Free Fallen Angels 04 - Rapture by J.R. Ward

four.”
    “I could have gotten a ride. I still can, if you want to—”
    “No, it’s better this way. I can pick up my car and drive it home.”
    Crap. She’d just boxed herself in. The only way Fi-Fi was going anywhere was if she were on the back of a flatbed—the poor thing had been auto-evac’d to a local service station.
    “Oh. All right.”
    As her mother fell silent, Mels wanted to apologize, but it was too hard to put the complicated
sorry
into words. Hell, maybe she just needed to move out. Constant exposure to all that self-sacrifice and kindness was a burden to bear, instead of a joy to be relished—becauseit never ended. There was always a suggestion, an offering, a how-about-this-way, a—
    “I have to go. Thanks, though.”
    “All right.”
    “See you tonight.”
    Mels kissed the soft cheek that was presented, and left through the front door in a hurry. Outside, the air was fresh and lovely, the sun bright enough to promise a warm lunch hour.
    Getting in the back of the cab, she said, “
CCJ
offices on Trade.”
    “You got it.”
    Heading into town, the taxi had shock absorbers to rival cement blocks, and all the seat padding of a hardwood floor, but she didn’t care about the rough ride. Too much chaos in her brain to worry about her butt or her molars.
    That man from the night before remained with her, sure as if he were sitting beside her.
    It had been like that all night long.
    Letting her head fall back, she closed her eyes and replayed the accident, double-checking, triple-checking that there was nothing she could have done to avoid hitting him. And then she got tied up in other things, like the way he had lain so still and watchful in that hospital bed.
    Even injured, gravely so in some places, he’d still come across like … a predator.
    A powerful male animal, wounded—
    Okay, now she was really losing it. And maybe she needed to look closer at her dating life—which was nonexistent. …
    Too bad she couldn’t shake the conviction that he’d been strangely hypnotic, and wasn’t that tacky. What she should be concerned with was his health and well-being, and how likely he was to try to sue her for what little she had.
    Instead, she lingered on the raspy sound of his voice, and theway he’d stared at her, as if every small thing about her had been a source of fascination and importance …
    He’d been hurt a while ago, she thought. The scars at the side of his eye had healed up over time.
    What had happened to him? What was his name …?
    As she got mired in the land of Questions With No Answers, the taxi driver did his job with no muss, no fuss. Sixteen dollars, eighteen minutes, and a sore tailbone later, she was walking into the newsroom.
    The place was already noisy, with people talking and rushing around, and the chaos calmed her nerves—in the same way that taking a yoga class made her jumpy.
    Sitting down at her desk, she checked her voicemail, signed into her e-mail, and grabbed the mug she had been using since she’d inherited the desk a little over a year and half ago. Heading over to the communal kitchen, she had one of six coffeepots to choose from: None of them were decaf; three of them were just plain old Maxwell House; and the others were that stinky hazelnut crap or that femme-y macchiato-whatever-the-hell it was called.
    Big whatever on the latter. If she wanted a damn caramel sundae, she’d get one for lunch. That stuff did
not
belong in a coffee mug.
    As she poured her basic black, she thought about the mug’s true owner, Beth Randall, the reporter who’d sat in that cubicle for … well, it must havc been just over two years. One afternoon, the woman had left and never come back. Mels had been sorry about the disappearance—not that she’d known her colleague all that well—and felt badly to finally get a dedicated spot to sit in under those circumstances.
    She’d kept the mug for no particular reason. But now, as she took a sip from it, she realized it