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Chapter 9
That night, sleep evaded me. It wasn’t due to an unknown visitor awakening me or anything like that. It was due to loneliness. I missed Lance so much that my heart hurt inside of my chest. I’d only recently had a complete physical, including a cardiogram, so I knew that it wasn’t a heart attack. It was longing and loneliness, plain and simple.
As I struggled to breathe and calm myself down, I let the tears flow as I whispered into the darkness. “Oh, Lance, how did we get like this? I love you, but sometimes I wish that you never found me. I wasn’t lonely before I fell in love with you. I was content with my life and the people in it. Now, everything is a mess and I’m in genuine physical pain for want of you.”
A bright glow that reminded me of the one that Agatha had appeared in when I was back in time began to form in the same spot. It was then that I
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“How many trunks are there?” I asked with dismay as I closed the lid to the oversized one containing clothes belonging to a man that I’d just finished going through.We’d already searched through five generously sized trunks and there were still a good deal more to go.“There are at least a dozen or more. Did every generation store their clothing like it was some sort of prized commodity? You could put whole bodies into these things with room to spare. Maybe more than one at a time. Whatever happened to giving away to the poor?” Nora puffed as she placed her hands against the small of her back and bent backward to stretch it out. I could hear a faint popping sound as she did it. “By chance, did the woman in your dream give you any indication of what room the trunk was in?”I pursed my lips with disgust. “None whatsoever.”My friend held her hands in front of her and twisted them
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I decided that the first point of action was to find out who had been the caretaker of the house prior to my ownership. It was in far too perfect a condition not to have been tended to. Besides, someone had to notice the loose floorboards and arrange to have them repaired.I determined that the best person to provide such information to me would be the lawyer who Lance used to arrange for the estate transfer from him to me. I’d placed the papers in the top drawer of a large mahogany desk in the study, so I hurried to get them. To my surprise and dismay, they weren’t where I’d left them.“Of course not,” I complained aloud to an empty room. “That would make things far too easy.”I sat in the oversized leather office chair while I thought on whether I’d moved them and forgotten. I’d admired the chair when I first toured the house. It was in such fine condition that I th
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I’d called the alarm company almost as soon as I’d realized that we’d had an intruder. Other than sincere apologies and a suggestion that we change the code to the alarm system in our house, I got nothing of value from them. It didn’t surprise me. It’s far less intimidating and easy to be uncooperative over the telephone than in person. The only reason that I even bothered to call in the first place was to use it as a means of venting some nervous energy while I waited for my business credentials to be available to me. Besides, you never know, I could have gotten lucky with whoever answered the phone.Nora went to a same day printer and had a small batch of business cards made up right away. Since I was only working on the one case and it was my own personal case, she felt secure in sending me off with only a few cards in my wallet until the ones that she’d ordered over the interne
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The sounds of the monitors next to my bed were the first things that registered when I finally came alive again. I opened my eyes. The light was dim, but it still hurt if I didn’t squint. I could see that I was in a hospital room. Little by little I began to remember that I’d suffered a terrible blow on the head and that there was blood as a result.“Do I have a concussion?” I said with a mouth that felt like I’d eaten a cup of sand.Nora rushed to my bedside. “You’re awake. Good.”“Do I have a concussion?” I asked again.“Of course you have a concussion. Whoever hit you over the head struck you so hard that they literally cracked your skull,” she said in a worried and reprimanding tone. “What the devil were you doing in that sketchy part of the city? And, in a deserted building, no less. Who knows what kind of sordid c
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I could barely open my eyes, but the little I was able to showed me that my hospital room had only a faint nightlight and the small lights from my monitor illuminating it. The shadowy figure of a tall male was standing next to my bed. I could see that he was inserting a needle into my I.V. tube.“What are you doing?” I managed to say in a voice that was just above a whisper.“I want you relaxed, but not asleep,” he whispered back.I felt an immediate sense of euphoria spread through my body from the drug entering my bloodstream. He wasted no time in pulling the covers away from me. The air felt cool and invigorating, yet invasive at the same time. Whether it was because of what Agatha said or if it was my own gut telling me, but I knew, rather than saw, that it was Jason.“My head,” I whimpered. &ldqu
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I heard Nora scolding the hospital staff about their incompetency long before my eyes opened and focused enough on the world around me for me to see her. I felt, rather than saw that there were others in the room that weren’t hospital staff.My head felt like I should remove it and place it on a shelf until it was healed again. I gave an involuntary moan as I lifted my hand in an attempt to caress the pain away.“You poor thing,” Nora said as she rushed to my side. Still not finished with her tirade about the hospital’s incompetency, she said in a voice loud enough for the nurse and doctor to hear, “I leave you here thinking that you’re in safe and competent hands and look what happens.”Doctor Cline’s face remained stoic as she moved to the foot of my bed. Whether she was insulted by Nora’s rantings or agreed with her, it was difficult to tell. “I need to examine her now, Miss O
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I went straight to bed upon returning home, but I had no intention of staying in bed the following day, so Nora set me up in the media room to binge on movies.The first movie that I selected from the enormous collection was “Gone With The Wind”. After having gone back to a time just prior to when the story depicted, I wanted to view it with a new perspective. The movie was still in the opening credits when she brought Killian Epps into the room.I found it interesting how easily I adapted to calling this stranger by his first name. Not only that, but, when he eased his lean, muscular frame into the media recliner next to mine, it felt like we’d done it dozens of times. Almost as if we were old friends.It was still fairly early in the morning, so Nora brought in a pot of coffee and some mugs. She’d also grabbed the box of cheese Danish that she’d purchased as a treat for me for when I got h
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Several days passed without my running into Killian. He was leaving the house long before I arose and returning after I’d gone to bed. Of course, the hours that I was keeping were those of someone in recovery, so they didn’t necessarily coincide with those of a healthy and active homicide detective. There was also the fact that he was called away to investigate something at the drop of a dime; making it even more difficult to spontaneously meet up with him.“I can’t seem to catch Killian,” I complained as I strode into the kitchen were Nora was making lasagna. “You’ve seen him, haven’t you?”“Why do you want him?” Nora asked in a tone that made me think that she was still worried about me usurping her with the good inspector.Annoyed, I said with a sassy tone, “Oh, I don’t know. I thought I’d strip him naked and have my way with him on the livi
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