Free Malevolent by Jana DeLeon Page A

and rubbed the cold plastic across her forehead. Her heart pounded in her temples, causing her head to ache. She drew in a deep breath and slowly blew it out, trying to calm herself, but it wasn’t very effective.  
    Someone had gone through her garbage and taken the scarf. What the hell kind of person did that? Crazy. She answered her own question, and the answer didn’t do anything to calm her nerves. It only made things worse.  
    She sat the water on the table and pressed her hands to her temples, silently willing the pounding in her head to cease. The description of the man that the boy gave her fit David. But David was dead. She knew he was dead. The paramedics and the coroner knew he was dead.  
    But he was still attacking her, even from the grave.
    Who was doing this? David had casual buddies, but no particular friends that she was aware of. No outraged person had contacted her after his death. In fact, no one had contacted her at all except the oil company he’d been working for, and all they wanted was to know where to send his final paycheck. Granted, the fact that she’d been the one to cause his demise probably prevented people from wanting to acknowledge his death at all, but surely if someone were angry enough to stalk her, they would have made themselves known before now.
    She drew in a deep breath and huffed it out, feeling slightly dizzy. She leaned forward and propped her elbows on her knees, still clutching her head. She closed her eyes and silently willed the pounding headache to subside and her racing pulse to slow the hell down.
    “Miss Frederick?”
    Her head flew up and her eyes crossed as a wave of dizziness washed over her. She blinked several times and finally Jimmy came into focus.
    “Are you all right?” he asked.
    “It’s just a headache,” she said.
    “I’ve got some aspirin if you need it.”  
    The amount of concern in his expression made her wonder just how bad she currently looked. Probably pretty awful. She struggled to get up from the chair and into a standing position, hoping that if she appeared more collected she might actually become more collected.
    “No thanks,” she said. “I’ve got some in my purse. I was just resting for a minute to see if it would go away.”
    Jimmy nodded. “Sometimes I get those bad ones…migraines they call them. I have to sit in a dark room with my eyes closed for a couple hours before they’ll go away.”
    “You should try breathing pure oxygen from one of your tanks the next time it happens,” she said, automatically slipping back into nurse mode.
    “Really? I ain’t never heard that, but I’ll sure give it a try. Thanks.”
    Emma forced a small smile. “Have you looked at my car?”
    “Yes, ma’am. I got your battery problem all fixed up. Good thinking using the chewing gum. I ain’t seen that one in a while.”
    “I can’t take credit for that. The security guard at the hospital knew that trick.”
    “It’s an old one, but it works. Anyway, you’re all nice and tight now, and I didn’t see any other problems with the car. Being that it’s only two years old and a Nissan, there’s usually not a lot that’s going to go wrong.”
    “Could the battery cable have come loose by itself?”
    “They don’t really do that, ma’am. When was the last time you had it worked on that they would have disconnected the battery?”
    “About a month ago at the dealership. Could it have been loose then and finally came off last night?”
    Jimmy frowned. “The chances of it happening that way are low. I mean really low. If it had been a day or two ago that they worked on the car, I’d say sure. But a month is a long time. You would have had problems a while back if the dealership had left it loose.”
    Emma tried to absorb everything Jimmy was saying, but her pounding head was making connecting the dots hard. “So it probably wasn’t a mistake by the dealership, and it couldn’t haven’t come loose on its own accord.” She