LITMIR.BIZ

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her leaky toilet. She licked her finger and pressed it to the seam to catch the last salty potato crumbs.

      It was only the late hour that made her notice the silence, that made her feel so alone.

      Jarek’s car swooped onto the lake bridge north of Eden and over a sea of mist. His eyeballs were gritty. A headache had been building at the base of his skull since the radio call that jarred him awake almost half an hour ago.

      As a rookie detective, Jarek had learned to go for days without much sleep. His new schedule gave him hours alone on a brand-new, super firm, double-wide mattress. But for the past three nights, he hadn’t slept so well. Maybe it was the new job.

      Or maybe it was the woman. Tess DeLucca.

      Should he have called her?

      She’d been crisp and professional yesterday when she phoned the station to set up this morning’s interview. Jarek lifted a hand from the steering wheel to rub the back of his neck. She was going to be really ticked if he blew her off. But right now her feelings were not his top priority.

      Besides, she was probably still sleeping, he thought, and then had to push away an inconvenient image of her dark hair and ivory skin against the white sheets of his bed.

      He had enough trouble already.

      The early-morning sun barely cleared the pines. Jarek followed the hidden shoreline past the gated driveway of the grand old Algonquin Hotel, heading toward the Bide-A-Wee vacation cottages, relying on the police scanner and his own imperfect knowledge of the town. He missed Chicago’s numbered grid.

      Bud Sweet should have called him, damn it.

      But even without coordinates, Jarek found the scene of the crime without any trouble at all.

      His mouth compressed as he took in the stretch of road. From the look of things, he was about the only person in town Sweet hadn’t called. If some enterprising burglar decided to hold up Main Street this morning, the downtown merchants were out of luck. Vehicles spilled along the asphalt under the pines. Yellow tape meandered in a haphazard rectangle around a white Honda Civic with Illinois plates. Red and white lights rotated and flashed from three patrol cars, two EMS vans, and—Holy St. Mike, was that a hook-and-ladder truck?

      Jarek pulled his radio car in thirty yards behind the mess and parked on the shoulder. As he got out of the car, he saw a woman pressed against the yellow tape, bright and exotic looking against a background of dark uniforms.

      His body reacted with quick enthusiasm.

      Tess.

      Jarek groaned mentally. With the exception of Bud Sweet, he couldn’t think of anyone he’d like less to find at a crime scene.

      He approached the huddle of cars, automatically putting his hands in his pockets. Look, don’t touch. The pine needles edging the road muffled his footsteps.

      “Tess,” he said quietly.

      She started. Turned. Something in his chest tightened at the early-morning pallor of her face, the unexpectedly serious set of her mouth.

      “What are you doing here?” he asked.

      Her eyes, that had been wide and welcoming, narrowed. She hitched her purse strap on her shoulder. “Getting a story.”

      He felt a muscle jump in his jaw. He didn’t want her here. She would be upset. And he couldn’t be distracted.

      He looked past her to the white car, its doors gaping open. No body that he could see, but there were enough uniforms crowding around to block his view of the interior. “I don’t have time to talk to you now.”

      Tess shrugged. “Okay. I’ll wait. You can give me a statement later.”

      That wasn’t what he wanted, either. In his book, the public’s right to know took a poor second to the victim’s right to justice. But he couldn’t spare time to argue.

      He nodded once. “Suit yourself. But you need to step back from the tape. We have to worry about contaminating the crime scene.”

      She looked at him, and then at the chaos surrounding them, and then at him again. She raised her eyebrows.

      “Yeah, I can see how that would be a worry,” she dead-panned.

      He resisted the urge to grin. There was nothing funny about a screwed-up investigation.

      Behind Tess, Patrol Officer Stan Lewis—who should have gone off duty an hour ago—quit arguing with the paramedics around the ambulance to run over and consult with the mob around the car. Jarek shook his head. He didn’t care how hard up his officers were for excitement. A crime scene was not a Lions Club picnic.

      “Excuse me,” he murmured to Tess, and ducked under the police tape.

      Bud Sweet stood guard by the white car, flanked by all four members of the day shift and rookie patrolman Tim Clark. When the lieutenant saw Jarek, his face crumpled like a disappointed Santa Claus’s.

      Jarek let his gaze travel slowly along the lineup to the flashing police cars and the hook-and-ladder truck still half blocking the road.

      “Somebody want to tell me where the fire is?” he asked mildly.

      Sweet drew himself up. “No fire. We have a roadside assault. Clark here caught the call on an abandoned auto. Only when he came to investigate—”

      Jarek held up one hand to silence him. “Just a minute. How’s the victim?”

      “Stabilized,” Sweet said.

      “She’s still here?” Jarek couldn’t keep the anger from his voice.

      “I was going to question her.”

      Jarek pivoted and strode quickly to the nearest EMS van. A tiny uniformed technician moved to intercept him, her dark eyes snapping.

      “We need to get her to the hospital,” she said. “Now.”

      Jarek nodded. “Do it.”

      As the tech climbed into the ambulance, he swung in after her and crouched down next to the victim.

      Young. Blond. Pretty. Or she had been, before the attack. She was swaddled in blankets, an IV running into her arm.

      Jarek put his head down close to hers. “Honey, can you hear me?”

      She opened dull blue eyes. Whimpered.

      The tech reached around him to moor the cot.

      Jarek tried again. “Honey, do you know who did this to you?”

      “Police,” she whispered.

      His heart nearly broke for her. She was really young. Maybe eighteen? “Yeah, I’m with the police,” he said gently. “You’re safe now. Did you see who hurt you?”

      “We’ve got to go,” the tech interrupted.

      Jarek’s jaw set. He started to crawl out of the ambulance.

      “Lights,” the girl on the stretcher volunteered suddenly.

      Jarek leaned back in the open door. “What, honey?”

      “The car that stopped me.” She licked cracked lips. Blue eyes met his and then slid away. “Red lights. Like police.”

      Jarek felt as if he’d just been thumped in the stomach with his own nightstick.

      Red lights. Hell.

      He stood like a block while the female tech slammed the doors and the van drove away, its turret lights flashing. On Jarek’s home turf, in Chicago, the police were identified by blue flashers. Ambulances and fire trucks operated with red. But in Eden and for most of Illinois, all official emergency vehicles were identified by red flashing lights. Only volunteer firefighters used blue.

      And the victim in his most recent case had just identified her assailant’s car as showing red lights.

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