Free Melody Unchained by Christa Maurice

and the other paramedic rifling through the box. The one who was working on her had started dabbing at her elbow with an antiseptic. She clenched her teeth to keep from flinching. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
    “Really? What are you doing for lunch tomorrow?”
    “Dan,” his partner muttered.
    “I’m serious.” He looked her in the eye. “I am serious. What are you doing for lunch tomorrow?”
    “Where are you taking me?” She smiled.
    He laughed. “Great.”
    “Excuse me, miss. I need some information.” The officer tapped his pen on his notebook. “Can you tell me your name?”
    “Melody Welsh.”
    His eyes narrowed on her. “Melody Welsh? You must be having a really bad month.”
    “Yeah.” Melody watched Dan work in her knees. He had to cut the hole bigger before he could clean out the scrapes. She had liked these jeans.
    “Wasn’t Detective Howland handling you?”
    Detective Howland? Jerry. “He helped me after my grandfather died.”
    “You want me to call him?”
    “No.”
    Too much anger must have slipped into her voice. Dan drew back and the officer glanced up from his pad. Her three rescuers stopped talking. She might have been imagining it, but she’d have sworn the birds stopped chirping and traffic stopped moving on the main road two blocks away where the coffee shop sat. She pictured everyone in a one mile radius staring at her with their mouths open.
    “I don’t have to call in Howland,” the officer said slowly. “Can I have your address?”
    Melody answered the rest of his questions while Dan bandaged her knees. Dan told her she should go to the emergency room, but she refused. She didn’t refuse his offer to walk her the rest of the way home so she could give him her number. He wasn’t Jerry. Not solid enough, but he seemed like he might fill the hole for a little while. Tara and Gina, two of the girls from the coffee shop, were always talking about men they had gone out with and men they wanted to go out with. People on television always dated different people too. It was what people, independent people, did. So she would date. Like a normal, independent person.
     

 
    Chapter 5
     
    Jerry leaned back in his desk chair and stared at the computer screen. Shift’s end and nothing to do. He’d closed every case he’d been assigned this week and filed all the paperwork for the DA’s office. Every night, he’d stayed late to finish up so he didn’t have to go home and look at that stupid brass lamp sitting right where she’d left it that day when she’d stalked him to his house. Between the lamp and Amanda’s pictures, he didn’t even want to go home.
    But he couldn’t do that again. He couldn’t deal with another woman who needed him so much that he had to be there for her every moment. It wasn’t fair to either of them. Melody should have her own life. If she’d been a slave for thousands of years–and there was no saying whether she had been or not–she deserved to be free.
    “Hey, Howland.” Szabo strolled across the room with his hat under his arm, the image of a perfect patrolman. “I ran into that girl last night.”
    “What girl?”
    “The girl from Welsh’s closet. His granddaughter, or whatever she was.”
    “Melody, she was his granddaughter. What about her?” Melody. Sweet Melody. Szabo must have stopped in the coffee shop to talk to her. He was probably working up to asking her out. That was going to be painful.
    “She almost had her purse snatched last night.”
    “What?” Jerry shot up out of his chair so fast it rolled into Nulty’s desk. “What do you mean she had her purse snatched? Is she okay? Where did it happen? When?”
    “I said almost. She wouldn’t give it up even though he dragged her halfway down the block. Paramedics were on scene when I got there, but the fire station is right around the corner practically.”
    “Paramedics?”
    “She got scraped up pretty bad. Elbows, knees. She was limping a little when the