“I like the taste of you better than anything,” he said with a growl. “And now I have to go.”
“I don’t know your name.”
“It’s not important. You have my number.”
Actually, she didn’t. When he’d recited the digits, she hadn’t paid attention.
As a sense of thresholding came back, Jo wondered what the hell it was about her life right now that she seemed to keep returning to this precipice theme. Everything felt like it was on the verge of something else.
“Yes,” she lied, “I do.”
With a nod, as if he were leaving things as he wanted them, the man strode out of the trashed kitchen. When the door into the alley closed behind him, Jo gripped the lip of the stainless steel counter and lowered her head. She needed to make herself stay here for long enough so that it was impossible for her to go after him and find him. So that he was lost to her forever. Never to cross paths again.
It was never healthy to want someone so badly that you forgot they were a stranger.
Especially if they were armed like that. And clearly used to evading the police.
Plus, hello, hypnotist. Which opened up the possibility of things that… in spite of all of her blogging about the paranormal… she couldn’t believe she was even considering.
As the sirens died down again, she wondered if the police had caught whoever it was they were looking for or whether her never-to-be lover had put another whammy on some badges.
Lifting her eyes, she looked around. The kitchen’s messy layout was an inconclusive set of tea leaves to read her future in. But other things percolated, and she thought about that gang member.
And what he’d said he’d seen here.
For all the unreliability of her memory lately, there was no need to get out her phone and reread any article or blog post to refresh her recollection of the story. Here in this kitchen, when that kid had been running from the police, he had encountered something that shouldn’t have existed outside of the Halloween season—and in spite of his tough street life, he had been horrified by it enough to be incapable of speaking of anything else. Not that the authorities had cared. They’d been intent only on punishing him for the crimes he had committed. None of the felonies had stuck, however. Two had been not-guiltys and one had been tossed out on appeal.
So he’d been free to preach to anyone who would listen about what he swore he’d witnessed here with his own two eyes.
She wished she could contact him now. Not possible. He’d been found dead in an apartment ten blocks from here about three months ago. Suicide? Maybe. Gangbanger life catching up to him? Very likely.
Eliminated because he was a problem that had become too noisy? Also a possibility.
She and Bill had been trying to reach him when his body had been found.
Jo turned her head and stared at the door to the outside. The ache at her temples and across her forehead was back and getting worse by the moment. She had plenty of Motrin at home, however, and the sirens were silent. The man in leather had been gone for a while. And the police were most likely not looking for her. Anymore.
Because she couldn’t hear a helicopter overhead.
Shifting herself off the countertop, she picked her way over to the exit, stepping around big dry wall buckets that—
With a groan, she stopped and weaved on her feet. The sense that memories were trying to break through some barrier in her brain dogged her, but she was used to this. The hot flash that heated her body from the inside out was likewise utterly familiar. What was new… was the despair that swamped her mood.
As she stepped out into the alley, and hesitated so she could double-check to make sure the police weren’t rolling up on her, she was acutely aware that there was no one waiting at her apartment for her. Nobody to call and connect to. Not a soul who she could unburden herself to.
She had a story to tell about the night, about the man in leather, about how she was feeling, but there was no real audience for it. Even if she put it on her blog under the guise—or maybe it was more like “clickbait”—of him being otherworldly, she was just shouting into a crowd that was mostly focused on themselves. And Bill was