Definitely Dead

our first date—that we’d been in peril. Was that a bad omen? I dismissed that rational thought when Quinn’s lips and teeth traveled down to find that vulnerable and sensitive place where the neck curves into the shoulder. I made an incoherent noise, because along with the arousal I always felt when kissed there, I felt undeniable pain from the bruises that circled my neck. It was an uncomfortable combination.
    “Sorry, sorry,” he muttered into my skin, his lips never stopping their assault. I knew if I lowered my hand, I’d be able to touch him intimately. I’m not saying I wasn’t tempted. But I was learning a little caution as I went along . . . probably not enough, I reflected with the sliver of my mind that wasn’t getting more and more involved with the heat that surged up from my lowest nerve bundle to meet the heat generated by Quinn’s lips. Oh, geez. Oh, oh, oh.
    I moved against him. It was a reflex, okay? But a mistake, because his hand slipped under my breast and his thumb began stroking. I shuddered and jerked. He was doing a little gasping, too. It was like jumping onto the running board of a car that was already speeding down the dark road.
    “Okay.” I breathed, pulled away a little. “Okay, let’s stop this now.”
    “Ummm,” he said in my ear, his tongue flicking. I jerked.
    “I’m not doing this,” I said, trying to sound definite. Then my resolve gathered. “Quinn! I’m not having sex with you in this nasty parking lot!”
    “Not even a little bit of sex?”
    “No. Definitely not!”
    “Your mouth” (here he kissed it) “is saying one thing, but your body” (he kissed my shoulder) “is saying another.”
    “Listen to the mouth, buster.”
    “Buster?”
    “Okay. Quinn.”
    He sighed, straightened. “All right,” he said. He smiled ruefully. “Sorry. I didn’t plan on jumping you like that.”
    “Going into a place where you’re not exactly welcome, and getting out unhurt, that’s some excitement,” I said.
    He expelled a deep breath. “Right,” he said.
    “I like you a lot,” I said. I could read his mind fairly clearly, just at this instant. He liked me, too; right at the moment, he liked me a whole bunch. He wanted to like me right up against the wall.
    I battened my hatches. “But I’ve had a couple of experiences that have been warnings for me to slow down. I haven’t been going slow with you tonight. Even with the, ah, special circumstances.” I was suddenly ready to sit down in the car. My back was aching and I felt a slight cramp. I worried for a second, then thought of my monthly cycle. That was certainly enough to wear me out, coming on top of an exciting, and bruising, evening.
    Quinn was looking down at me. He was wondering about me. I couldn’t tell what his exact concern was, but suddenly he asked, “Which of us was the target of that attack outside the theater?”
    Okay, his mind was definitely off sex now. Good. “You think it was just one of us?”
    That gave him pause. “I had assumed so,” he said.
    “We also have to wonder who put them up to it. I guess they were paid, in some form—either drugs or money, or both. You think they’ll talk?”
    “I don’t think they’ll survive the night in jail.”

Chapter 10
    THEY DIDN’T EVEN RATE THE FRONT PAGE. THEY were in the local section of the Shreveport paper, below the fold. JAILHOUSE HOMICIDES, the headline read. I sighed.
    Two juveniles awaiting transport from the holding cells to the Juvenile Facility were killed last night sometime after midnight.
    The newspaper was delivered every morning to the special box at the end of my driveway, right beside my mailbox. But it was getting dark by the time I saw the article, while I was sitting in my car, about to pull out onto Hummingbird Road and go to work. I hadn’t ventured out today until now. Sleeping, laundry, and a little gardening had taken up my day. No one had called, and no one had visited, just like the ads said. I’d thought Quinn might phone, just to check up on my little injuries . . . but not.
    The two juveniles, brought into the police station on charges of assault and battery, were put in one of the holding cells to wait for the morning bus to arrive from the Juvenile Facility. The holding cell for juvenile offenders is out of sight from that for adult offenders, and the two were the only juveniles incarcerated during the night. At some point, the two were strangled by a person or persons unknown. No other