“They did.” I raised my pitch into Jas’s higher range, imitating our conversation. “‘But Mama, they weren’t boy boys, they were geek boys—and not cool geeks who might become rich computer geniuses someday. They were gamer boys.’”

  Lynnie laughed. “Sounds like some of the guys I used to date.”

  “I know. Me, too.” I lifted my teacup to Lynnie and we touched rims. “In Jas and Paz’s way of thinking, they weren’t breaking the major number-one rule about having boys stay over at night because they were geeks, not boys. I reminded them the geek boys had penises. I thought they were going to die, right there in the rec room.”

  “Well, Mamash shouldn’t use such foul language.”

  “We both know they’ve said worse. Anyway, they seemed to get the point.”

  “Oh, honey, this is too rich. Thanks for sharing.” Lynnie checked her watch and drained her cup, rinsing it at the small sink and putting it away in the cupboard wet. Her body tightened just a bit as she said over her shoulder, “I’m sorry about the girl they found. She was a member of your family?”

  The laughter drained away and I closed my eyes for a moment, thinking about the TV pictures of the newest graveyard crime scene, the camera’s glimpse of the decayed body. “Yeah,” I said. “She was. My Aunt Mosetta’s great-granddaughter. Her father didn’t even know she was missing. Not like that.” I finished my tea and passed her my cup, which she rinsed as well, her back still to me. “He thought her mother had come back and taken off with her. Over twenty months ago. She was so much older than the other girls that no one put it together with the Ballerina Doll murders.”

  Lynnie turned from the sink, her face pained. “They think one man did everything, don’t they? All the murders?”

  I walked to the sink, the two of us in the tiny space, hemmed in by desk and cabinet and chairs. I slipped an arm around Lynnie’s shoulders and she put hers around my waist. Side by side, we stood in the office, surrounded by clutter. “Yes,” I said. “One guy working alone. Cassie was sixteen, but looked fourteen. Not an early bloomer, our Cassie.” I remembered the girl, dusky-skinned and green-eyed, unlike the blond, blueeyed girls the murderer usually took. Jim had said it was most likely a “trial run” to see how it went and refine his technique. It was sordid, horrific, and I grieved for the young girl.

  “This is awful,” she said softly, sounding as upset as I felt.

  I nodded, my head against hers. “Thanks for being my friend,” I said.

  Lynnie laughed, a breathy sound, and squeezed me in a hug. “I got to work. See you tomorrow,” she said, grabbing a chart. I followed her with my eyes out the door and to the pharmacy, the small nook in the Majors where meds were kept.

  I shook my head. Time for the pill and med count, documenting every single drug prescribed in the last shift. More paperwork. With Lynnie gone, I finished up and gathered my bag, fishing out the keys. I waved to the night crew as I passed through the door, and Christopher waved back. He and Farley had the schedule out on the counter, their heads close together. They seemed to be negotiating days off. MacRoper was standing nearby and seemed surprised to see me still around. He looked at the clock and frowned.

  I took the elevator and stopped in at Elroy’s room, telling him that Jas and Paz would be back in a day or so. He had taken a shower and shaved and was looking better. He would be going home soon, he informed me. “I’ll pass it along to the girls,” I said, and headed out, trying not to think about the way his eyes had lit up at the thought of their visit and hoping that my girls wouldn’t hurt him.

  It wasn’t dark in the parking lot. Rather, the soft, gloomy dusk of spring, shadows pooled in odd places, cast in peculiar patterns by the security lights. It was a comforting sight, the evening air warm on my skin.

  The older SUV didn’t have an automatic unlocking system and getting the key in the lock was never easy in less than perfect lighting. I bent over the door. I needed reading glasses. Could I date a younger man if I needed reading glasses?

  The breath thudded out of me. I slammed into the asphalt. Skidding. My knees and palms ground into the pavement and pain shot up my limbs, white hot. My bag hit my hip and whipped past me.

  I’ve been hit. I’m on the ground. The thoughts lightning fast. I tried to shift upright.

  The second blow took me on the shoulder. My face hit the tarmac. Dusk became night-dark. Something draped me, smothering, covered my head and shoulders. I sucked in a single breath, hot and panicked. Adrenaline blasted through me.

