naughty pictures from slipping into your mind.
As for Chang, if she could have her druthers, she would work all her cases alone, but it didn’t happen that way. Protocol demanded that she liaise with the L.A.P.D. That being the case, she much preferred Conners to the other officers she had worked with in the past. He was the only one who hadn’t treated her with sometimes barely concealed resentment, even disdain.
He was also the only one who had not hit on her at the first opportunity. She was mostly grateful for that fact. She had no—absolute zero—interest in getting involved with anyone, had neither the time nor the energy nor the inclination. Her job was her life.
She had enough womanly vanity, though, to be a tad disappointed at his total lack of interest. He was good-looking: nothing flashy, but nice. Only a few inches taller than her, short for a cop. That, combined with a boyish and astonishingly innocent face—he must get carded every time he walked into a bar—made him look more like a college kid than the experienced police officer she knew he was. He was stocky, with firm muscles and enormous hands that suggested real strength, and the way he held himself, the way he moved and walked, told her that he was most likely dynamite in the sack—and damned well knew it.
She’d had a thing with a guy just like him in college, the last real thing she’d had with any guy. She had broken if off cold after two breathless weeks. He was just too good. She couldn’t afford the distraction. Not then, not now.
As if he had read her thoughts, he glanced at her and flashed a grin. Nice teeth, she thought, and then, Jeez, Roby, like you’re buying a horse. Why don’t you check out his rump while you’re at it?
Which she did when he walked ahead of her to unlock the car. Of their own volition, her eyes dropped to his buns, nicely rounded, looking like they were carved out of granite.
She snapped her eyes away from them. Buns were not a part of her business plan. She had bad guys to catch. Totally disgusted with herself, she slid into the car seat beside him.
“Crapola,” she said aloud. She hated shit like this.
* * * *
Mommy, Mommy, help me!
Becky....
Catherine fought against the restraints that held her to the bed, the tubes that connected her to monitoring equipment.
Even when the nurses came running, even when the sedative had relaxed her body and her struggles had ceased, the cries still rang in her mind:
Mommy, Mommy....
CHAPTER TWO
“This will seem a little strange to you,” the woman doctor said. She was one Catherine hadn’t seen before, a pale blonde woman. The light from the window formed a golden halo about her head. After three weeks they had finally removed the last of Catherine’s bandages. With the wrappings gone her scalp felt oddly naked.
The doctor raised a small penlight in front of Catherine’s face and flicked it on. Intense light filled Catherine’s vision. “Don’t blink.”
It reminded her of that other light, blinding, pure. She had told no one about that, had resolutely refused even to think about it, but the light shining into her eyes, blinding her, brought it back. It began to seem to her that she could see something in this light—almost see something, if she just looked a little harder.
She was only vaguely aware of what the doctor was saying: “You must travel. You must learn it. Try, now. Just a little way. I will help.”
Suddenly, she was in the corridor outside. There was her nurse, Millie, coming along the hallway toward her, a clipboard in her hand. Millie looked up and saw her. She blinked, disbelieving, her eyes wide.
As suddenly as she had left it, Catherine was back in her bed, pain threatening to make her head explode. She moaned aloud. She had forgotten the doctor tending her until she said, “Hurts, doesn’t it?”
Catherine opened her eyes. That brought fresh lightning bolts of pain crashing into her skull. “Who?” she started to ask, when the door flew open. Over the doctor’s shoulder, Catherine saw Millie dash into the room and come to an abrupt stop. The doctor did not turn, did not even seem to notice the sudden entrance.
“You’re here,” Millie said. “I thought....”
The doctor smiled and waved a hand to indicate the tubes connecting Catherine to the various life support systems. “How could she go anywhere?” she asked.
For a moment more, Millie gaped. With a mystified expression, she shook her head. “Of course. How silly of me, how could you go anywhere?” She backed out of the room, her puzzled eyes studying Catherine’s face.
Catherine looked at the doctor. “Why did you say that?” she asked.
“Say what?”
“That, what you said, about traveling?”
The woman chuckled and slipped her penlight into the pocket of her tunic. “My dear, I’m afraid it will be a while before you do any real traveling. You rest now.” She got up and strolled toward the door.
“Wait,” Catherine said, “I—I’m confused.”
At the door, the doctor paused for just a second to look back and smile. Up until this moment she had been utterly professional and sweetly bland, a face you could almost but not quite remember, the sort of someone you might know only slightly from church or perhaps one of your child’s teachers. There was nothing bland or sweet about the smile she flashed across the room at Catherine, however. It was fierce, almost demonic. And challenging.
“Of course you are. It will get better, I promise. You’ll be fine. It just takes time.”
* * * *
It felt strange to be back in Los Angeles. Jack McKenzie took the freeway ramp for Hollywood Boulevard, swerving out of the way of a brainless driver determined to get around him to exit first. That, at least, hadn’t changed: the Los Angeles traffic and the nutty drivers. No, that wasn’t true. The volume of traffic had doubled, at least, in the dozen or so years since he had been here.
One thing that blessedly hadn’t changed was Musso and Frank’s. The restaurant sat where it had sat for ages, defending its faded elegance against the growing seediness of Hollywood Boulevard. He left his car in the parking lot in the rear, slipping the attendant a ten to insure that he kept an eye on it, and entered by the back door and the little corridor that went past the kitchen. To the right was the newer dining room with its lunch counter and brighter lights.
He went to the left, however, to the older of the two rooms, with its monumental mahogany bar, the faded and vaguely pastoral murals, the high-backed wooden booths where generations of stars, politicians, moguls had sipped their cocktails and eaten the unchanged list of daily specials. The waiters might have been the same ones who had served him in the past. None of them were young and all of them were pros. To a man, and here and there a woman, they eschewed the trendy we-are-all-buddies-together style of service. If you wanted a waiter-as-friend, you could get that all over this town. Here, what you got was the business of good food and good drinks, properly, efficiently served.
Peter Weitman was already in one of the booths, and already sipping a martini. A second one waited in its little bowl of ice for
