Lover Beware

her yearn to cry out.
    No. No. She had a job to do. Already his closeness was playing havoc with that. She’d worked too damn hard, for too long, to allow these impossibilities to screw up her priorities, not to mention her life.
    Turning her face away from his kiss, her lips still moist and swollen, she shoved him away, backed against the old wrought-iron railing flanking the steps up to Bobbie Cox’s apartment, and covered her mouth with the back of one hand.
    “If you ever really gave a damn about my feelings,” she said, “you won’t do this. You won’t make me feel this way. You won’t mess with my priorities, number one of which right now is to help you find a killer. Please, Jerry. I’ve worked too damn hard all these years to become what I am. Don’t fuck it up for me.”
    A look of frustration and anger flashed across his face—a familiar look that slammed her back to those years ago. He simply wasn’t capable of seeing her as anything other than a female whose priorities should be sex, marriage, and children first, and to hell with a career.
    Jerry glared at her a moment longer, his face lit by moonlight and grooved by shadows. His breathing sounded hard as he clenched his teeth and removed the apartment key from his pocket.
    Hands reach for the keys—nice hands, well manicured.
    Anna blinked, the unexpected stab of light and image sharp and blinding. She stumbled back, her hand flying to her eyes that, suddenly, felt as hot as burning coals.
    “Hey.” Jerry reached for her. “You okay?”
    She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax, and nodded as she looked into Jerry’s eyes. Yet, it was there still. Flashes of shadowy images—tickles of nervousness and anticipation.
    Nuts and perverts. But this guy isn’t so bad. Good looking, clean, compassionate.
    “Anna?” Jerry reached for her, his hands gripping her arms as he searched her face. Only, for a moment, it wasn’t his hands that were gripping her—and for a moment she felt that she was no longer Anna Travelli, but Bobbie Cox—the grip on her arms crushing and painful, the eyes staring into hers like black holes leading straight to hell.
    The whoop of the cruiser’s siren shattered the silence and wrenched Anna out of the momentary horrifying hell. The sound of running footsteps echoed down the alley.
    “Mr. Costos!” The cop who had been sleeping in the cruiser appeared through the darkness. “We got a signal thirty-four and possible forty-two. Aggravated battery with a weapon. Hooker assaulted!”
     
    RED AND BLUE lights flashed from the cruisers positioned on the narrow side street. By the time Anna and Jerry arrived, a crowd had begun to form and the wail of the advancing EMT unit reverberated throughout the area.
    The victim lay behind a Dumpster amid a scattering of broken glass and garbage. A uniformed cop, his hands already protected by latex gloves, squatted beside her while four others proceeded to cordon off the area, securing the crime scene.
    A young woman stood in the shadows, flanked by two officers. Hooker, by the looks of her. Bleached hair and short skirt, skimpy top, stiletto heels. The flashing red and blue cruiser lights reflected from her tear-streaked face as she hugged herself and sobbed uncontrollably.
    “I heard her screaming. She was screaming, like, horribly. ‘Help me!’ I was there—down there—” She pointed to the distant street corner. “I ran down here and saw him—on her. You know what I’m saying? Raping her, right there in that garbage.”
    “Did you get a good look at him?” an officer asked. “Can you describe him?”
    “I screamed at him. You know? Screamed at him to stop “Can you describe him, ma’am?”
    Anna stepped around the sobbing woman, struggling to put on her latex gloves, and moved up beside the victim, easing down to one knee beside the cop who continued to hold her wrist between his fingers, checking her pulse. He glanced at Anna.
    “FBI,” she said, appraising the young woman’s badly beaten face and the bleeding wound on her throat. “Is she going to make it?”
    “I think so.”
    The woman groaned. Her eyes opened slightly, focusing on Anna.
    The instantaneous assault of image and sound flashing before Anna’s eyes rocked her back. Fear rose up inside her, her heart swelling to the bursting point and pain exploding through her face. She couldn’t breathe; the pressure on her throat was crushing.
    She jumped to her feet, stumbled against the