LITMIR.BIZ

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finally made it out of the alley, and she jogged to the nearest streetlight, basking in the glow of its warm yellow circle of light. People could see her. She was safe now.

      And then she felt the breath of a stranger on the back of her neck, as someone behind her whistled “Strangers in the Night.”

      That was it. The next level.

      Emma dropped her bags, her groceries spilling and rolling onto the sidewalk at her feet. Screaming “Fire!” as she’d been taught in the free self-defense class on campus last semester, she threw her weight forward, running toward the front walkway of her house, just ahead. Something rippled in the darkness, in front of the fat little palm tree planted near the street, and she didn’t know whether it was a person, an animal or just her imagination. She prayed it was something that would save her. “Please,” she breathed.

      The silk scarf she’d wrapped loosely around her neck slid smoothly across her skin and fell away—whether of its own accord or because someone had pulled it, she couldn’t say. Quelling the urge to look behind her, she kept running in her torturous heeled boots, scrabbling through her purse for that damned whistle on her key chain. She reached deep inside her for one last burst of energy, just enough to live through this…

      Then she tripped.

      Time slowed to a crawl as the ankle that had buckled earlier gave out once more. It was almost as if she were floating above her body, watching herself stumble, scream, fall. Watching her pursuer pull a Taser from the waistband of his grimy jeans. Watching herself scuttle backwards on her heels and elbows like a pathetically small and scared crab.

      The moonlight glinted off the Taser above her. Attack. Immobilize. Isolate. The words of the self-defense instructor came back to her with stark clarity. The pavement cut into the palms of her hands. The sounds of cars whirring along the nearby streets and highways mingled with dance music and barking dogs. The breeze blew her hair into her eyes. And Emma waited, not moving, not blinking, for the man charging toward her to do all of the above.

      His attack never came. He charged right past her, toward the squat trunk of the short, leafy palm tree in front of her home, several feet away. The darkness rippled again, and a second man erupted out of the tree’s shadow, chopping his hands so both thumbs hit either side of her would-be attacker’s wrist. The Taser flew into the air, landing harmlessly a few feet away from her. Emma scuttled sideways crab-style on her hands and heels until she could reach out and grasp it by its thick plastic handle. She wasn’t sure how to use it, but at least it was in her hand and not anyone else’s.

      The two shadows circled each other slowly, one with his hands clenched into fists, and the other assuming a vague, martial arts-looking stance. The one with the fists—the Sinatra freak—swung wildly, and the other man curved his body into a bow, effectively dodging the blow. He followed defense with attack, delivering a well-controlled blow to the attacker’s temple with the back of his fist. A lightning-fast punch to the stomach, knee to the head and swirling roundhouse kick to the chest, and it was all over. Her former pursuer slumped to the ground, unconscious.

      Emma zapped him with the Taser anyway. Or tried to. She thought she’d missed, but then the man’s body jerked upward and he went still. Whether he’d been intentionally following her or not, she had a great story for the next Take Back the Night rally on campus.

      “Are you all right?” the other man asked her, his face obscured by the shadows. He held out a hand to her, and she grasped it, allowing him to pull her off the pavement to a standing position.

      “I’m fine,” she gasped. “Thank you.” She glanced briefly at her pursuer, who lay spread-eagle on his back, groaning like a child.

      “Get inside.”

      Emma squinted into the darkness, wanting very much to get a look at the man who might have saved her. “Who are you?” she asked.

      But all around her was darkness, and her rescuer was gone. A handful of dry leaves blew around her ankles in a crackling dance, and when she looked at the ground where her pursuer had fallen, she saw that he’d disappeared, too.

      In the distance, she heard the sound of someone whistling, “Strangers in the Night.”

      Chapter Two

      “Both of them? Gone? Even after you’d zapped that guy?”

      “Pretty much.” Emma pulled her reading glasses off her face and tossed them carelessly on one of the neatly stacked term paper monoliths on her desk.

      “Creepy,” replied Celia Viramontes, St. Xavier University’s now off-duty head librarian. “But let’s go back to your mystery man. You never got a good look at his face?”

      Emma shook her head. “He just swooped in, saved my life—sort of, I think, depending on the actual motives of the whistling man, which are, at the moment, a mystery—and then, poof.” She flicked her hands in the air to demonstrate said “poof.” “He’d disappeared.”

      “Wow.” Celia swung her legs up and thunked her Betsey Johnson sandals on a rare clean corner of Emma’s tidy but always covered desk, tugging open one of the buttons on the wine-red jacket of her fall suit. “That’s amazing.”

      Emma leaned back in her chair until the hinges squeaked and gave her best friend a look that had sent many a student cowering back to their dorm rooms. “I hate it when the freshmen start researching the Romantics. You get sappy.”

      Impervious to “the look,” Celia ignored her. “And what were you doing walking alone at night with serial killers on the loose?”

      That made Emma sit up. “Serial killers?”

      Celia rolled her eyes. “Hijole, don’t even tell me you haven’t heard about what’s been going on in this country? There are approximately thirty-five to fifty serial killers at work across the nation at any given moment. Do you ever watch the news? Pop your addled professorial brain out of the 18th century every so often?”

      “TV rots your brain.” She paused. “Except for reality shows, which are often very deep commentaries on human relationships in the 21st century.”

      Celia snorted. “Riiiiiight. Pick up a newspaper, then?”

      Emma shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Umm…”

      “You know, living in the now for at least a few minutes a day can be good for your health. You can’t just completely close yourself off like this.” Celia reached forward and plucked Emma’s glasses off the stack of papers from which they were threatening to slide off. She produced a case from a nearby drawer and neatly stuffed the spectacles inside. “You see where that gets you,” she wagged the case at Emma. “Nearly assaulted in a dark alley by a psycho, that’s where. You’re going to be thirty-five tomorrow. You should know better.”

      “I’m not closed—”

      “You are so,” Celia interrupted, then threw her hands up in disgust. “It’s a good thing you weren’t shuffling around with your nose in a book down that alley as usual, or you’d have been toast.”

      “I do not shuffle,” Emma objected.

      Placing the glasses carefully on top of a short mahogany bookshelf, Celia rose from her chair and smacked her palms against the shiny wooden surface of Emma’s desk. “You, my dear, are Rut Girl to that guy’s Mystery Man,” she announced.

      “Rut Girl!”

      “You teach your classes and spend the rest of your time grading papers and watching out for your mom, all sprinkled in with the occasional need to risk your life running errands in the wee hours of the night. I mean, I know you’re sometimes restoring that old house of yours, which is cool, because you’ve got that Home & Garden thing going on and it’s good to have hobbies, but get a life!” Straightening up, Celia tugged on one of the tight black curls that swirled and bobbed about her head and surveyed the room. “I know things with your mom have been tough, but you need time for you, too. You know, it’s like

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