by Linda Turner
How long she lay there like that, she couldn’t have said. The deep, dark silence of predawn enveloped her, surrounding her like a blanket, weighing her down. Exhaustion pulling at her, she should have slept, but her mind was too busy, her pulse too erratic. Restless, she couldn’t even seem to lie still. She was all over the bed, searching for a comfortable spot that just wasn’t there. Finally giving up in defeat, she rolled over with a disgusted sigh and stared up at the darkened ceiling. Maybe she should just forget the whole thing and get up.
When the phone on the bedside table suddenly rang, shattering the silence, she nearly jumped out of her skin. Instinctively, she reached for it without turning on a light, her heart slamming against her ribs. It was nearly five o’clock. Who could possibly be calling Blake at that hour of the morning? “Hullo?”
“Did I wake you?”
Blake’s deep, rough voice rumbled softly in her ear, as clear as if he was there in the bed beside her. With a will of its own, her heart slowly turned over and picked up speed. Just that quickly, she was smiling and couldn’t for the life of her say why. “Do you make a habit of calling women at five o’clock in the morning, Nickels?” she teased softly.
“Only ones who are sleeping in my bed when I’m not there,” he countered smoothly, chuckling. “You are in my bed, aren’t you?”
She should have said no, that she’d decided to just stay up the rest of what was left of the night, but the truth popped out in the most provocative way. “Yes, cowboy, I’m in your bed,” she murmured huskily. “I’ve been hugging your pillow for the last fifteen minutes trying to get to sleep.”
He groaned and admitted thickly, “I don’t think I needed to know that part, Jones. Now I won’t be able to sleep.”
She laughed, not the least bit repentant. “Don’t expect any sympathy from me. You’re the one who insisted on giving up your bed for me.”
“Only because I was worried about you. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Really,” she assured him. “Anyway, if you want to worry about someone, you’d better worry about yourself. Once word gets out on the street that you’ve got a knight-in-shining-armor complex, you’re going to have damsels in distress from all over the city beating a path to your door. If I were you, I’d get out of town while I still could.”
His chuckle vibrated in her ear, warming her inside and out. “I’ll have you know I don’t pull out the armor for just anyone. Only a particularly feisty female reporter I have a bet with.”
“A bet you’re going to lose,” she reminded him sweetly.
“Time will tell. Speaking of time,” he said gruffly, “I guess I should get off of here and let you try to get some sleep. You know where I am if you need me, Jones.”
She should have made some lighthearted, breezy comment, but his raspy words seemed to reach right through the phone line to squeeze her heart. Her smile faltered, and emotions, thick and warm, clogged her throat. “I know,” she whispered. “Good night, Blake.”
His soft good-night echoing in her ear, she hung up and hugged their conversation to her breast as fiercely as she did his pillow. It was a long, long time before she finally fell asleep.
The morning sun was bright and cheerful, and if he’d had a shotgun, Blake would have shot it out of the sky. Slamming his eyes shut against the glare, he cursed long and low, damning his throbbing head, the too-small twin bed in his grandfather’s guest room, the hot, sensuous dreams of Sabrina that had haunted the few hours of sleep he’d finally been able to snatch from what was left of the night.
In spite of his best efforts, a reluctant smile propped up one corner of his mouth as he thought of their whispered phone conversation while most of the rest of the world slept. It was, he realized, a good thing that they’d been almost two miles apart, or he would have had a damn difficult time keeping his hands off of her. God, what was he going to do about her?
She was tying him in knots, taking over his thoughts, his dreams, haunting him. And that didn’t even begin to touch the emotions that gripped him every time he thought of the note that had been left for her on her kitchen table. Just the thought of some sleazeball following her, watching her every move, wanting her, enraged him. She was in danger, more than she seemed to realize, and every instinct he had urged him to lock her up somewhere safe, out of harm’s way, until the bastard was in custody.
