Free Raven's Peak by Lincoln Cole

detective?”
    “You’ve been photographing me.”
    “For my blog.”
    “You mean for George Wertman, right?”
    “Him, too. He’s the guy who hired me.”
    “I’ve read your blog. You’ve never done a single story like this.”
    “The opportunity was sort of sprung on me,” he said.
    She smiled sadly and shook her head. “You have no idea how right you are.”
    She turned and disappeared into the kitchen. He could hear sizzling and the microwave was running. “How do you like your eggs?” she called out.
    “Excuse me?”
    She appeared around the corner again. “Eggs? How do you like them?”
    “I’m not hungry,” he said, shaking his head. “How did I get here?”
    “In a car. Your car, I hope. Otherwise, someone is going to be pissed tomorrow when their space is empty.”
    “What happened?”
    “You passed out. I thought that much was obvious.”
    “I mean, what happened after that? How did I get here? Did you drive?”
    She paused, staring at him with pursed lips. “You ask a lot of dumb questions. You know that?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You keep asking questions that would be obvious to any sane person who examined this logically. Do I look like I have a driver with me? Maybe someone waiting out front to chauffeur us around? No, after you hyperventilated I shoved your ass into the passenger seat and climbed in.”
    “How did you know where I live?”
    “Your driver’s license,” she said.
    “My driver’s license . . . ”
    He sucked in a breath. He started to feel dizzy.
    “Whoa there, stay with me. Let’s not do that again.”
    “Guy . . . he was dead . . . ”
    “It was a costume,” the woman said. “Just a costume.”
    Haatim kept gasping for air, having trouble focusing.
    Suddenly she banged her hand on the wall, startling Haatim. He shook his head, back in reality.
    “Just a costume,” she reiterated. “The guy uses it to scare people.”
    Haatim hesitated. “It didn’t seem like a costume.”
    She shrugged. “I don’t care what it seemed like. In any case, I retrieved your wallet and keys and brought you back here.”
    Then she disappeared back into the kitchen. After a second, he heard humming.
    He stood up, still a little off balance, and staggered over to his bedroom. The smell of stale vomit wafted out as soon as he opened the door and he swallowed back a bit of bile. Without breathing more than necessary he kicked his dirty clothes toward the basket in the corner of the room and pulled a shirt and some pants on.
    He stared longingly at the bedroom window for a few minutes after he was dressed. He could slip out, find a police officer, and tell them some strange person was in his kitchen, someone he’d never met before who had apparently driven him home and undressed him in his apartment.
    But he decided against it. For one thing, he didn’t know what was going on, and it seemed like maybe she had saved his life. Another problem was that he’d been following her for a few days now, collecting evidence on his computer and the document he’d been writing mention of her more than a few times. “Sorry officer, this person I’ve been cyber stalking for a few days broke into my apartment and cooked breakfast in my kitchen, ” didn’t sound very convincing.
    But, the real reason he decided against it was that his bedroom window was really small. He wasn’t in as good of shape as he used to be and doubted he could slip through.
***
    With a deep and—he hoped—calming breath, he headed back to his living room. He felt better now that he had clean clothes on, and the pain and tightness in his body had mostly gone away.
    The woman was sitting on one of his barstools, munching a piece of toast and scrolling through a phone. She paid him no attention at all.
    It was the first time he saw her in good lighting up close. She was actually quite beautiful, he admitted, with full lips and smooth black skin. He’d suspected she was gorgeous, and she certainly didn’t