  Hands wrenched my shoulders back. The cloth tightened around my head and upper arms. I struggled, hitting out. Hard. I felt an impact, heard a grunt. But I was on the ground, at a disadvantage. I kicked, screamed. I fisted my hands, lower arms still free, and swung them. Beating into the attacker.

  “Damn it, Mnem, stop fighting.”

  Screaming, I redoubled my efforts. He cursed. Abruptly, he whipped the cloth off me and he was gone, footsteps receding. I whisked back my hair and blew it from my mouth, sucking in a breath.

  A second man was running toward me, a silhouette between cars. He had drawn a gun. “Stop!” he shouted, extending the weapon in both hands, pointing it at the running man.

  His steps faltered when he saw me in the dark between cars. The security light behind him shadowed his face into a dark mask in the rapidly falling night. His form towered over me. Instinctively, I cowered back, fear bubbling up fast. He cursed before holstering his gun and bending over, hands on his knees, breath huffing.

  His face resolved into human. I recognized a security guard.

  The bubble of fear popped. He was maybe mid-sixties, out of shape. He looked up once more, as if tracking the running man, and then at me. “You okay?”

  “Yes, thanks to you.” I looked down at myself. “He tore my new uniform,” I said, and I burst into tears.

  The security officer laughed, the sound shaky. Abruptly, I was laughing with him through my tears.

  “Yeah. It’s like that sometimes,” he said, of my whiplash emotions, “laughter and tears.” He pulled out his radio and said into it, “He got away, but she’s hurt. Send EMS.”

  “No. I’m fine.” I wiped my nose, bloodying my face in the process.

  “I’m convinced,” he said dryly, the tone of the career cop beneath the words. “You got hurt on hospital grounds, so you have to be seen in the ED. Company policy. And I have to fill out a ton of paperwork.”

  “Can’t I just walk back in?” I asked.

  “Nope. But you can sit in your car until they get here.” He extended both hands and I held up my bleeding palms. He gripped my wrists and levered me to my feet, found my keys, which had been knocked away into the shadows, and opened my SUV door. One handed, he helped me into the seat.

  “Did he get anything?” he asked.

  My bag was still looped over my arm, and I shook my head. “He didn’t take my stuff.”

  The guard nodded, thoughtfully. “I thought I saw something over your head.”

  “A blanket or something. He—” I stopped as fear flared through me, belated. I forced a breath into my lungs and it exhaled as laughter, the sound edging toward hysteria. The security guard reached in and patted my shoulder. His touch was calming, and I took another breath, forcing down the panic. Softer, I said, “He wanted me. He was trying to take me.”

  Red emergency lights flashed at the entrance to the lot. After that, it was a lot of medical mumbo jumbo, putting me on the stretcher, which I argued against, taking my blood pressure, which was up a bit, pulse ditto, respirations ditto again. Frustrated, I pushed them away with my bloody hands saying, “I just got beat up. What the hell do you expect?”

  Lynnie Bee’s shocked laughter floated across the lot and I spotted her at the back of the crowd, pushing her way through. I realized I had just cussed a paramedic, which let me know, better than the tests, just how upset I was. I looked up into the paramedic’s face, realized I knew him in passing from dropping off patients, and said, “Sorry, Chayo,” sounding as overwhelmed as I felt. Tears pooled as my hands started shaking. Stress reactions, the professional part of my mind informed me.

  “No problem,” the Latino man said, amused. Opening a bottle of sterile water, he brandished a pair of scissors. “Let’s get your pants legs out of the way and flush your hands and knees, okay?”

  Lynnie pushed in, her face strained, took the scissors and cut through the thin cloth exposing my knees. I cried harder, knowing I looked like a ten-year-old who had taken a fall from a bike.

  They carted me in the ambulance to the ED, bypassing the Minors, which was where I should have gone, and wheeled me directly into the Majors, where I could be properly fussed over. There are benefits to working in a hospital, and preferential treatment is one of them. I got the premier cubicle, the head of my stretcher up at a forty-five-degree angle so I could see and be seen by the crowd of co-workers who streamed by, their images wavering in my tears, which were falling now, unchecked. I knew from their expressions that I must look pretty beat up. I wiped my nose on the back of one wrist and accepted the tissue Lynnie handed me. Even Dr. Death walked by, looking me over. Of course, he was probably gloating at my being beaten up in the parking lot.