Slinging an arm over his eyes to blot out the sun, he rolled to his back and tried to laugh at the thought of anyone trying to protect Sabrina Jones when she didn’t want to be protected. She’d take his head off if he even suggested such a thing. The lady was a fighter, with more guts than any woman he knew. He didn’t doubt for a minute that in most circumstances, she could take care of herself, but that gave him little comfort. There was nothing ordinary about her current situation. She had a serial killer on her tail, and that wasn’t something she or any other woman should have to deal with alone. And that was something he could do something about. Rolling over onto his side, he reached for the phone. A few seconds later, he grinned as a familiar voice drawled, “Alamo City Investigations. This is Adam Martin. May I help you?”
“Well, that depends. How much is it going to cost me?”
“Blake?” his friend said, shocked. “Is that you? Son of a gun! I tried calling you last week in Lordsburg, but your number had been disconnected. Where the hell are you?”
“Some P.I. you are,” Blake teased, his green eyes twinkling. “I’m right here in town. I’ve been working at the Times ever since the beginning of August.”
“Hey, man, I’ve been working my tail off. Who’s got time to read the paper?” An old college friend, Adam gave him a hard time about not calling sooner, then proceeded to catch up on the latest news. “So what’s going on?” he asked finally. “And don’t tell me you need a P.I. I told you before if you ever wanted to give up reporting, I’d hire you in a second. I’ve got employees with ten years’ experience who can’t hold a candle to you when it comes to investigating. Say the word, and you’ve got a job.”
Blake’s smile faded. “Actually, I do need your services,” he said seriously. “I want you to watch Sabrina Jones for me.”
“Sabrina Jones, the reporter for the Daily Record?” he asked in surprise. “Why? Is she stealing your stories or what?”
“I can hold my own with the lady when it comes to reporting. This is something else. I guess you’ve heard about the serial killer going around town killing professional women?”
“Of course. Every woman I know is as jumpy as a scalded cat, and I can’t say I blame them. What’s that got to do with Sabrina Jones?”
“The killer’s become fixated on her. The bastard’s sending her notes, threatening her. Last night, she came home to find one on her kitchen table. The police think he has a key.”
“Damn! And she doesn’t have a clue who he is?”
“No. Detective Kelly and I finally convinced her that she needed to stay someplace else until the son of a bitch is caught, so she’s taking over my place until it’s safe for her to go home. I’m staying at Pop’s.”
“So she’s still alone at night and roaming all over the city during the day,” Adam concluded. “If the jerk really wants to get her, she’s an easy target, Blake.”
“I know. That’s where you come in. I want you to watch her night and day and not let her out of your sight.”
“And the lady’s agreeable to this?”
“Are you kidding?” Blake laughed. “She’d be all over my case in a heartbeat if she suspected that I was even talking to you about her, let alone hiring you. So you’re going to have to be damn discreet. She’s no dummy.”
“Hey, discreet’s my middle name,” Adam joked. “Give me all the particulars, and I’ll put someone on her right away. And don’t worry. She’ll never suspect a thing.”
Relieved, Blake gave him a detailed description of Sabrina, his address, and the license-plate number of her red Honda. When he hung up a few minutes later, a worry
that he hadn’t allowed himself to acknowledge lifted from his shoulders. She’d be furious if she ever found out he’d put a tail on her, but for the first time in what felt like days, he knew she was safe. Maybe now he could get her out of his head and sleep at night.
Her head sluggish from what amounted to a little over an hour of sleep, her eyes bloodshot, and her stomach rolling at the mere thought of food, Sabrina reported to work on time, but God only knew how. She didn’t remember dressing, or for that matter, actually driving to work. And things only went downhill from there. On a day when she would have liked nothing better than to trade places with someone on the obit desk, Fitz sent her all over town, chasing one breaking story after another. By three in the afternoon, all she wanted to do was drag herself back to Blake’s apartment, crawl into bed, and not move for another twenty-four hours.
