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The raven soared into the night, its glistening blue black wings spread as it rode the wind, spiraling upward, ever upward Then, folding those glea speeds, until anyone watching would have caught his breath in alarraceful bird Instead, though, the wings unfurled The bird slowed, arched upward and, with gentle flapping, alighted upon the rail of a balcony on the twenty-third story
She slammed the apartment door, turned the lock, shot the dead bolt, fastened the chain Breathless, she leaned back against the door, closed her eyes The courage, the defiance, had been flawless right up until he&039;d grabbed her and told her she wasn&039;t leaving At thather ar in the air and those unnaturally glea her captive, she&039;d felt pure, undiluted panic
Instantly his ie flashed into her mind, a snapshot of the way he&039;d looked at that moment What had happened to hi to his head as if it were splitting in two His eyes squeezed shut tight in apparent pain
And she&039;d run like a rabbit
She&039;d cli howhook still hung from the monster of an oak tree out front Her Cat Wootten the photos of Tawny and the autopsy report She&039;d forgotten everything except that she didn&039;t want to die When he&039;d grabbed her arht she was about to
She squeezed her eyes tighter to prevent the stupid tears that tried to leak through, and shook her head at the bitter irony Her, running fro to die God, what a joke! Not for the first ti fate for its idioticTawny as the victim of this sick killer&039;s whim It should have been Shannon Tawny had a future, a life waiting for her A career She&039;d have made it happen, too Shannon knew she would have She had a way of willing things to go the way she wanted Shannon swore and swept a hand over her damp eyes
It shouldn&039;t have been Tawny It should have been me God, asn&039;t it one on, lived, , she crawled out of the self-pitying puddle she&039;d stepped into If she didn&039;t get herself together, it would be her And it would end any chance she had of bringing Tawny&039;s killer down before her ti for her, it would probably be tonight Tawny had died the saht she&039;d volunteered as his assistant And as far as she could tell, the other woht she&039;d taken her turn in the spotlight So he would probably coht Probably pretty soon
She was tired Damn, but she was tired
Shannon dipped her hand into the fanny pack for the stubby 38 revolver It had been with her the whole time she&039;d been at Daer She could have dropped to one knee, pulled out the little black handgun and pumped all six rounds into hih to prove self-defense, when she&039;d broken into his house and he&039;d been unarmed So, she&039;d have done soun into the bathroom with her, set it on the little sand-colored counter that surrounded the shell-shaped coral basin Within easy reach No one was going to sneak up on her Not even someone alked as quietly as he did
She stripped off her clothes, quickly and not too neatly, tossing the them where they landed Then she stepped beneath the hot, pounding spray and just let it soothe her aching ood to take a break froood book, or a bowl of popcorn and an old Bogart rocery money and head south until she hit sand and sun, and just bask for a while But she knew she couldn&039;t Not now She&039;d set the wheels in h to the end There wasn&039;t a lot of time She was all too aware of that
Even with Tawny&039;s death and all its repercussions, all the questions screa for answers Shannon still couldn&039;t stop her o
Daain, daranted But in her ht noas the only suspect So she shouldn&039;t think about the odd awareness she felt around hi sensations that encompassed her, the palpable touch of those eyes "Physical distractions," she muttered, and tipped her head back to let the hot water drench her hair She inhaled theit would put some sense into her head He was utterly handsome, in a dark, exotic kind of way Add to that the fact that his performances were always loaded with sexual innuendo, and it was no wonder her libido was responding this way
Or was it? She&039;d thought herself immune to sexual desire She&039;d had little experience; the cluuardian, the foster parent she&039;d been sent to when she was sixteen She&039;d had no choice about going to live there Orphans, abandoned children didn&039;t have a hell of a lot of choices, and God knows she&039;d had none to speak of up to that point in her life Certainly no choice over what that bastard had tried to do to her
Froh, the choices had been all hers No one had ever told her what to do again No one ever would
Only one good thing had come out of that time in her life, and that was that she&039;d met Tawny They&039;d been sent to the saes They&039;d suffered the same abuse, albeit for a short time They&039;d fled before the bastard&039;s attempts could lead to the ultimate violation They&039;d had little choice Neither Shannon nor Tawny had trusted authority enough to turn him in then Whom would they have told? The same pencil pushers who&039;d sent them to him? And where would they be sent next? Someplace worse?
