“Okay, okay, I can take a hint.”
He backed up and opened the driver’s door for her. She got in, and he leaned in after her, kissing her again.
“Be careful.”
“I will be. I promise.”
“You could call me when you get home.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow at work, Will,” she said firmly.
“It was worth a try.” He shrugged and closed the car door.
She was still smiling as she pulled out of the lot. He was walking a little stiff-legged as he made his way to his own car. She could still feel his hardness pressed against her as if it had left an imprint on her body. She shivered as she wondered what it would feel like to have that hardness inside her.
CHAPTER 24
Trish Peters was waiting by her new black Camaro when Jen arrived at the city employees’ parking lot. She wore a denim miniskirt and jacket, an embroidered western-style shirt, and thigh-high blue leather boots. Her long blond hair hung loose around her shoulders.
Trish was twenty-five years old and had been on the department for three years, having come to them fresh out of college with a degree in Criminal Justice. She was tall, just over six feet, with large-boned good looks that she had inherited from her Swedish mother.
“The way you look in that mini, no one will bother asking me to dance,” Jen complained, as Trish slid into the passenger seat of Jen’s five-year old Mustang.
“I thought we were working tonight, not trolling for men.”
“I didn’t say anything about trolling for men. I just said nobody would ask me to dance. Besides, your outfit doesn’t exactly look like work clothes.”
Trish laughed and fastened her seat belt.
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about. You look fine. Besides, from what I hear, you’ve got all the action you can handle.”
“And exactly what have you heard?”
“Oh, just that a certain gorgeous FBI agent and you have been working very closely on this case. Any truth to the rumors?”
“You’ve been talking to Jamie. You have to remember Jamie has a tendency to jump to conclusions.”
“Jamie? I didn’t hear anything from Jamie. Jeff Holloway told me he’d seen you and Anderson out together the other night.”
Jen groaned.
“We weren’t out together,” she said. “We just stopped at Tango’s to get something to eat. We’d been working late.”
“Um-hmmm.”
Jen laughed.
“Okay, okay. So maybe there’s some truth to the rumors. But,” she cautioned, “it’s too early to tell how much.”
“I’ve seen the man around the building,” Trish said. “Tell me, is he as good as he looks?”
“That’s for me to know and for you not to find out,” Jen said and was immediately surprised at herself. In essence, she had just staked out her territory. She hadn’t even found out for herself if he was as “good as he looked,” as Trish put it, but already she was warning other women away from him.
“Enough about my love life,” she said, shaken by what she had just recognized in herself. “How’s yours?”
“Getting better, no doubt about it. Of course, just getting rid of that jerk I was married to was a huge improvement in itself. Would you believe, that creep had the nerve to call me a few days ago and ask me out. When I stopped laughing, I hung up on him.”
“Nothing surprises me anymore,” Jen said. “Least of all, male behavior.”
Trish mumbled her agreement. Jen glanced at her. She acted tough, but that’s all it was—an act. She’d never let anybody, maybe not even herself, know how much Les’s betrayal had hurt her.
Six months before, Trish had married a handsome state trooper named Les Ransom. They had met when she covered him on a felony stop of a stolen car. It had been love at first sight, or so it seemed. They married after only two months of dating, and for a while, it seemed that they were going to live happily ever after. Les lavished attention on Trish, sending her roses for no special reason, calling her at work every chance he got just to tell her he loved her. One day she found out why.
She had been working communications because the regular communications supervisor was on vacation, and the department’s policy was that a sworn officer always supervised communications. Les had called her from home just to tell her how much he missed her. Trish had hung up, and on the spur of the moment, decided to surprise her husband by running home for a quick lunch break.
She had surprised him all right. She had also surprised her next door neighbor’s wife. Les begged for forgiveness, but Trish was not one to allow second chances. The divorce had been final now for a little over a month.
“Looks like a halfway decent crowd tonight,” Jen said, as she turned into The Factory’s parking lot. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and locate this weirdo.”
“I’m sure that if we locate any weirdo, I’ll marry him.”
“Not the boy we’re looking for.” Jen shook her head. “His bedside manner is definitely lacking.”
“So I’ve heard,” Trish said. “Just between you and me, Jen, I hope we don’t find him. I’d like to leave this one to the guys.”
As Jen parked the car, she thought about Vicki and Carla. Trish was right. She didn’t want to be the one to find this maniac either. Yet as long as he was walking free, with the worms squirming and eating on his brain, she and every other woman in the city were in danger.
CHAPTER 25
Neither of the women noticed the man sitting in a car parked two rows behind them. He watched as they walked to the door of the club, thinking how close it had been. If he’d been just a few minutes later, he would have missed her and would have had to wait for her return. He didn’t like that because it gave him too much time to
