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Clint might not know. "Yeah, she needs someone who'll stop her from taking that shortcut
through the park like she usually does on her way home from poker night at her friend Anna's."
Clint's eyes narrowed dangerously. "There have been a couple of car-jackings in that
park. What is that woman thinking?"
"And someone who'll make sure she takes care of that old rattletrap of a car of hers - I
know for a fact that she almost rear ended someone recently because of the condition of her
brakes, and despite the fact that it's ready for the junkyard, she's always speeding through town
like she's driving a Ferrari." In truth, Thom didn't know the condition of Kelsey's brakes, but
Callie had mentioned several things about Kelsey that had worried her and this was one of them.
Thom figured that there was no harm in nudging Clint just a little in the right direction.
A whimsical image flashed through his mind - an atrocious picture of himself as Cupid,
complete with crown of laurel, wings fluttering on his back and a bow and arrows, although - as
a former college football defensive lineman, he wasn't at all small enough to pull it off, even
naked.
Shaking his head hard, he dispelled the disturbing picture quickly with a shudder, lest it
stick in his head.
"She is, is she?"
Thom wasn't entirely sure that he hadn't said too much, so he clamped his mouth closed,
muttering quietly, "Uh huh. Anyway, it was nice of you to offer to move things halfway
through, though."
"Mmmmmmm." Clint was obviously paying absolutely no attention to what he was
saying. Nothing like stirring up a man's protective instincts - rusty though they may be in his
case - to get him thinking about a woman.
As Clint stood up quickly and headed for the door, Thom threw out, "If there's anything
else I can think of that needs to be discussed, I'll be in touch."
"You do that," came the growl from the hallway.
Thom decided not to hurt himself patting his own back. He'd wait until the wedding.
Clint barely hauled himself into his apartment Friday night before the move. He'd driven
all the way to Montpelier, where he and more than a handful of other cops and victims' family
had converged on the parole board. Everyone else was extremely emotional, but relatively polite
about their impassioned pleas against the man's release. He tried to stick to the facts as much as
possible.
Clint didn't sugar-coat anything. He boldly called into question the intelligence of every
member of the board, chiding them like naughty children for allowing Travis' attempt to wiggle
out of his just sentence to get this far. Coldly, calculatingly, he had run through each of Travis's
crimes - playing show and tell with disgustingly graphic crime scene photos that had relatives
bawling in the gallery.
But he felt he'd - and they'd - made their point. After that, there was no way any sane
person would decide to let that animal loose.
No way.
Chapter 5
Kelsey hated moving. Hated it with a capital HATED. She'd asked - okay, drafted - a lot
of her friends to help, but only some of them could come, and then, of course, very few of them
actually showed up, even with the promised beer and pizza afterwards. It had dwindled down to
just herself and Anna and Bitsy, and she still had her living room furniture to heft into the house.
Randy was there, but then, as she lugged the umpteenth heavy box into the house from
the van she'd rented, she realized that he might as well just have stayed at home - he was that
much help. Come to think of it, he seemed to have a rather convenient back condition that was
generally only displayed when it became necessary to lift anything heavier than a cat - unless it
was computer equipment, of course. More often than not during this process she found him
leaning against the side of the van, wearing his a ridiculously inappropriate oxford shirt and
khakis, looking like he was attending an office party as opposed to a helping his girlfriend move.
Correction, she thought sarcastically to himself, he wasn't helping, He was watching everyone
else work.
As it happened, Clint pulled up in his big truck at that point. Behind him was a whole
crew of burly cop friends to help him - which was overkill, considering his lack of furniture - and
they got his stuff taken care of in no time at all, not that he had much to move beyond the bare
bones that was in his apartment - the recliner, the poker table, and his king-sized bedroom set.
Kelsey had resolved to ignore him as much as possible for the next year and a half, and
today was no exception. She uncovered the heavy sleeper sofa, stationing herself at the far end
opposite her two friends at the near end. Through much pushing and shoving and cursing and
grunting, they managed to move it about a half a foot. Bitsy whined and complained through the
whole thing, and Kelsey was rolling her eyes so much that it was starting to give her a headache.
"C'mon, guys. This is one of the last few things we have to get in. Then we'll send out to
Gully's for all the pizza and beer you can stand," Kelsey encouraged, starting to push the big
couch herself.
"Why don't we just enlist the aid of the police auxiliary, there," Anna mused, motioning
with her head towards Clint's mob while pulling with all her might. Bitsy was busy
perseverating over a chipped nail in her manicure. She was proving to be about as much help as
Randy.
Kelsey grimaced, and not from the exertion. "Never. I'd sooner get help from a bunch of
rattlesnakes - "
Clint deposited the last box of junk in his room - barely able to sidle around the tight fit
of the oversized bed - then turned around to head back out the door. Neither bedroom was
occupied, so he'd taken the high road and deliberately put his stuff into the smaller room that had
no connecting bath. Let her have the master for the first nine months. He could be big about it,
even if it cramped his style a little in the mean time.
 When he stepped out the front door, he could see right into the back of the good-sized [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]