LITMIR.BIZ

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of the apartment. He focused on a big guy across the street. The man wore a blue-and-white tracksuit and had a pair of binoculars trained on Lauren’s front windows. Marco moved closer to the window and raised the blinds. The big guy didn’t move. Marco glared. No reaction from the guy in the tracksuit. He might have been a mannequin, except they didn’t make mannequins that burly, and after a few seconds, the watcher reached up to scratch his ear.

      Marco moved quickly down the hall to Lauren’s bedroom and stopped in the doorway, stunned at the sight of her up to her elbows in lace and satin. She’d apparently dumped the contents of her dresser drawers on the bed and was sorting through the pile of panties, bras, stockings, negligees and who knew what other items of feminine apparel.

      She glanced over her shoulder at him. “It was easier to just dump everything and sort through them this way.” She grabbed up a handful of items and danced over to an open suitcase in the dresser and dropped them inside, then spent some time arranging them, smoothing them out and humming to herself.

      “There’s a man standing out front, watching your apartment,” Marco said. “He’s not even trying to hide it. He has this huge pair of binoculars, like a bird-watcher would use.”

      “Maybe he is a bird-watcher.” She giggled, a high-pitched, unnatural sound.

      “Come look and tell me if you know him.”

      “All right.”

      She glided down the hall ahead of him, still humming, and went to the window. “Oh, yes, I know him.” She waved like someone greeting a friend at the airport.

      “How do you know him?” Marco asked.

      “He delivered that package.” She waved idly toward the box on the table.

      “All right. Go ahead and finish packing. We should leave soon.”

      “Yes, I’ll do that. I have a gorgeous new dress. I was in the mall yesterday and saw it and just had to have it. I’ll take it in case we go someplace nice.”

      Marco frowned. “Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

      Her smile didn’t waver, though to him it seemed forced. “Why wouldn’t I be feeling all right?”

      “You’ve been under a lot of stress.” He spoke carefully, watching her eyes. Her gaze shifted around the room, as if frantically searching for something. “Most people would be anxious in a situation like this.”

      “Yes. I am anxious.” She twisted her hands together. “I just... I’d love to go for a run now. Burn off some of this extra energy.” She turned to a dresser and began pulling out exercise tops and shorts, adding them to the pile of clothing on the bed.

      Now was not the time for a run. He had to get her away from here, away from the guy in the parking lot, to some place safer. “Would you like me to call Sophie?”

      “No! No, don’t call Sophie! She’s always so worried, worried I’m going to go off the deep end or do something stupid. Something...crazy.” She whispered the last word, standing still with a tank top dangling from one hand.

      “You’re not crazy.” He kept his voice calm in the face of the agitation rolling off her in waves. After he’d met her, after he carried her in his arms out of the collapsed mine on Richard Prentice’s estate, he’d gone online and done some reading on bipolar disorder. He’d learned that stress and even variations in routine could trigger a manic episode. Lauren’s life had been nothing but stress these past months, and she had no more routine—no job or real home or any certainty about the future.

      “Maybe...maybe I should call my doctor.” She looked at the clothes piled on the bed and the open suitcase. “I took my medication,” she said softly. “I always do, even though, sometimes, I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”

      “Maybe the medication just needs...adjusting.”

      She nodded. “Right. I...I’ll call him.”

      He waited in the bedroom while she went into the living room. He wondered if he should remove the clothes from the bed—pack for her. But no. That was too personal. Too patronizing, even.

      He backed out of the room and rejoined her as she was hanging up the phone. “I talked to the nurse,” she said. “She suggested I take more of one of my pills, and she’s calling in another prescription I can take if I need to.”

      He nodded. “Do you need anything from me? Help with packing? Something to eat?”

      “No, I’m good. I’ll just, uh, finish up back here.”

      “I’ll keep an eye on our friend.”

      “Friend?”

      He nodded toward the parking lot. “The bird-watcher.”

      She laughed again, and the sound continued all the way down the hall. The sound worried him a little, but it also made him angry. Why did such a beautiful, vibrant woman have to be plagued with emotions that veered so easily out of control? Why was she at the mercy of a disease she hadn’t asked for and didn’t want? He’d spent his life fighting off physical enemies, first in a street gang, then the military, now as a law enforcement officer. But what could he do to help her?

      * * *

      THE MEDICATION BEGAN to work quickly, a numbing fog slipping over the anxiety and agitation that were the first signs of a climb toward mania. Lauren hated this lethargy and not feeling as much as she dreaded the extreme highs or lows of her disease. Why couldn’t she just be normal?

      She finished packing her suitcase, stuffing in clothes without care, putting off having to go back into the living room and face Marco. This hadn’t been a bad episode. She hadn’t burst into song or taken off her clothes or made a pass at him—all things she’d done before her diagnosis had provided an explanation for her bizarre behavior. But she’d waved her underwear around in front of him, and laughed at the idea of a man stalking her.

      He was so solemn and unemotional. What must he think of a woman who, even on her best days, tended to feel things too deeply?

      In the end, she didn’t have to go to him; he came to her. “Are you ready to go?” he asked. “We can stop and get some lunch on the way.”

      “Sure.” She zipped the suitcase closed and looked at the disarray of the room.

      “It’s all right,” he said. “You can clean this up later.” He picked up the suitcase. “Do you have everything you need?”

      “Yes.” She grabbed the two pill bottles from the top of the dresser and cradled them to her chest. “I’m ready.”

      She put the pill bottles in her purse and followed him to the door. Sophie had rented the apartment when she’d decided to relocate to Montrose to be with Rand, and Lauren only stayed there because she had no place else to go. She couldn’t claim to be attached to the place, but still, it felt bad to be leaving so soon, to face more uncertainty.

      Deep breath. Center. She closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose, the way the therapist at the psychiatric hospital had shown her. She could deal with this.

      When she opened her eyes, Marco was watching her. She saw no judgment in his calm brown eyes. “Are you ready?” he asked.

      She nodded. “Is the bird-watcher still out there?”

      “He left a few minutes ago. I guess he’d done his job.”

      “What was his job, do you think? Besides delivering the package.”

      “He was sending the message that you were being watched. His job was to intimidate you.”

      “The note did that.”

      “I guess Prentice likes to cover all the bases.”

      “What about the package?” She looked around for the creepy gift. “I don’t want Sophie finding it when she comes back.”

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