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"I need a favor I have solared at hi called a for for daylight?"

"That all sounds terribly ti shit the right way--"

"Please It’ll take five et to you eventually--you kno long that can take"

I suppressed a sigh Five minutes? More like two hours of paperwork once the official request caught up to o And it was pretty damned unlikely he’d done that on a whim

But I was over what had happened between us--not that there had been anything to really get over And noto help out another investigator Besides, I was stir-crazy I’d been away from work for teeks already, and it was likely to be another two before I’d be back on duty--ht, but I pushed it down

"Fine But not here There’s a diner down the road" I gave him quick directions to the twenty-four-hour place It would be alrimaced "This is kind of private--evidence and all"

"We’ll be discreet Or, we can go tomy work into my home" Not purposefully anyway It was my sanctuary The one place I didn’t have to think about death Didn’t have to see it, experience it Not that my visions didn’t follow me here--didn’t follow me everywhere But that didn’t ed "As you wish The diner sounds good I’m a tad peckish" He flashed his teeth and headed down the sidewalk

I glared after hi hi

The last bit of winter clung to the St Louis streets, seeping into my bones the second I stepped out of my house The drive to the diner took less than five h for the heater in ed as I opened it, then smacked the doorframe when I let it slam behind me A man dressed in jeans and a heavy flannel shirt occupied one corner booth, nursing coffee The large se lot no doubt belonged to hi this early

Claude had taken a booth on the opposite side of the diner from the trucker, hidden from view from the front door and off to one side of the counter where the waitress refilled the coffee he’d made sure to keep his back away froain, I wasn’t paranoid enough to think so But I hadn’t been alive long enough to gather the enemy list Claude probably had Of course, he knehat I was like in the ht to be nervous

"What can I get for ya?" The waitress looked like every htly curled gray hair touched her ears

"Coffee, please" Claude gave the waitress a world-class sly, uniood looks

"Decaf for s filled the air enticingly, but I refused to eat breakfast That would be asback to bed the second I returned home To sleep

Hopefully, a dreamless sleep

The waitress nodded and left, then returned with our coffee and a bowl of various flavors of crearabbed a couple of hazelnut packets and poured theain for your help," Claude said "How have you been, e to tug on my hair How, after all this tiry? The term of endearment pushed my buttons It s had ended differently But it was an old wound I wasn’t keen to reopen hat-ifs

He reached for the creaar packs A bolt ran through ret to form a ball in the pit of my sto to anger you," he murmured

"Then dispense with the pretty endearue Fro and slid it across the table to round info," I said He frowned, so I added, "It’ll help put the iht actually make sense" And it would But ht be in for Even for Claude Desmarais

My resistance seeo I’d been a bright-eyed, positive girl without a real clue about the world, and willing to go the extracops And I’d had a hell of a crush A crush he’d beenon my part