Gingerbread Man

usually slow and easy, and everyone knows everyone else. Nothing bad ever happens in Dilmun, you know."
    "So I've heard." He nodded. "I was thinking along the same lines myself, as a matter of fact."
    Holly lifted her head, frowned at him over the coffee mug.
    He pulled a chair up to face hers, and sat down in it. "I misjudged this town and the people in it from the start, Holly. It's tight, and close, and caring. I like that." He drew Holly's bare feet up off the floor along with the tail end of the blanket, which he tucked snugly around them. Then he set her feet in his lap and rubbed them warm again. "Most of all, though, I misjudged myself."
    She tipped her head sideways. "About what, Vince?"
    "Oh, you're gonna laugh at this one. I thought, I honestly thought, I could keep from falling in love with you."
    She went very still, not quite meeting his eyes. "And you, um, you were wrong about that?"
    "More wrong than I've ever been about anything."
    He took her cup from her hands, set it aside on the doctor's desk. "So, what do you say, Red?" His stomach clenched tight. Leaning forward in his chair, he took both of her hands, held them in his own. "Jim Mallory says he could use another officer."
    "You're saying—you want to stay?"
    "I want to stay. I like it here. And I want to be where you are, where your family is."
    Her eyes teared up again as she held his gaze. If she didn't say she loved him back pretty soon he was going to break something. But, damn, she looked so vulnerable right now. Her lips were trembling. Maybe it was too soon.
    "Promise not to hurt me, Vince," she whispered. "And I'll promise not to hurt you. Not ever."
    He closed his eyes, realizing she was still scared of the same old thing. Of losing the one you loved. That fear would probably never go away. He pulled her close and kissed her tenderly. He took his time about it, made it long, and slow, and gentle. It was a kiss of promise, and one of healing, he thought. For both of them.
    When he lifted his head, he looked into her eyes, not blinking. "I won't hurt you, Red," he promised. "I swear to God, I will never, ever hurt you."
    A sigh escaped her, along with a lot of tension, he thought. "I love you, Vince," she whispered against his lips as he tasted her tears on them. "I love you so much."
    "I'm damn glad to hear that."
    * * *
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    SLEEP WITH THE LIGHTS ON!



Prologue
----

    HE WATCHED THE body sink in slow motion through the murky green water. Tears blurred his eyes, obstructing his view, but he wiped them away. He liked to watch. It was peaceful, the way the long tendrils of dark seaweed seemed to reach up for the bodies. Like they were waiting, eager to welcome them home. They parted, those tendrils, as the body sank deeper and then closed up again as its descent continued. Like the fingers of a loving hand, embracing them, wrapping them in the liquid softness of death. He liked to think of them resting at the bottom, sinking into the deep, soft mud. Peaceful. Easy. When the seaweed fingers returned to their former positions, reaching toward the surface, waving gently in the currents, it was as if they’d never even been there.
    As if he’d never killed them.
    When the last ripple faded and the water returned to green stillness, Eric backhanded the new tears from his face and snuffled hard. It was done. Again. But this was it, it was over. This would be the last time.
    You say that every time. But you know better.
    Yeah, it was true, he’d said it before. Every time, with every lanky, brown-eyed young man he bludgeoned to death with his favorite framing hammer. It wasn’t that he took any pleasure in killing them. It was just that he couldn’t help himself. When he saw them, he got this persistent itch in the back of his brain. And it would get worse and worse. You couldn’t scratch that itch from the outside. It was
inside
. It scratched and it scratched, a rat on a wall, working until it broke clean through.
    That other one inside him.
He
was the killer. And once he got his rocks off beating them to death, he crawled back into his rat hole, leaving Eric to clean up the mess, to plaster over the hole and cover up the crime, and pretend there were no rats in his house at all.
    What rats? I don’t hear any rats. Look at me, I’m just a normal guy. And yeah, my eyes are red, but not because I’ve been sobbing over the poor fucking bastard I just dumped