Ghostwalker 06 - Predatory Game

Larry,” she informed him coldly, too angry to laugh at the situation. He had no idea who—or what—he was dealing with. The idiot. He thought he could force her into sleeping with him by threatening to dump her in a bad part of town? She wondered if his plan had actually worked for him before. The idea made her fingers itch to get at him. She held on to her cool and stared him down.
    Swearing furiously, Larry revved the motor and, laying a trail of rubber, screeched away, leaving her standing in the middle of an empty street.

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    Saber stamped her foot as she glared at the disappearing tail lights. “Darn it, Saber,” she muttered, kicking at the curb in frustration. “If you insist on going out with jerks, what do you expect?” She was tired of trying to be normal. Weary to death of pretending. She was never going to fit in, not in a million years.
    Raking a hand through the mass of thick, blue-black curls spilling in unruly confusion around her face, she took a long, slow look around. Larry hadn’t been kidding—it was an appalling part of town.
    Drawing a deep breath, she muttered, “Just wonderful. There are probably rats down here. Starving rats. This is not good, Saber, not good at all. You should have kicked the hell out of him and stolen his car.”
    Sighing heavily, she headed down the cracked, dirty sidewalk toward the only streetlight, which illuminated a telephone booth. “It will be my luck the stupid thing is broken. If it is, Larry,” she vowed aloud, “you will definitely pay for your sins.”
    Because, of course, she couldn’t have a cell phone like everyone else. She didn’t leave paper trails for anyone to follow. Next time, if there ever was a next time that she was stupid enough to go on a date, she would take her own car and she would do the dumping.
    A forty-five-minute wait for a cab. Bravado would only carry so far. She was not going to wait forty-five minutes in the dark surrounded by rats. No way. How incompetent of the taxi service not to have planned their resources better.
    In a fit of temper she slammed the phone in its cradle, giving only a fleeting thought to the dispatcher’s ear. Saber kicked the side of the booth and nearly broke her toes. Howling, jumping around like an idiot, she vowed eternal revenge on Larry.
    She should have stayed in the car and faced him down instead of letting him drive off. He was a worm crawling his way across the earth, but he was no monster. She knew monsters intimately. They dogged her every step, and soon—far too soon if she didn’t leave—they would find her again. A slimebag like Larry was a prince in comparison. Larry certainly hadn’t recognized the monster in her. If he had touched her…She pushed the thought away and made herself think normal. She should have decked him though, just once, for all the other women who would be put in the same situation because he liked power. She was fairly certain most women would have had the desire to at least punch the bastard.
    Saber sighed softly and shook her head. She was putting off the inevitable. She wasn’t walking home and she couldn’t very well stay where she was. She was going to pay royally for this, but what was one more lecture out of several hundred? Fighting for a deep controlling breath, she punched in the numbers, her fingertip unconsciously using a rather vicious stabbing motion on the blameless telephone.

    Jess Calhoun lay sprawled out full length on the wide, leather, specially built futon, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness. Suffocating silence surrounded him, wrapped him up and pressed heavily down on him. The sound of the clock ticking was only in his mind. Endless seconds, minutes. An eternity.
    Where was she? What the hell was she doing out at two thirty in the morning? This was her night off. She wasn’t at the radio station working later than usual, he’d already checked. Surely she hadn’t been in an accident. Someone would have notified him. He’d called every hospital in the area, at least he could console himself with the knowledge that she wasn’t in any of them.

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    His fingers curled slowly into a fist, beat impotently once, twice, on the leather. She hadn’t told him she was going out. She hadn’t even called to say she would be late. One of these days he would be pushed too far by