Free Killer's Prey by Rachel Lee Page B

out without purpose right now, unlike summer, when everyone seemed to be out and about on the long evenings.
    He parked in front of her house and called her again. Still no answer, but he could see that a lot of lights were on. Concern crawled along his nerve endings, propelling him out of the car and up to her door. He was in uniform, and he had already gathered she had a problem with that, but too bad. All she had to do was open the door and then he could rest easy.
    It seemed to take forever after he knocked before at last a curtain twitched. Then the door opened and Nora stood before him. She almost looked as if she had been crying.
    “Why don’t you just leave me alone?” she asked.
    That smarted after the progress he had thought they’d made that day. “I was worried when you didn’t answer the phone.”
    “That was you? I thought it was my dad again.” She hesitated, biting her lip. “Jake, you don’t owe me a damn thing. I feel bad about the position I put you in about the prom. I get that you probably feel bad, too. So...” She trailed off. “I can’t ask you in.”
    “Why?”
    “Dad.”
    She spoke the word with enough bitterness that he didn’t need much explanation. “House rules?”
    “Plenty.”
    “Dammit, Nora, you’re grown up.”
    “Tell me about it. First of all, I’m not feeling very grown up at the moment, and second, I’m living under his roof. At least for now.”
    He paused, seeking a way around old impasses and new ones. He wasn’t quite sure why it was so important to him, except possibly that he still felt guilty. But then he remembered something else.
    “Get your jacket. If you can stand five minutes in my patrol car, we’re going to go somewhere and talk.”
    “Talk about what?”
    “Anything. Everything. Twelve years ago or earlier this afternoon.”
    She bit her lip. “Jake, what’s going on?”
    “Maybe I give a damn. Someone should. Will you get your jacket?”
    Her hesitation was so palpable he almost turned away, but then she stunned him by saying, “All right.”
    Why that relieved him so much he couldn’t have said. Yes, the incident all those years ago still had the power to keep him awake with shame some nights, but it was something else. Something about remembering Nora at eighteen, prettier than she had probably ever imagined, so vulnerable and so innocent and reaching for something so ordinary and normal that her entire life had denied her.
    Maybe it was that image, overlaid by the shrunken, frightened woman some lunatic had turned her into, that was getting to him.
    Something sure as hell was, and it wasn’t only today’s unpleasant news.
    When he’d gone to pick her up in Denver, he’d done so out of a sense of old debt. A small way to make up for the hurt he’d inflicted so long ago. But now...now he wasn’t so sure. He’d felt protective of her during their youth, but he’d been raised that way. Now he was feeling protective again, and the reason behind it was totally different. Even he was self-aware enough to realize that.
    This wasn’t just something he was doing because it was right. At that moment, he wondered if it really had ever been that simple.
    She took only a moment to get her jacket, then stepped out into the chilling night and locked the door. As she turned, he saw her breath like a puff of steam on the night air. That cold already?
    She hesitated again as she looked at the police car.
    “Is it about being arrested?”
    “Partly. I was stunned. Completely stunned by that.”
    “Well, that’s not going to happen here, I promise you. I’m astonished it happened in the first place. Some idiot wasn’t doing his job right.”
    He opened the door for her, careful not to touch her, and was relieved when she made it inside.
    Maude’s, he decided. There’d be enough people around to make her feel like she wasn’t alone with him, but not so many at this hour to cause her other problems, like the feeling she was being stared at or