Free Love On The Line by Kimberly Kincaid Page A

firmly planted on Jason, she jerked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating the kitchen. “Dinner’s ready, and there’s plenty for two. Think you can help me out and do the dishes? I’m cutting it close to get to Tessa’s, and she’s a pit bull about punctuality.”
                  “Okay, sure.” Jason took a step back to let her pass. “I’ll see you for lunch on Wednesday, yeah?”
                  Her softly-soled boots shushed over the floorboards as she fidgeted, but her bright smile and dash for the door covered the move right up.
                  “Absolutely. Have a good night.”
    And then she was gone.
    #
                  After three hours of cinematic asskickery, two bowls of the best chicken and dumplings ever to pass his lips, and one failed attempt to relax after another, Noah had to concede defeat. His arm was quickly eclipsing his pain threshold, and between yesterday’s memory teaser and tonight’s debacle with Violet, his brain was just as knotted up. He hadn’t mentioned the memory thing to Jason, mostly because he knew Lieutenant Martin wouldn’t let him work the case, even peripherally, until Noah came up with more than one sketchy image.
                  So until he could remember every detail, he’d just have to try harder. Not that he’d been sitting around playing Tiddlywinks. After all, he’d spent hours with Violet today, just waiting for another memory, or even better, the whole lot of them, to come crashing back. But instead of unlocking his temporarily buried recollection of events, they’d ended up wrapped around each other like pretzels, four seconds from detonation when her brother knocked on the door.
                  Christ, he could make a living on being frustrated for how good he was at it right now.
                  Noah padded into his dimly lit kitchen to grab a bottle of water from the fridge, setting it on the counter before reaching for the Ibuprofen. He popped the cap on both, knocking back a bit of each along with his aggravation. He’d learned the stubborn way that taking even low-level pain meds on an empty stomach was a bad plan, so he flipped the cupboard open for a quick scan. One perfect, sunshine-yellow square of cornbread remained from last night’s meal, and hell yeah, that would do the trick. Funny, Noah hadn’t realized it until yesterday, but he hadn’t eaten homemade cornbread in ages, probably since he was a kid.
                  His stomach let out an anticipatory rumble as he leaned back against the counter, taking a huge bite. Buttery and honey-sweet, the bread melted on his tongue, just light enough to be crumbly but still dense enough to pack that cakelike punch. His mom used to make cornbread like this, right from scratch, and you’d better be prepared to throw some serious elbows if you wanted seconds.
    Or take them. Man, he’d gotten his first black eye over his mother’s cornbread, an errant shot from his brother Ben’s overly enthusiastic jockeying. Their mother had punished Ben the best way she knew how, too. Noah had gotten all the seconds.
    Noah’s laugh sounded off through the quiet kitchen, and he took the last bite, the tension in his shoulders sliding free. Next time he talked to his brother, he’d have to give him a hard time over that. Maybe he could even—
    The kitchen disappeared before he could even complete the thought, replaced by the laser-cut image of a door. Years of use and neglect had chipped away at its surface, taking it from bright red to the patchy, faded-out color of old bricks. Jason stood next to him, calm as always as he scanned their surroundings, head on a fully-ingrained swivel. The broken lock— kicked in, from the look of it— gave way to a musty, graffiti-streaked vestibule, and a warning twitched, low and hard in Noah’s gut. A row of metal mailboxes lined the wall, painted over enough times to make them