Free Medium Rare: (Intermix) by Meg Benjamin Page B

just cautious. But she did leave her cell phone on the passenger seat where she could reach it quickly if she needed to.
    Even with the windows closed she could still hear the dogs. Grimacing, she started the engine and pulled out into the street, heading for the freeway on-ramp.
Must be hell trying to sleep around here. Maybe animal control doesn’t come out at night.
For just a moment she was aware of vague shadows dancing in her rearview mirror, but when she looked more closely, the street was deserted.
    Nothing out there, Rosie. Nothing at all.
Still, she pulled onto the brightly lighted interstate with a feeling of relief.
    A few minutes later, she turned onto South Alamo, heading for home. The streetlights seemed fainter all of a sudden, dimmer. Mist. Another foggy evening. Must be a symptom of global warming or something. As a rule, San Antonio wasn’t known for this kind of autumn weather.
    She parked in her driveway, then glanced down toward the river at the end of the backyard. Mist hung in the live oak leaves, reflecting the shrouded lights along the river paths, just like fog on the Thames in an old Sherlock Holmes movie. On an impulse, Rose slipped her purse over her shoulder and headed toward the hiking path.
    As she strolled along the sidewalk near the Johnson Street Bridge, she realized she wasn’t the only one who wanted to see what the river looked like in the fog. A few couples ambled along the near path, and she saw some of her neighbors standing in their yards. Well, she assumed they were her neighbors—with the fog it was hard to tell. Sort of people-sized lumps, anyway.
    There wouldn’t be this many people around in a Sherlock Holmes movie. On the other hand, having this many people around made it less likely she’d run into Jack the Ripper. Not that she was uneasy or anything.
    For some reason Alana DuBois popped into her mind. Rose’s jaw tightened. Alana DuBois definitely hadn’t been done in by Jack the Ripper, at least so far as she knew.
    She walked to the center of the bridge and rested her elbows on the wrought iron railing, leaning forward to look down into the black water. The fog muffled sounds as well as lights, making the voices around her indistinct in the darkness. Sherlock Holmes on the Guadalupe.
    Far down the river, she could hear dogs barking. She frowned, turning slightly toward the other side of the bridge. That baying sounded a lot like the dogs she’d heard at the Nightmare. She couldn’t remember ever hearing dogs in her neighborhood before, particularly not at night. She was fairly certain the King William Association would be all over anybody who kept a couple of pit bulls in their yard.
    She peered through the darkness and mist billowing around the river, toward the shadows under a clump of cypress a half block down. Had something moved there? She squinted, straining to see in the gloom. Something
had
moved, a vague shape heading in her direction.
    The barking was louder now. Rose glanced back at the couples on the path, but they strolled on, oblivious.
    The barking stopped suddenly, the silence almost more threatening than the noise had been. She stood very still, feeling her heart thump. Somewhere close-by she heard a growl, low and vibrating. She squinted at the shadows across the river. Surely it was her imagination. She leaned forward, narrowing her eyes.
    At the edge of the darkness under the trees, something smoldered. Two somethings. A moment passed before she realized what she was seeing.
    Two large eyes. Large, orange, glowing eyes, in fact.
    “Oh, holy crap,” Rose gasped, backing away from the railing. “That can’t be good!”
    ***
    Evan sat staring at his cell phone, wondering why he was having this inner conversation when he’d already decided not to call Rose Ramos until morning.
    On one hand, he hadn’t found anything that couldn’t wait for a few hours. The news that Alana DuBois was a crook whose real name was Sylvia Morris wouldn’t be a