for once, she’d found someone she could count on. Someone who felt as strongly about her as she did about him.
That was what happened when you expected too much, she told herself. You wound up with too little. Or, in this case, with almost nothing at all.
But she was determined that no one would suspect how she really felt. It didn’t go with the image of herself she wanted to project.
Wanting to change the direction of the conversation, she looked at Joanna. “So, your turn. How are things going with you?”
Joanna’s eyes glowed. She pushed aside her almost depleted dish of dessert, wiping off the area in front of her. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Digging deeply into her purse, she pulled out a small white album that was almost bursting at the seams. It was crammed full of brand-new photographs of her brand-new baby.
Sherry laughed as she dug into her own purse. “I’ll meet your stack—” she plunked down her own album “—and raise you five pictures.” “You’re on,” Joanna declared.
Lori exchanged looks with C.J. “I think we’re about to get babied to death.”
“Bring them on,” C.J. encouraged. “I can’t think of a sweeter way to go.”
* * *
Last night had been nice break, but it felt good to get back to work, C.J. thought as she sat, reading over the folder that Warrick had left with her yesterday. She was reviewing it for the umpteenth time.
The office was empty, except for her. There were times she welcomed the quiet.
She enjoyed getting together with the other women. That in itself was a constant source of surprise to her. Apart from her mother, she’d been raised in a world of men. With three older brothers and one younger one, C.J. found that she had a difficult time relating to other women.
But Lori, Sherry and Joanna were different. Maybe because, for different reasons, they had all found themselves approaching motherhood while in a single status. Facing the biggest event in their lives without a life partner beside them had given them all something in common.
Something in common.
What did these thirteen women have in common? she wondered, staring down at the photographs spread out on her desk. Beyond the obvious, of course. If you looked quickly, and myopically, they almost looked like photographs of the same person.
Of her, she thought grimly. Because she bore the same eerily similar physical features as the dead women. She was a blue-eyed blonde within the age range that the Sleeping Beauty Killer gravitated toward.
There but for the grace of God…
C.J. shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She didn’t know if it was the thought or the unnerving twinges she kept feeling that was getting to her.
What had made the Sleeping Beauty Killer snuff out these women’s lives, executing them politely but firmly? Why them? Why not green-eyed redheads or brown-eyed brunettes?
There had to be a reason. Something.
One by one she held up the photographs of the young women, taken while they were still alive, and examined them closely. Did they represent some kind of fantasy woman to the killer? Someone in his life who had been unattainable to him? Who perhaps had spurned him?
Or was there some kind of other reason behind his choice?
She just didn’t know, and not knowing frustrated her to the nth degree. Muttering an oath, she tossed down the last photograph, taken of the last victim. A Bedford University sophomore named Nora Adams.
“Did you know him, Nora? Did you talk to him? Smile at him? Or did you not even see him?”
“Don’t you have a home to go to?”
Startled, C.J. almost jumped. It took a moment for her heart to stop slamming against her rib cage. Turning around, she saw that Warrick was standing not five feet away from her. She hadn’t even heard him come in.
C.J. took a deep breath and gathered the photographs together again. “Since when did you decide to become my keeper?”
As if that was possible. “It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.”
This pending motherhood with all its emotional baggage was getting her too jumpy, she thought disparagingly. Her nerves felt scattered and dangerously close to the surface. She just wished she didn’t ache so. “How’s the investigation going?”
He’d been on his way home when he’d decided to take a detour and stop at the field office. He had a hunch C.J. would still be here. There were times, such as these, when he felt that his partner didn’t have the common sense of a flea. Not when it came to herself, anyway.
Warrick shoved his hands into his pockets. The case was as frustrating to him as it was to her. There were dead ends as far as the eye could see. Just like the last time.
“No more dead girls, if that’s what you’re asking. No more clues, either. No fingerprints, no bodily fluids, no sloppy anything left in his wake.” He laughed shortly. “It’s like the guy’s a ghost.”
He’d put into words the thought she’d just been entertaining. “Maybe he is.” Warrick looked at her sharply. “What do you mean, like Casper?”
“No.” He knew she didn’t mean that, C.J. thought in exasperation. “Like someone nobody notices. One of those people who pass through our lives who we never take any note of.” Caught up in a fast-paced existence, she was as guilty as everyone else. “The kid bagging your groceries, the toll booth guy making change. The postal worker who weighs your package. People we see every day without really seeing them at all.”
She could be on to something. That could explain why no one ever noticed anyone out of the ordinary hanging around, Warrick reasoned. “That doesn’t mean he won’t make a mistake.”
She sighed, flipping the folder closed. She shifted again. Her back was aching in the worst way. She tried to remember if she’d done something to strain it. “He hasn’t until now.”
“And odds are, he won’t tonight.”
She looked at Warrick quizzically. What was that supposed to mean? Had he heard something? “Tonight?”
“Yes.” Pulling her chair back from her desk, he turned it around to face him and leaned over her. “Go home, C.J. You look tired.”
Feet planted on the floor, she scooted back. “Bad lighting.”
There was no such thing as bad lighting as far as C.J. was concerned. She looked good in shadow and in sunlight. Rousing his thoughts, he waved around the office. “Everyone else is gone.”
She raised her chin defiantly, knowing she was baiting him and enjoying it. “You’re not.”
“That’s because I’m checking in on you.” He stopped, knowing this was going to go nowhere. With C.J. it never did unless she wanted it to. “God, but you are a stubborn woman.”
She