  My wounds were being cleaned when the cops showed up, two in uniform and one in plainclothes. Lynnie shooed them out as she washed my cheek and applied antibacterial salve. “It’s only a tiny bit of road rash,” she assured me, tears bright in her own eyes. “Please stop crying. It’ll heal with no scarring. I promise.” She hugged me, my face tight against her shoulder.

  “I don’t care about my face,” I whispered to her. “Not really. It’s only a scratch. I might have been dead.” Lynnie shuddered with me, rocking me like a child before wiping her own face and returning to the job of cleaning my wounds.

  In short order, the FBI entered—Bow-tie Emma and Julie Schwartz. Standing in the corner of my cubicle, they took a statement from the security guard, whose name was Hickson, and who, it seemed, had called them. I listened in as I was bandaged with burn pads and cling wrap—not the kind used in kitchens but the sticky gauze wrap used for bandages. Someone thought I deserved the pretty stuff, so one hand was wrapped in purple, the other in fuchsia. My knees were done up pale pink and lavender, to match.

  Hickson said, “That other agent, Ramsey, said to keep an eye on her, coming and going. We were watching on the camera monitors and saw it right away, when she was attacked. I took off to help and my backup called Ramsey. I guess he called you?”

  Jim had asked hospital security to watch over me? Or to watch me? There was a mighty big difference.

  “Yes, he did,” Emma said, sounding just as ticked off as she looked. She glared at the local cops and said, “We’ll handle it.”

  The plainclothes guy shrugged and said, “Less paperwork for us.” They left without a backward glance. I would rather have been under the focus of the locals than have the attention of Emma.

  Hickson gave the bow-tied feeb a detailed but succinct version of the events while Julie watched me, taking in every scrape, cut, tear and road rash. When the medical part of the entertainment was over and I was bandaged up like the Michelin man, Julie moved in closer and opened an evidence kit. She put on gloves and began picking bits and pieces of things off me. I had never been conscious while a forensic investigation was done on me and was surprised how awful it made the recipient beneath the examination feel—un-important, and somehow more of a victim.

  Julie bent close to me, her body still. She raised her voice. “Supervisory Special Agent Simmons, would you take a look at this?”

  With ill grace, Emma left Hickson, came close and bent over me, inspecting my shoulder. Her face tightened a fraction and I watched as she moved around the stretcher to my other side, studying my scrub shirt, my hair and my face. “We’ll need her clothes.”

  Residual fear blasted into anger and my tears stopped. “For what, Emma?” I demanded. “Being mauled isn’t enough, you have to steal my clothes, too?” Okay, I had gone from feeling pitiful to snarky.

  Emma gave me a real, honest-to-goodness grin with no attitude in it at all. I flinched, I was so surprised. “The cloth your attacker used to cover you left a number of short black fibers on your shirt,” she said with satisfaction.

  Instantly, I understood what she was thinking. This may not have been a random attack, a man on the lookout for any available female to kidnap, rape, torture and kill. Oh no. Nothing so horrifically mundane. The kidnapper of the little girls may have been after me. Me, specifically. A Chadwick. One who had been on TV and whose house had been violated. “Oh,” I said, a world of meaning in the word. “But I’m an adult….”

  Lynnie grabbed my wrist, dark eyes wide. I thought she might pass out, she looked so pale. To give her something to do other than think of me, her friend, as a victim of assault, I said, “I have a clean set of scrubs in my locker.” I was satisfied when my words came out sounding almost normal. “Would you get them, please?”

  The breath rushed out of her. “I’ll get them. Be right back.”

  “Sorry,” I said to Emma before I thought. I was saying it a lot lately, and this time, I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for anyway.

  “No problem. Too bad we weren’t really expecting an attack on you. We could have used you for bait and had the son of a bitch.” With that pithy comment, she left the room, followed by Julie.

