Free Paris After Dark by Jordan Summers

One
    Rachel Chang pinched the cigarette between her lips and reached into her pocket for her lighter. Five years of being nicotine free was about to go up in smoke, if she could just get this damn thing to light. She flicked the Zippo and inhaled, then proceeded to choke. Eyes watering, Rachel flicked the cigarette onto the cobblestone as a high-pitched scream pierced the night.
    One hand moved to where her weapon should be, while the other automatically reached for the St Michael medal around her neck. For a moment Rachel saw her partner lying in a puddle of blood. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as the panic attack eased. This wasn’t New York. The vision wasn’t real. And this wasn’t her problem. Let someone else clean up the mess for a change.
    A second scream followed the first, then ended abruptly. Rachel remained immobile, while her conscience called her every foul name in the book. Unfortunately, the voice in her head wasn’t loud enough to drown out the struggle she could hear taking place on the dimly lit road off Boulevard Raspail.
    “You have no authority here. You don’t even speak French. Let the Parisian police handle it,” she muttered under her breath as she came upon a man grappling with a woman. The woman’s arms were flailing as she beat at the man’s broad shoulders with her clenched fists.
    The dark-haired man wasn’t striking her back, but he was holding her tight to deflect her blows. It looked like a typical domestic dispute. Only a fool got in the middle of those. Rachel had been foolish once and it had cost her dearly. Never again. She shoved her hands in her pockets and kept walking.
    Rachel saw a sign for the Cimetière du Montparnasse affixed to a high, grey brick wall. She glanced at the sky. “Trying to tell me something, partner?” Of course Paul Veretti didn’t answer. No one did. Like the residents of the fancy French cemetery, he was dead. All that was left of him was her memories and the St Michael medal around her neck.
    The patron saint must have been on a coffee break the day her partner caught a bullet in the chest – a bullet that was meant for her. It was Rachel’s idea to answer the domestic battery call on the drive home. It wasn’t even part of their job. She should’ve been the one to stay in the house and try to calm the battered wife, not Paul. But he’d insisted she escort the husband outside and wait for a patrol car to pick him up. Rachel had barely made it to the porch, when the shot rang out. There was a shocked cry and a loud thump. She knew without looking what had happened. She felt like that bullet had been chasing her ever since.
    Rachel glanced at the cemetery once more, then asked herself what Paul would do. The answer was obvious. She cursed, then tromped back to the mouth of the street. This was a bad idea. Her gun and NYPD badge currently resided an ocean away inside her captain’s desk. She’d have to count on the man fleeing when she confronted him. Rachel ran the odds of that happening in her head and let out a string of expletives.
    The woman had stopped struggling and now hung loosely in the man’s arms. Had he struck her after Rachel left? She hated bullies. Hated people who thought their size gave them free rein to do as they pleased. The man stood in the shadows with his back to her, but Rachel could tell he outweighed her and the woman by a good fifty pounds. This was such a bad idea.
    “Hey buddy,” she shouted.
    The dark-haired man didn’t acknowledge her, but Rachel saw his broad shoulders tense.
    “Yeah, I’m talking to you. Parlez-vous … anglais? Let the woman go,” she said in frustration, wishing she’d paid attention to the French CDs she’d checked out of the library.
    He slowly turned. Rachel caught a glimpse of shimmering green eyes, the colour so unnatural it couldn’t possibly be found outside the animal kingdom. Had to be contact lenses. But it wasn’t his eyes that held her in place. It was his