Free Deception by Christiane Heggan

right?”
    Positive. A teenager who lives in the area came to her rescue.”
    Relief loosened the pressure in his chest. “Did they catch the bastard?”
    “No. And it’s not likely they will. It was too dark for her to identify the attacker.” She paused. “She thinks it was intentional, Dan, that whoever attacked her wanted to kill her.”
    would she think that?”
    She’s been investigating her father’s death. She doesn’t believe that was an accident, either.” Ashley’s voice betrayed her anxiety. “And neither do I.”
    Under different circumstances, the thought of Jill playing amateur sleuth would have made him smile. She had always had a fertile and inquisitive mind and loved a good puzzle. That Nancy Drew side was one of the things he had loved most about her. But Ashley was right. This brutal attack had to be taken seriously.
    “Did Jill ask you to call me?” he asked.
    There was a low chuckle at the other end of the line. “Hardly. This was my idea, one I may soon live to regret.” There was a brief, expectant pause. “You’re the only one who can help her, Dan, the only one she’ll listen to.”
    The remark made him laugh. “You have a short memory, Ashley. Jill was never very good in the listening department. Especially if I was the one dispensing the advice.”
    “That was thirteen years ago. She’s grown up a lot since then.”
    Though he already knew the answer, he asked the question anyway. “What exactly do you want me to do?”
    Ashley let out a nervous laugh. “Would finding the killer be too much to ask? Assuming Jill is right and Simon was murdered.
    Dan was silent as he considered the request. Time wasn’t a factor. With semester break just started, he had over a month of vacation coming. The trip to New York would even present a bonus—spending Christmas with his family in Brooklyn. Chief Brennan would be disappointed, but Dan could put him in touch with a former FBI agent who was an excellent profiler and lived only fifty miles out of Chicago.
    The real question was more difficult. Did he want to get involved in Jill’s life again? Stir up all those old memories? if the answer was no, then he was better of giving Ashley the name of a good private investigator in New York City. of course, getting Jill to hire a PI. when she was so determined to do the job herself might not be an easy task.
    “Dan?” Ashley’s voice was heavy with worry.
    “All right.” Dan sighed. He was going to regret this, but what the hell. “I’ll take the first available flight.”

Seven
    Dan arrived at the airport just in time to make the 11:02 flight to La Guardia Airport.
    As he sipped a 7-Up the flight attendant had just poured him, he stared out the plane window, thinking about Jill, trying to anticipate her reaction and remembering his tempestuous marriage, in spite of the promise he’d made to himself not to.
    She had a way of doing that to him, sneaking into his thoughts. Even now, after all these years.
    He had met her in the spring of 1984. He was a police officer with the NYPD at the time and she was a sophomore at Columbia University. The odds of two such different people ever coming face-to-face, much less falling in love, were about a million to one. But on that balmy April night, the odds had been the last thing on his mind.
    Dan was on his way home from work when he spotted the green BMW convertible parked on the side of the street in SoHo. The driver, a stunning redhead in a black evening gown, was standing beside the car,
    * fists on her hips, glaring at a very flat rear tire.
    When Dan stopped and offered to change it for her, she let out a sigh of relief and gratefully accepted his help. Hitching up her dress and crouching next to him’ she told him that she had been at a party and hoped her father wouldn’t realize it was almost 2:00 a.m.
    “He doesn’t seem to understand that I’m nineteen.” She spoke as if she were thirty instead of nineteen. “And that I’m