  Special Agent Schwartz flashed me a smile on the way out of the room. “I’ll be back to get the clothes,” she said.

  “Whoopee,” I said to myself. But I was feeling calmer. More steady. More myself.

  Moments later, she was back, excited and agitated. “You know a Denise Abercrombie?” she asked.

  “Distantly.”

  “We just found out she’s a Chadwick,” Julie said, jubilant. “Someone broke in to her house yesterday and tried to kidnap her. She fought him off. He got away.”

  I held Julie’s gaze. “Why is he taking adults now?”

  “That is the million-dollar question.”

  Jim raced around the corner of my cubicle, long legs flying, and nearly skidded into Julie. My heart jumped in my chest, then plummeted. How did he get here so fast? How did any of them?

  “Hold up there, cowboy,” Julie said. “The little lady’s doing fine.” She laughed as if that were an inside joke.

  Jim chuckled dutifully but the sound was strained, and his eyes swept me as his hands took my bandaged ones. He curled my fingertips out, inspecting the wrappings. He was breathing hard, a sheen of sweat beading his forehead. He leaned in and brushed something hard and sharp from my cheek. “Ash?” he asked. “You okay?”

  “Don’t touch her,” Julie said belatedly. “I have to get her clothes for fiber analysis. I don’t want to be getting results from another site.”

  Jim backed off and I managed a smile for him, uncertain, shaky. “You got security to watch me?” I asked, careful to keep any accusing tone out of my voice.

  “I had a feeling,” he said. He blew out a hard breath and bent over for a moment, his hands on his knees, his head down, in odd imitation of out-of-shape Hickson. He must have run hard and fast to get to me. He stayed bent over, breath strident. At last he stood, his face folded into some resemblance of the cop mask, tucking his hands in his pockets. “Nothing to go on. Just a hunch,” he said.

  “Too bad it wasn’t official,” Julie said, her tone acerbic. “Simmons would have used her for bait.”

  “Simmons can go fu—” He caught himself but not before Julie laughed and looked at me from the corner of her eye.

  So he had been worried about my safety, not my guilt. The thought warmed me, taking a bit of the sting from my heart, if not my palms.

  “Step outside the curtain and I’ll get her clothes,” Julie said. “Then you two can go kissy kissy, okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure,” Jim said, and he pulled the curtain around the bed, though I could see his shoes on the other side, lace-up leather in need of polishing. He was easing his weight back and forth from foot to foot, antsy. He was worried about me. Which, I decided, I really liked. It brought me down another notch from the adrenaline rush of the attack, though tears still threatened with every other breath.

  Julie spread a blue plastic cloth on the floor and motioned me to step on it. I slid my legs off the bed and stepped on the blue evidence cloth. Julie bent and unlaced my shoes.

  “My shoes, too? They’re brand new,” I complained.

  “Yeah.” She met my eyes from the floor, patiently waiting. “Tough break.”

  “I’ll never get them back, will I?”

  “Probably not,” she said, sounding totally indifferent.

  She could have at least faked concern. It would have made me feel better. And they were comfortable shoes, too. Now I’d have to make time to go shopping. I sighed, resigned, and eased my feet out one at a time. Julie placed the shoes in an evidence bag.

  Next came the socks, then the torn and cut scrub pants. Julie rolled them down and placed each in a bag, which she labeled. She pulled my scrub top off over my head and put it in a bag, holding me bent over until she had a free hand to shake out my hair before gathering up the blue cloth and folding it carefully, putting it in its own bag. She plucked several hairs from my scalp, put them in their own tiny evidence bag, and all the bags went into a large bag, which she labeled as well. “Done,” Julie said. “Thanks.”

  From the other side of the curtain, Lynnie said, “I got your clothes. Ready?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Hope you brought socks and shoes.”

  “Got it all,” she said, easing through the split. She set pants, top, shoes—old and scuffed—and socks on the stretcher, all except for the pink socks and white shoes. Easter colors. I’d forgotten I had put old pink scrubs in the locker. I took the socks and tried to pull them on my feet, the bandages making me clumsy. Fingers still quivering, Lynnie brushed my hands aside and helped me put them on. Helped with the pants and the top too, and even tied my shoes for me.