brushed over the collar of his shirt, and the most fabulous blue eyes. His physique was lean and taut, just the way she liked it. She’d wanted to moan when they’d slow-danced, his crotch pressed to hers. Whenever she saw him it was like he radiated the word sex. She didn’t care what it took, they were going to get together tonight. She’d find a way to go home with him. Her shift didn’t start tomorrow until eleven, so they had hours to kill making love.

      She practically gave herself an orgasm just thinking about him.

      She was toweling off when she heard the sound. A slight squeak of a soft-soled shoe. Her heart clutched. Had she locked the door? Had she? She could visualize her keys tossed on the kitchen counter, but she couldn’t remember twisting the lock.

      She was naked. Carefully, she stepped from the shower and pulled her uniform back over her head. Minutes passed. Finally her breathing turned to normal. There was no one out there. She was making it up. Living alone did that to her. Every noise sounded alien.

      Nevertheless, she grabbed a glass bottle of bath salts, tested its weight, then threw open the bathroom door, letting it bang hard against the wall, bath salts held high, ready to take on any danger.

      There was no one there.

      But her front door was unlatched and she quickly crossed the three steps to take care of that mistake.

      Her fingers were reaching for the lock when the front door suddenly slammed inward, sending her reeling. Inga staggered, her back hitting the opposite wall. A man stood in the aperture, his arms hunched forward, his head thrust toward her, breathing hard.

      She shrieked in fright, and then he was upon her, his hot breath in her face, his body big and hard, his hand grabbing hers and twisting her arm in one swift movement so the bath salts fell to the hardwood floor and shattered, little lavender grains of sand flying everywhere.

      “Witch,” he said, throwing her down so that her head cracked hard on the floor and she saw stars.

      “Wait…wait…I have money…please…”

      He was unbuckling his pants, humping hard against her. Determined. She knew he wasn’t hearing her.

      “Wait! Please…!”

      Part of her brain was disengaged. Her hand groped along the floor and landed on a sharp shard of glass. She grabbed it and jabbed forward, gouging the piece into his neck, pulling it out and stabbing again and again for all she was worth. She couldn’t let him win. Couldn’t!

      In surprise he jumped back, clapping a hand to his neck, his eyes wide. He looked kinda crazy to Inga’s way of thinking and he threw his head back and howled like a beast. Then he hit her in the face till she was dizzy. She flailed the glass at him again and again until he ripped it from her hand.

      She tried to scream but his hands circled her throat. “Burn in hell,” he growled through gritted teeth.

      Her fingers scrabbled to loosen his hold but it was no use. His grip was too tight, too hard. Pinpoints of light swirled in front of her eyes. She fought against the darkness but it was no use. The pressure wouldn’t give. Wouldn’t quit. She tugged and tugged at his hands but he was too strong. Her trachea was clamped shut. She couldn’t breathe!

      Couldn’t…breathe…

      Oh, God. Please…

      “Witch,” he spat and then Inga’s world circled and spun into blackness.

      Her last thought was a regret that she wouldn’t get to be with Daniel after all.

      Chapter Four

      Dr. Avery was in his fifties, with silver hair and black eyebrows and a stony expression that would have worried Gemma had she not learned that beneath his cold exterior he was a man who fiercely loved his wife and two sons, one of whom was engaged to be married. She knew he’d been in to see her before but she’d gained mostly impressions about him, about what he thought of her injuries, nothing concrete or substantial.

      This visit he’d removed the bandage over her eye, the white of which was half-filled with blood.

      “I look gruesome,” Gemma said.

      The doctor didn’t answer, just kept writing vigorously on her chart.

      She’d spent a restless night, waking up to shadowy thoughts and images, fading back to sleep, waking again with her heart pounding in fear and a sense that she needed to save someone, falling to unconsciousness once again, back to the fleeting ghosts and skittish memories.

      “Am I going to be able to leave today?” she asked a tad belligerently as the doctor just kept on writing.

      He didn’t look up.

      “When’s the wedding?” she tried, hoping small talk might get his attention if medicine wouldn’t.

      “What wedding?”

      “Your son’s.”

      His gaze slowly lifted from the chart, which he slid back into its holder at the foot of

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