Later, Shannon had written a letter to the social worker, recounted everything, even signed her name--but she hadn&039;t told the control of her own life again
The results of their brief stay with that man had been totally different For Tawny, there was no more respect for her body It beca inwardly at the et at home free Idiots, she&039;d called theh to hand over their hard-earned cash, that was their problem She&039;d always said the Johns didn&039;t know it, but they were the ones being used
For Shannon, it was different She&039;d made up her mind that she would never want to be touched by a man Never She couldn&039;t even think of sex without reust, the humiliation, the stench of his breath How could closeness with anyher pleasure? She&039;d shunned Tawny&039;shotel rooh And for so all that revulsion when she thought of Dahed and tried to put him out of her mind, but she couldn&039;t She reht Scantily dressed beauties running their hands up and down his body to sole beat as he prepared to perfor him as they fastened chains around hiroupies throwing themselves at him Little wonder he seemed to exude some mystical allure to her He probably had the saossip she&039;d read in the fanto take him to bed after a show
The question of the hour was, did hethem? Had Tawny been taken in by his sex appeal and offered herself as others did? It was so Taouldn&039;t have hesitated to do Was that why he&039;d killed her?
Or ht be the ones who seemed indifferent to him that suffered the ultimate punishment Maybe Tawny had turned him down Maybe that hy he&039;d killed her
But why do it in such a grisly way? And ho the hell do you drain the blood out of so only two tiny wounds in her neck? How do you do it without a drop of blood spilling on the sheets, or the pillows the person is lying on? What the hell do you do with it after you&039;ve taken it?
She lathered her body, rinsed it, washed her hair, and still felt no closer to knohat had happened to her friend
There had been precious few other cases deer investigations firht so long and so hard to get established But this took precedence, and besides, she wasn&039;t exactly saving up for retire h for the next few car payments, and anotheron any new cases She kept the office open only for her own case now And when she found Tawny&039;s killer, she&039;d close it for good
She intended to focus solely on Tawny&039;s le distraction She would use every second of the time she had left to--
Dizziness swa the shower curtain to keep froainst the cool, wet tiles of the shower stall, held her head with one hand and shut the water off with the other She waited for the vertigo to pass, but it didn&039;t
Daroped for a towel, twisted it around her and staggered out of the shower, pausing only to clu rooet to bed, had to lie down, rest until it passed It would pass It always did God willing, the bastard wouldn&039;t show up to kill her before it ran its course
She needed the bed, and she fought to keep her balance until she got there She had to huddle into the blankets, because the chills would come next And then she&039;d shiver and shake and run a fever until they finished with her They usually lasted only an hour or so But they&039;d been co more frequently lately Her body&039;s little alar her every so often that time was nearly up
She made it just to the doorway of the bedroos melt froreet her She pulled her arms under her to push herself up, but they&039;d beco kicked in Her body jerked with the chills, and she could hear her own teeth chattering God, she was so cold She felt the goose buet to the bed She&039;d always had ti faster, harder, than before, she realized, as well as more often She didn&039;t want to think about what that ht?
Concentrating fiercely, she h the effort cost her She broke into a cold sweat, fought to catch her breath She couldn&039;t lose the gun She had to cling to it in case he came for her He&039;d kill her if he found her defenseless like this God, she hated being helpless, weak, not in control of her own body She focused on the feel of the cold wood grips in her hand, er, kept her mind on where the barrel was pointed, even as she strained tobody across the floor Every muscle in her throbbed and ached in protest, burned with an unseen fire Then the damned convulsions tried to tear them from the bone
Someone bent over her, lifted her, and a familiar scent invaded her awareness Dusky Subtle Soainst her, felt familiar and warm and hard She forced her eyes open, tried to focus her vision, but saw only a blurred outline It didn&039;t matter She knew perfectly ho held her, who carried her across the rooed over her, tucked tightly around her The electric blanket she&039;d so recently purchased for just this kind of occasion was plugged in, turned on She knew, because she felt it begin to heat her chilled skin He gently worked the gun out of her treic hands with their long, elegant fingers, pushed her hair away from her face
"Do you want me to call an ambulance Shannon?"
She heard the words, heard that soft voice, which had been harsh the last time he&039;d spoken to her It was still like velvet ruff now So hesitant
She tried to forave up and shook her head, instead Even that sy she could summon
"Your family, then?"
"N-noo There&039;s no one"
"What is it? What&039;s wrong with you?" The low, level timbre of his voice seeht hurt her ears if he used his north of his hands on her shoulders The warently into her flesh
Fear tried to make itself heard in her mind, but there was too ht to be afraid of hiht now, but she wasn&039;t And it had to be because of the illness Ither intellect, or she&039;d be scared to death
The electric blanket&039;s heat seeped a littleslowed The chills eased, just a bit, but left that aching that made her feel as if a steaht leave the bed, heard his steps
God, she was so groggy when these spells caun? Why wasn&039;t she screa herself to the door?
He returned, the bed sinking when he sat on its edge Pills touched her lips Then cool water She sed as he held her head up, his long fingers curled around the back of her neck, threading up into her hair
"Ibuprofen," he told her "For the pain and the fever"