Free Underdead by Liz Jasper

for the Jetta. I walked around the block twice before I accepted that Gavin wasn’t coming.
    Why? Why would he stop staking out my place now ? Nothing that man did made any sense! I headed back up the stairs to my apartment, but instead of going in I sat on the top step to mull things over. As I sat staring out to the street, a gold Ford Escort drove by, slowing slightly as it passed. I recognized the car because I’d parked next to it at the police station.
    Gavin might not be following me anymore, but one of his minions was. Probably Officer Brady, if I read Gavin right. After another slow turn around the block, the car parked a little way down the street. No one got out. It was so obvious a stakeout it was almost an insult. I wondered if it was deliberate.
    I sketched a wave to the officer and went back inside, sat down at my desk, pushed my students’ papers aside and began to plan. Really plan. This was war. If they were still watching me, they must think I was withholding information. That or I was still on the murderer’s list. And yet all Gavin had done was tell me to be careful.
    I didn’t think much of the police work on this case. They hadn’t exactly done a stellar job with the other four victims, had they? Gavin had as good as admitted the last girl had been abducted right under his nose.
    I needed to protect myself. And if the detective wasn’t going to level with me, give me the information I needed to arm myself, I would just have to go get it. The stalkee was becoming the stalker.

Chapter Seven
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    The next evening I waited until the sun went down before heading back to the police station. The darkness fit my mood and my purpose. As it was about the same time I’d gone the day before, I expected Gavin would still be at work, and I was right. After a little hunting, I found his Jetta in the back lot reserved for officers. I parked on a side street, gathered my “to grade” folder in case I had a long wait and ducked into the coffee shop across from the station.
    The coffee shop was one of those old mom-and-pop joints that looked as if it had been around forever and probably had. Under its load of framed, signed portraits of grinning customers, the walls were a comforting color of coffee whitened with cream. Padded booths covered in well-worn avocado-green vinyl lined the perimeter. The rest of the place was crammed with an irregular assortment of heavily varnished tables, bumped out of alignment by the legs and hips of customers trying to squeeze by. A heady smell of coffee, grilled onions and bacon filled the air. The place was busier than I would have expected.
    As I hovered uncertainly a few feet inside the door, a passing waitress told me the drill—table service and dinner at the booths, coffee orders at the counter. Ignoring the rumbling of my stomach, I opted for the latter and scanned the menu board while a crusty old proprietor waited, his pencil stub hovering impatiently over a small, plain white pad of paper. Normally I would have ordered a latte—they were on the menu—but it would have taken more courage than I possessed to bring up foam preferences with that man. I ordered a plain black coffee.
    He slapped a thick white mug on the counter, told me refills were a quarter and moved on to the person who had queued behind me while I dallied. I was headed toward the window to scout for a table when I felt a tap on my elbow.
    I turned to see a familiar blond head. “Bob?” This was the last place I expected to find anyone from ritzy Bayshore, even another teacher.
    “Hey, Jo,” he said, greeting me with a friendly smile. “Looks like my secret’s out.” He gestured toward the thick stack of papers he’d been grading. “I come here to grade. It’s the only coffee shop I know of that the students don’t go to.”
    Poor Bob. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more assertive female students followed him home. I gave him a sympathetic pat on his burly shoulder. “Your