Hidden Riches

a crate of dynamite set with a very short fuse. She didn’t want to be in harm’s way when and if he exploded again.
    Then again, she had a temper of her own. She might have had a longer fuse, but pound for pound she’d gauge her explosive quality equal to his.
    Maybe that was just what he needed, she reflected. A woman who would stand up to him, fight back, win as often as she lost. If he had someone who understood the need to kick inanimate objects now and again, it might help him open up. It might help him squeeze out the poison in the wounds that troubled him. It might—
    “Hold it, Dora,” she mumbled. “You’re getting this backwards. It’s not what he needs, it’s what you need.” And what she didn’t need was to take on a lover with more problems than a Eugene O’Neill play. She turned into the little gravel lot behind the shop. No matter how cute he was when he smiled.
    The T-Bird was gone. Dora frowned a moment, then shook her head. For the best, she thought. If he wasn’t around, she couldn’t think about knocking on his door and inviting trouble.
    Her boots crunched over the gravel, clattered up the back stairs that she usually took in a run. After entering the code into the alarm system, she unlocked the door, then secured it behind her.
    She wouldn’t tempt fate and listen for Jed’s return, she decided, but make an early night of it. A pot of tea, a fire and that book she’d been trying to read: the perfect remedies for a troubled mind. And with any luck, they would also erase the effects of Scream, If You Dare —the horror movie she’d treated Richie to that evening.
    She let herself into her apartment and turned on the Christmas tree. The cozy, colored lights never failed to cheer her. Once she had the stereo on low, she pried off her boots, peeled off her coat. Everything went neatly into her hall closet while she hummed along with Billie Holiday.
    In her stocking feet, she padded into the kitchen to heat the kettle. Her hand on the tap jerked as a board creaked in the other room. Her heart made a beeline for her throat so that she stood frozen—water splashing into the sink—listening to the sound of her own racing heart.
    “Get a grip, Conroy,” she whispered. Imagine, letting a silly film give her the willies. There wasn’t any seven-foot superhuman psychopath in her living room, waiting with a butcher knife. The building was settling, that was all.
    Amused with herself, she put the kettle on to boil, adjusted the heat. She walked back into the living room, and stopped dead.
    It was pitch dark, dark as a cave, with only the thin backwash of light from the kitchen illuminating the silhouettes of furniture. Which, of course, made the dark worse.
    But she’d turned the tree on, hadn’t she? Of course she had, she assured herself as her hand crept up to her throat to soothe a jittery pulse. A fuse? No, no, the stereo was still playing and they were on the same plug. She reasoned it out slowly, waiting for her heart rate to settle. The tree lights had probably shorted. Shaking her head at her overactiveimagination, she started across the room to fix it.
    And the kitchen light went out behind her.
    Her breath sucked in on a gasp that she forced back out with a slow shudder. Slippery little fingers of fear slid over her skin. For a full minute she didn’t move, listening to every sound. There was nothing but her own drumming heartbeat and shallow breathing. Lifting a hand to her head, she laughed. Of course there was nothing. A bulb blew, that was all.
    Creative imagination was a killer, she mused. All she had to do was—
    A hand clamped over her mouth, an arm snaked around her waist. Before she could think to struggle, she was yanked back against a hard body.
    “You don’t mind the dark, do you, honey?” DiCarlo kept his voice at a whisper, for practical purposes, and to add another element to her fear. “Now you stay real still and keep real quiet. You know what this is?” He loosened his grip enough to slip his gun under her sweater, run the side of it up over her breast. “It’s a big, mean gun. You don’t want me to have to use it, do you?”
    She shook her head, squeezing her eyes tight when he stroked her flesh with steel. All capacity for thought vanished.
    “Good girl. Now I’m going to take my hand away. If you scream, I’ll have to kill you.”
    When he removed the hand from her mouth, Dora pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling. She