Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [614]
“Okay.” I breathed, pulled away a little. “Okay, let’s stop this now.”
“Ummm,” he said in my ear, his tongue flicking. I jerked.
“I’m not doing this,” I said, trying to sound definite. Then my resolve gathered. “Quinn! I’m not having sex with you in this nasty parking lot!”
“Not even a little bit of sex?”
“No. Definitely not!”
“Your mouth” (here he kissed it) “is saying one thing, but your body” (he kissed my shoulder) “is saying another.”
“Listen to the mouth, buster.”
“Buster?”
“Okay. Quinn.”
He sighed, straightened. “All right,” he said. He smiled ruefully. “Sorry. I didn’t plan on jumping you like that.”
“Going into a place where you’re not exactly welcome, and getting out unhurt, that’s some excitement,” I said.
He expelled a deep breath. “Right,” he said.
“I like you a lot,” I said. I could read his mind fairly clearly, just at this instant. He liked me, too; right at the moment, he liked me a whole bunch. He wanted to like me right up against the wall.
I battened my hatches. “But I’ve had a couple of experiences that have been warnings for me to slow down. I haven’t been going slow with you tonight. Even with the, ah, special circumstances.” I was suddenly ready to sit down in the car. My back was aching and I felt a slight cramp. I worried for a second, then thought of my monthly cycle. That was certainly enough to wear me out, coming on top of an exciting, and bruising, evening.
Quinn was looking down at me. He was wondering about me. I couldn’t tell what his exact concern was, but suddenly he asked, “Which of us was the target of that attack outside the theater?”
Okay, his mind was definitely off sex now. Good. “You think it was just one of us?”
That gave him pause. “I had assumed so,” he said.
“We also have to wonder who put them up to it. I guess they were paid, in some form—either drugs or money, or both. You think they’ll talk?”
“I don’t think they’ll survive the night in jail.”
10
THEY DIDN’T EVEN RATE THE FRONT PAGE. THEY were in the local section of the Shreveport paper, below the fold. JAILHOUSE HOMICIDES, the headline read. I sighed.
Two juveniles awaiting transport from the holding cells to the Juvenile Facility were killed last night sometime after midnight.
The newspaper was delivered every morning to the special box at the end of my driveway, right beside my mailbox. But it was getting dark by the time I saw the article, while I was sitting in my car, about to pull out onto Hummingbird Road and go to work. I hadn’t ventured out today until now. Sleeping, laundry, and a little gardening had taken up my day. No one had called, and no one had visited, just like the ads said. I’d thought Quinn might phone, just to check up on my little injuries . . . but not.
The two juveniles, brought into the police station on charges of assault and battery, were put in one of the holding cells to wait for the morning bus to arrive from the Juvenile Facility. The holding cell for juvenile offenders is out of sight from that for adult offenders, and the two were the only juveniles incarcerated during the night. At some point, the two were strangled by a person or persons unknown. No other prisoners were harmed, and all denied seeing any suspicious activity. Both the youths had extensive juvenile records. “They had had many encounters with the police,” a source close to the investigation said.
“We’re going to look into this thoroughly,” said Detective Dan Coughlin, who had responded to the original complaint and was heading the investigation of the incident for which the youths were apprehended. “They were arrested after allegedly attacking a couple in a bizarre manner, and their deaths are equally bizarre.” His partner, Cal Myers, added, “Justice will be done.”
I found that especially ominous.
Tossing the paper on the seat beside me, I pulled my sheaf of mail out of the