Free In Harm's Way by Ridley Pearson

history?”
    “Money. You’re certainly the curious one tonight,” he said.
    “I like staying up on your cases, knowing what you’re doing.”
    “Since when?” he asked.
    “Since . . . I don’t know. I just do. Particularly this prowler at the Berkholders’ or now at this other guy’s.”
    “Could have been the same guy, I suppose, though that’s a long way to travel.”
    “Not so very far.”
    “That, and the Berkholders’ home was empty at the time. With so many homes empty in this community, why hit one where there’s a chance of running into someone?”
    “Better stocked. Fresh food.”
    “So, you’re the detective now?” He waited. “Hey, that was a joke.”
    “Ha, ha.”
    “Listen, Gilly and I found a spot with the grass beaten down outside the Berkholders’. This guy scouted the place, and timed it so no one was home. You don’t have anything to worry about here.”
    “Which is why you parked the Jeep at the top of the hill where you can’t miss it?”
    “You noticed that,” he said.
    “Earth to Walt: I have a photographer’s eye. I don’t miss much.”
    “No, you don’t, do you?”
    His photographs had downloaded. She worked the laptop. Walt stood and looked over her shoulder, impressed with how she modified each one.
    “That’s amazing,” he said.
    “You can do anything to a picture. You know that.”
    “ You can. Not me.”
    “Is it typical of squatters?” she asked. “Scouting a place like that?”
    “Probably not.”
    “No, I didn’t think so.”
    “Keeping all the lights on is good,” he said. “He’ll stay away, if he hasn’t left the area already.” He paused. “Why do we make everything about the office? I didn’t come here to give you my camera. I thought about that at the last moment.”
    “Then why did you come here?”
    He barely hesitated. All the time spent thinking about this moment, the right situation, and it came down to no thought at all.
    He bent down and kissed her on the lips. Her eyes expressed her surprise, but her lips, warm and sweet with wine, pressed to his more tightly, and then her eyes shut and her hands came around his head, and her body shook as if caught in guttural laughter.
    He pulled back and she held on to him saying, “Don’t . . . don’t you dare stop,” kissing him hungrily.
    Her chair went over backward, Walt throwing his arms around her and saving her from the fall, the weight and warmth of her pressed to him as he eased her to the floor, her hair spread like a fan on the throw rug. She was laughing, in fact, like a child opening an unexpected, yet long anticipated, gift. Their bodies touching, hands beginning to explore and delight, she worked her fingers past his ears, holding his face an inch away from her own and managed to growl, “Why . . . so . . . long?”
    Walt answered with smiling eyes, his fingers trapping a tear as it spilled down her cheek.
    “Do we dare do this?” he whispered.
    “You’re damn right we do,” she answered breathlessly, tugging the shirttail from his waistband and running her hands up his back, delivering chills.
    Time arrested all thought. Walt fell away from himself, from his planning and predetermining. They knocked a vase off the coffee table. She laughed harder, and slapped his hand as he reached to right it, grabbing and guiding his fingers lower on her. Scared and elated, both present and absent, he felt her respond to his touch, her legs parting, her warmth overwhelming. The scent of her, sacred and mysterious, engulfed him, intoxicating. Dizzy with her, overwhelmed, underprepared, and fearing inexperience, he fell victim to her, suddenly finding himself past any point of reason or thought, driven by human hunger and a forceful need to join her.
    When it was over, when the flush beneath her collarbone flared and her bare flesh rippled with gooseflesh, she opened her eyes to the ceiling and smiled devilishly, chortling to herself.
    “Oh my God,” she said. She took him by