Free Find Me by Debra Webb

between them. "Sarah, if you stay on this track you're headed for trouble. Following my advice is the only way to avoid it. You know this."
    Sarah pulled out the menu and scanned the items available after seven. What else would one eat in Maine? Chowder.
    "I'm ordering something right now. You can listen." Sarah ignored whatever the doc said and placed her cell on the table while she made the call on the room phone. She ordered the chowder and hot tea. A young, female voice promised to deliver the order within fifteen minutes. Sarah recradled the receiver and picked up her cell. "You happy now?"
    "Sarah."
    Here it came. The talk.
    "Have you forgotten what happened last time?"
    Sarah scrubbed her free hand over her face. "Of course not." How could she? She'd spent seven days in a padded room with voices that weren't hers screaming in her head. Then another seven days under close observation.
    "This is the way it starts," Ballantine scolded gently. "You stop eating and taking your medicine. You stop sleeping and then you become vulnerable to the break."
    The break. That was the official diagnosis. A break in reality. The inability to control one's thoughts or actions and to discern the real from the imagined.
    Not exactly a trip to the islands.
    "I'll check in with you tomorrow," Sarah promised. "I'll be fed and fully medicated. I swear."
    "I've seen the news reports regarding the case you're working on, Sarah. You let yourself be vulnerable and you could end up a victim. You know this. It's one of the hazards of your work. Not to mention the fact that you're not going to win any popularity contests while you're there. Stress can be an overpowering enemy."
    "Yeah. Yeah. I got it, Doc. I'll do better."
    "Tomorrow," Ballantine reminded. "Five o'clock. You call me and give me an update."
    Sarah gave her assurance and ended the call. She pitched her cell aside and lay there for a long, disturbing moment considering all that Ballantine had said.
    The medicine made Sarah groggy, slowed her reactions. She just forgot to eat. It wasn't on purpose. And the dreams et al, she had about as much control over those as she did the rest of her life. Shit happened.
    She'd always dealt with it just fine except that once.
    Maybe the case had been too close to home. The murdered kids had been between eight and ten years of age. Sarah had empathized too closely with their vulnerability. Gotten in too deep… nearly gotten herself killed.
    She touched her right side. Shuddered.
    Put it away. Don't even look.
    In her experience the best medicine for her was work.
    As long as she remembered not to trust anyone but herself.
    With that in mind, she sat up and reached for her shoulder bag. She never left home without it. Inside she carried a folder on whatever case she was working, a flashlight, compact pair of binoculars, an ultrathin digital camera, pepper spray, matches, and toilet paper. Oh, and a bottle of water. The bag was her life preserver.
    She pulled the folder from the bag and thumbed through her handwritten notes and the newspaper clippings and police reports she'd gathered. As if she'd gone blind and couldn't see any of those things, her thoughts wandered back to Conner. If she opted to keep him around, how long would it take her to win him over to her side? A couple of days? Maybe. Right now he was just doing the job he'd been ordered to do. But he wanted the truth just as badly as she did. Maybe more. He wouldn't find it until he backed off that high horse of his and admitted that the killer could be anyone.
    That could be expecting too much. Maybe winning him over wasn't possible.
    She'd learned in the past couple of hours that he wasn't quite as easygoing as he appeared.
    Not twenty minutes ago she had reminded herself what trouble she could get into hanging around with a guy like him. Suddenly she was leaning in that direction.
    Kale Conner was a means to an end. He could help her get into places she might not get into otherwise. He