Danger Signals

Once in a while, she'd let Why not? cross her mind like a mouse making a daring dash over open floor.

But…no. The time wasn't right, and neither was he. A cop? Bad enough, as terrible at relationships as they were known to be. And this one with those missing pieces, missing memories, and skeletons in his closet even he didn't know about? No.

And besides that, there was Jeannette, who needed her more and more every day. These days Tierney had to help her grandmother with nearly everything, from getting dressed in the morning to going to bed at night. And in between there was the constant vigilance necessary to keep Jeannette from wandering off. hurting herself or setting the apartment on fire. Tierney had learned, sometimes the hard way, to keep anything that might cut, stab, poison, ignite, kindle, break, fall or tip over hidden or put away out of her grandmother's reach. Electrical outlets were covered by furniture that couldn't be easily moved, or taped over with duct tape. The knobs for the stove burners were hidden in a high cupboard, and all cupboard doors and drawers containing objects that might be dangerous or broken were locked with childproof fasteners. Windows and doors were kept locked, and the water heater was turned down to low.

But far, far worse than all that was losing the essential person that was Jeannette. Every day the shining light that had been her personality grew dimmer. Every day Tierney could feel the special link that had always been there between them becoming thinner, like a rubberband stretching… stretching. One day, she knew-probably soon-that bond would snap, and nothing would ever be able to put it back together. Her grandmother would be gone. Forever.

Sometimes, Tierney just had to go somewhere-the bathroom, or her workroom, or maybe the car-so she could cry.

No, this wasn't the time to be thinking about love, or even sex. And certainly not Wade.

As the days continued to roll by with no new victims. Wade and the other members of the TK-Torture Killer- Task Force grew more and more edgy. On the one hand, of course, everyone was relieved not to have to deal with another woman's brutalized body. But no new victims meant no new leads, no chance for new evidence or even, please Lord, a witness. And worse than that was the growing fear that the killer might have slipped through their fingers.

Since the news conference, the media had been all over what they'd delighted in calling the department's 'crystal ball.' So far Wade had managed to keep Tierney's home address secret, but there'd been plenty of attention paid by both newspapers and television to cases she'd been involved with in the past, and law enforcement's use of psychics in general. It was his greatest fear that the killer might have gotten the wind up, gotten scared, gone to ground, or-worst case scenario-moved on, not to be heard from again until someday, in another part of the country, in another city, another town, women began dying.

Wade didn't know how he'd be able to live with himself if he let the sonofabitch get away.

On the other hand, there'd been some progress in the case. The DNA evidence still hadn't come back, which didn't matter much since they didn't yet have a suspect's DNA to compare it to. The canvass of traffic citations was being cross-referenced with juvenile, military and medical records and so far had come up with seven possible suspects. Four of those, known sex offenders, had been brought in for questioning and tentatively ruled out. Three hadn't been located-yet.

Absent some sort of break in the case, the task force was reduced to going back over ground already covered, talking to friends, family, neighbors and coworkers of the victims, sifting through files, culling through databases of similar cases in other cities. There was progress, but it was too slow and too little to suit Wade.

To keep himself from going nuts, he spent some after-hours time-well, okay, some on-the-clock time, as well- looking into the background of one Cory Pearson, journalist.

One thing he had to say. He was who he said he was. There was no dearth of information on him available on the Internet. Wade had been too young at the time to have paid much attention to what was happening on the far side of the world, but it seemed the guy had been a well-known war correspondent in his day-had even been captured and taken prisoner during the Second Gulf War. While a captive in Iraq, he'd met an airman named Tristan Bauer, who had been shot down during the First Gulf War, and at the time had been missing and presumed dead for eight years. They'd both been rescued together-there'd been a big to-do over that, all sorts of medals and honors and receptions at the White House-and in the process, Cory Pearson had met the airman's daughter, Samantha. They hadn't gotten together until years later, though, after the two of them wound up in the same Philippine jungle. Evidently, Pearson had written a book about some of his adventures. That, and a whole bunch of articles for every major news outlet from Time magazine to CNN.

Wade was about ready to conclude Tierney must have been mistaken about the source of the emotions she'd picked up that day in the Portland Rose Gardens. He'd probably have chalked the whole thing up to coincidence, except for one thing. With all that information, gazillions of words written by and about the man, there wasn't a thing, not word one about him between his birth-his birth certificate listed his mother as Susan Louise Pearson and his father as Christopher George Pearson and his birthplace as Indianapolis-and when he'd become a journalist. Okay, college. But before that-nada. Which could mean nothing. But could mean something. Sealed juvenile records, maybe? Which he'd need a warrant to access, and he had no cause whatsoever to justify a warrant.

Maybe someday he'd find a way to dig into it a little deeper, but for now…he supposed he could always ask Tierney to try again to pick up something. If he could keep his prurient imagination under control. Which he was having a lot of trouble doing lately.

No, unless another victim turned up, calling Tierney Doyle was simply too damn dangerous.

He thought about her. though. Thought about her a lot.

She popped into his head at odd times and in peculiar ways. Driving home from work, seeing a little girl with red-gold curls skipping across the street hanging on to her mother's hand, it occurred to him Tierney would have looked like that when she was little, and if she had a daughter…

Catching a glimpse of a rose, or the scent of one-and roses were everywhere in Portland, in May-always brought her vividly to mind, looking the way she did that day in the gardens, with her shoulders bare and the wind playing with her hair and skirt, and her shoes dangling by their straps from one finger.

He couldn't bite into a hamburger without seeing the blissful smile on her lips as she'd crunched on that veggie sandwich of hers…and remembering the way watching her eat had made hungry juices gather at the back of his throat.

He couldn't look at Officer Williams's crime scene photos without his chest contracting at the vivid recall of Tierney's face when she'd looked at the body, her eyes gone stark with grief and self-blame. And that would lead inevitably to the memory-not so much mental as sensory-of the way she'd felt up against him with his arms wrapped around her and his lips pressed against her hair. The sweet, clean smell of her hair, reminiscent of country roads and moist green gardens in the midst of the ugliness of that day.

Then, of course, there were all the usual ways a beautiful woman occupies a man's mind. Sitting at his desk, looking at the phone and thinking how much he wanted to pick it up and call her. Walking up the stairs to his apartment in the evening, his imagination seeing her nice round bottom swaying back and forth as she mounted the stairs to her place just ahead of him. Waking up in the morning in a sweaty tangle of sheets with the imagined image of her naked body entwined with his fading rapidly from his consciousness, and having to dive into a cold shower to clear his mind so he could get on with his day.

Between Tierney Doyle, Cory Pearson and a stalled murder investigation, Wade wasn't getting a whole lot of sleep. He figured if something didn't break somewhere soon, he might be tempted to do something drastic. Get drunk, or look up an old girlfriend, maybe. Except both of those options had about as much appeal as, say, sharing a lumpy sofa with Bruno the basset hound.

The break finally came on Friday night, though not quite the way he'd expected.

It had been a frustrating week, and as the members of the TK Task Force packed it in. one by one they stopped by Wade's desk to ask if he was planning on joining them for beer and pool at Friendly's, the department's watering hole a couple of blocks up the street. Last to go was Ed Francks, and Wade told him what he'd told the others: he might be along later. He wanted to check something out first.

'Come on. man, give your brain a rest,' Ed said as he twirled his jacket off the back of his chair and onto his broad shoulders. 'We all need it. This case has us chasin' our tails. Even Superman needs a little R and R now and then, and you ain't no superman.'

'This isn't the case.' Wade frowned at the screen as he brought up the Google search he'd saved. 'Some