“Jones, get over to Comanche Courts,” Fitz yelled across the city room at her. “There’s been a drive-by shooting. Go see what you can get on it.”
She groaned, but she went, hanging on to the thought that in another couple of hours, she could call it a day. Just two more hours. Surely she could get through that.
Comanche Courts was a housing project on the near east side of downtown, mere blocks from the River Walk and Alamo and the hundreds of thousands of tourists who visited the city every year. Since it was so well-known to her, Sabrina could have driven there with her eyes closed. A hotbed of poverty and crime, the courts had, over the years, been the site of more drug busts, murders and shootings than Sabrina could hope to remember. And she’d covered almost all of them.
It was not a place where you dropped your guard, but Sabrina had never been scared there. As usual, the police were present in intimidating force, the lights on top of their patrol cars silently whirling as they questioned possible witnesses. No one had been hurt—this time—but too many times before, she’d arrived to find an innocent victim lying in his own blood while his family screamed and wailed, helpless to save him.
Making her way through the crowd, Sabrina started questioning people, but if anyone had seen anything, they weren’t willing to talk about it. Then she found herself next to a young girl who couldn’t have been older than twelve. An innocent with dimples, she looked like a baby—until you got a look at her eyes. Dark and knowing and old, they had obviously seen things that no twelve-year-old should have even dreamed about, let alone witnessed firsthand.
“It was the Demons,” she said in a voice so low that Sabrina had to bend her head to hear her. “They were after Joshua Cruz because they think he joined a rival gang.”
At the mention of one of the most dangerous gangs in the city, Sabrina arched a brow. “I thought the Demons stuck to the west side.”
“Not anymore. They declared war on the Devils.”
“So this is the start of a gang war?” Sabrina asked in surprise, jotting down notes. “Is the Cruz boy a member of the Devils?”
Hugging herself, goose bumps rippling across her skin in spite of the heat of the afternoon, the younger girl shook her head, tears of frustration gathering in her dark eyes. “No, but they don’t care. Franco Hernandez is a bully and a killer. He doesn’t care who he hurts as long as it makes him look tough.”
Studying her, Sabrina asked quietly, “Are you saying you saw the shooting? Was Franco the shooter?”
For a minute, she could almost see the word yes hovering on the girl’s tongue. Then fear crept into her eyes and she clammed up. “I’m sorry. I can’t say any more.” And before Sabrina could even ask her her name, she disappeared into the crowd.
“Damn!” Muttering curses under her breath, Sabrina knew her one shot at getting anyone to talk to her had probably just slipped through her fingers. The people in the courts had their own brand of justice that had nothing to do with the legal system, and that, unfortunately, led to more shootings, more deaths, a catch-22 without end.
Still, she couldn’t give up. Not when there was a chance that someone among the fifty or so people milling around might give her a little more information. And she still needed to question the officers investigating the shooting.
All her concentration focused on pulling information from witnesses who wanted nothing to do with her, it was a long time before Sabrina felt the touch of someone’s eyes on her. Frowning, she turned, half-expecting to find Blake watching her with a mocking grin, but he was nowhere in sight. And no one else seemed to be paying the least attention to her. In fact, no one even made eye contact with her.
“You’re losing it, Jones,” she muttered to herself. “That’s what happens when you only get an hour of sleep. Chill out.”
She tried, but when she turned back to the rookie officer she’d just started to question, the fine hairs at the back of her neck rose in warning. Suddenly chilled, her heart lurching in her breast, she fought the need to glance over her shoulder.
“Something wrong, ma’am? If you don’t mind me saying so, you look a little green around the gills.”
Sabrina winced at that ma’am. She must look more haggard than she realized, she thought with a groan. She couldn’t be five years older than the fresh-faced officer, and he was treating her like his grandmother.
Forcing a smile, she said, “Actually, I’m fine, just a little paranoid at the moment. You’re going to think I’m crazy, but could you do me a favor?”
“Sure, if I can. What is it?”
