LITMIR.BIZ

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by the office tomorrow when you get off work, and I’ll bring you back to look at those mug shots. Now let me drive you home. You’re not the only one who needs a shower and bed. It’s been a long night.”

      Not even a cup of herbal tea helped Terri relax into sleep. Too much had happened in the hours just past, and her mind and emotions struggled to cope with them. Attempted rape, not once but twice. She’d stabbed a man. Every time she remembered that, the way it had felt, the realization of what she had done, she shuddered again.

      Nor did it help that she had to get to work around ten. The idea of only a couple of hours of sleep seemed to make it harder yet to close her eyes.

      And then there was Jude Messenger, private investigator. Eyes as dark as the night he had emerged from, turning an odd shade of dark gold when he stepped into the light. A man only slightly taller than average, but somehow seeming much, much larger. That voice of his when he’d told those men to go. If she hadn’t been paralyzed with fright, she probably would have obeyed that order herself.

      The incredible speed with which he had approached her, so fast it had almost seemed he was there picking her up before she had seen him move. But of course that was impossible. Absolutely impossible. Her recollections must be marred by the fear that had been raging in her. The adrenaline.

      The man had rescued her, yet he had left her feeling supremely uneasy, anyway. And she couldn’t really understand why. His office was normal enough. His assistant Chloe was perfectly normal. Even Garner, that handsome young man, had seemed typical, even though she got the impression Jude considered him to be some kind of plague.

      So what was it about Jude Messenger?

      She lay on her side, keeping the locked door in sight, making sure that even if she shut her eyes, they would open trained on the only place from which a threat could come.

      Somehow she couldn’t feel safe. Was she really worried that Sam might carry out his threat to kill her? Or was it just a holdover from the earlier hours? She didn’t even want to turn off the small lamp by the bed, although sunlight had long since begun peeking around the edges of the curtained window above the bed.

      And the feeling she had right now reminded her all too much of her childhood, when fear had kept her awake countless nights, fear of something she could not see, could only sense and finally, to her horror, hear. The haunting. But this was different. Surely?

      Yet, in some way she felt as if she had brushed up against that evil again during the past night.

      A shudder passed through her, and she forced herself to breathe deeply and slowly, calming herself. That evil had been gone from her life for sixteen years now. There was absolutely no reason to think she’d ever encounter it again.

      But her thoughts refused to be entirely corralled and kept returning to Jude. He, too, made her uneasy. He might be a little … different, but he had saved her from those beasts, and had brought her to a safe place where Chloe had become an instant friend. Then he had even gone so far as to accompany her to the police.

      So what was it about him? She had to admit that along with the uneasiness he made her feel, she also found him undeniably attractive. Maybe thirty, she thought. Maybe a bit older. Something in his eyes, when they turned golden, made her think he was older.

      He was definitely handsome. No, not exactly that. Good-looking, yes, but he was even more attractive in another way. Something visceral in her responded to him. Maybe that was what made her so uneasy.

      It had been a long time, a decade or more, since simply seeing a man had been enough to make her aware of fluttery, eager femininity. Of desire. And she’d been aware of it every single second in his presence, despite everything that had been happening.

      Pretty amazing, actually, but pretty unnerving, too. Even his gruffness and impatience hadn’t put an end to it.

      She closed her eyes and gave up, hugging the unexpected, nearly forgotten feeling somewhere deep inside. No one would ever know, and it was nice to realize she could still feel that way. At twenty-nine, she had thought she would no longer feel those things. Too many other things, adult things, kept getting in the way.

      But somehow the mere sight of Jude Messenger had swept away the layers of the years and made her young enough in some way to just respond to man’s appearance and voice, and get a thrill from it.

      Kind of neat, actually, now that she had figured it out.

      Satisfied she had identified the source of at least part of her uneasiness, she curled more comfortably on the bed and finally let sleep crawl closer.

      Surely her uneasiness had nothing to do with that haunting when she was a child, no matter how it felt. How could it? It had been so long ago.

      No, of course that had nothing to do with it. She was just feeling uneasy because it had been so long since she’d felt such a powerful attraction. She didn’t want that now, didn’t have time for it.

      All in all, though, it had been one heck of a night. And at last her eyes fluttered closed.

      The Medical Examiner, Steve Crepo, sent Terri home a little early when he heard the reason for her obvious fatigue. Her usual shift ran from ten to eight four days a week, with a brief lunch break. “You should have just called in and explained,” he told her.

      “I’m the newbie. Besides, honestly, I didn’t want to spend all day thinking about last night.”

      He nodded understandingly over his half-rimmed eyeglasses. A little plump and balding, he had a kindly face which belied the strict way he ran the M.E.’s office. He did have the somewhat disconcerting habit of treating the cadavers as if they might still be alive, and referring to them by name rather than number. It was almost as if he saw himself running a surgical suite rather than a morgue.

      In one way Terri liked that about him. In another she found it discomfiting, because his idiosyncrasy had already begun to chip away that carefully trained distance she had been taught to place between herself and the dead. She found herself on guard, for fear she might lose objectivity.

      Although there were inevitably cases where objectivity went out the window, terrible cases, mostly those involving small children. Then anger and horror often overrode all self-protective mechanisms.

      “I understand,” he told her now. “But remember, if you’re overtired, you can make mistakes. We can’t have that.”

      “No, sir.”

      He smiled. “So go home and rest up. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

      She showered and changed back into street clothes before leaving, washing the smell of death out of her very pores. That odor clung and sometimes she wasn’t sure that even three shampooings got it all out of her hair.

      Outside the sun hadn’t quite yet set, and that for some reason made her think of Jude Messenger. A man confined to the hours of darkness, who had nevertheless managed to cobble together a useful life, and even, apparently, some very loyal friends, to judge by Chloe.

      Remembering Chloe’s promise to accompany her to look at mug shots, and feeling an oddly strong compulsion to follow through even though she was exhausted, she got off the bus near Jude’s office and rang the bell.

      Chloe’s voice greeted her. “Messenger Investigations.”

      “Hi, Chloe, it’s Terri Black.”

      “Hey, Terri. Come on in.”

      She walked down the now-familiar dark hallway as Chloe opened the door and leaned out.

      “How are you doing?” Chloe asked.

      “I’m tired but fine. I guess we should go to the precinct and look at mug shots, but I can barely see straight.”

      Chloe laughed, inviting her in, then closing the door behind them. “I slept most of the day,” she volunteered. “Jude’s not going with us. Says he’ll get to it later. Did you want to see him, too?”

      Terri

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