“Just casually look behind me at the crowd. Do you see anyone watching us?”
Rubbing the back of his neck, he glanced around with a nonchalance that would have done an Academy Award winner proud, then shrugged, his smile crooked, as he turned his attention back to Sabrina. “People always stare when the police show up, but I don’t see any suspicious characters if that’s what you mean. Why? Has someone been bothering you?”
“Not bothering me exactly. Just…watching me.” Unable to explain the disquiet that had her pulse jumping in her veins, she laughed shakily. “Just forget I said anything. I didn’t get much sleep last night—I guess it’s catching up with me. If you hear anything else about the shooter, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call.”
She gave him her card, then drove back to the paper, double-checking her rearview mirror every couple of blocks. The traffic shifted and flowed normally enough around her, giving her no reason to think that she was being followed, but her gut was churning, the back of her head itching in awareness, and nothing she could say would reason her growing uneasiness away. Her fingers curling tightly around the steering wheel, she hit the gas, zipped around the car in front of her, and made a sharp right turn at the next corner without bothering to use a signal. Horns honked and someone threw an obscene gesture at her, but she didn’t care. The Daily Record’s fenced-in parking lot was a half a block away, the security guard clearly within sight. Sending up a silent prayer of thanks, she raced into the lot like the devil himself was after her.
It wasn’t until she braked to a stop and cut the engine, however, that she realized she was shaking like a leaf. Laying her head back weakly against the headrest, she let her breath out in a rush. “This isn’t like you, Jones,” she lectured herself in a voice that wasn’t nearly as firm as she would have liked. “You don’t jump at every shadow like a ’fraidy-cat. Those notes must really be getting to you. Maybe you really should think about taking a long vacation and letting someone else deal with this for a while.”
It sounded good, but she knew she wasn’t going anywhere. Whoever had left those notes for her could threaten her as much as he wanted, stand in the dark and stare at her, try to follow her if he thought he could keep up with her, but it wasn’t going to do him any good. She was scared—only a fool wouldn’t be—but there was no way she was letting a sniveling coward of a murderer scare her off the story of a lifetime.
The matter settled, she strode into the city room of the Daily Record with her chin at a confident angle. If her knees still had a tendency to knock and her heartbeat wasn’t as slow and
steady as she would have liked, no one knew that but her.
“Hey, Jones,” Fitz called out the minute she stepped into the city room. “Did ya get the skinny on that drive-by?”
She nodded, holding up her notebook. “Got it right here, boss. Give me a few minutes to transcribe my notes, and I’ll have it to you by five.”
“Atta girl! Now if I can just light a fire under the rest of the bums around here, we just might be able to put out a paper tomorrow.”
Sinking down into the chair at her desk, Sabrina grinned at the old man’s familiar litany. He’d been with the paper for nearly forty years, and as far as she knew, he’d never yet missed a morning edition. But he still worried like an old woman, pacing and grumbling and fretting until the paper was put to bed every night. That kind of stress might have eaten away the lining of someone else’s stomach years ago, but Fitz seemed to thrive on it. It was, she knew, what made him so good at his job.
The city room was, as usual, mayhem, with her co-workers coming and going and putting the last finishing touches on stories for tomorrow’s edition. Flipping open her notebook to her notes, Sabrina hardly noticed. With the ease of years of practice, she blocked out everything but her thoughts and started to pound out the story on her computer keyboard.
Concentrating, she couldn’t have said when she first became aware of the fact that someone had stalked into the city room and crossed directly to her desk, where he stopped and glared down at her, waiting for her to notice him. Her gaze trained on her computer monitor, she caught sight of movement from the corner of her eye and figured it was one of the copyboys. “Just a minute,” she said absently. “I’ll be right with you.”
Frowning, she closed her eyes, searching for the ending to her article, and suddenly there it was. Her fingers flew over the keys. Saving it, she smiled in satisfaction. “There! Now, what can I do—”