In the Air Tonight by Lori Handeland Read Free Book Online Page B

wanted to see that coming at them in the dark?
    The guy would be back. He might even turn up at Jenn’s. Ghosts came to me for a reason, and they didn’t leave until I’d helped them make the reason go away. Despite the meat cleaver he wouldn’t, couldn’t, hurt me. Permanently. However, I’d rather discover the purpose of his visit when it wasn’t pitch-black dark and I was alone. If that makes me a coward, too bad.
    Jenn lived at the opposite end of First Street from my apartment, in an adorable cottage set back from the road. The building would make a fantastic bookstore, caf é , or antiques shop, if New Bergin were the go-to vacation spot of west-central Wisconsin. Except the only tourists we saw were those on their way to La Crosse, Eau Claire, or Minneapolis who had a sudden need for gas and a restroom. Which meant we had no need for a quaint bookstore, caf é , or antiques store. Still, Jenn’s place was much nicer than mine, even without factoring in the meat-cleaver maniac.
    Jenn turned on all the lights. Like that would help.
    I’d been trying to get the old woman in the corner rocking chair to cross over since Jenn had moved into the house. But she was attached to the cottage, and she wasn’t going to leave until the building either burned to the ground or was razed—maybe not even then.
    Instead I responded to her nod with one of my own—when Jenn’s back was turned—and went on with my business. Directly to the kitchen and the nearest bottle of red. I’d only had a swallow—large though it had been—of my nightly allotment. I was due.
    Jenn held up two wineglasses. I snatched the one that was more of a brandy snifter and filled it with enough wine to be unfashionable then did the same for her. Whenever I went to a restaurant I had to fight not to laugh—or sometimes cry—at the splash of liquid considered a serving.
    “TV?” Jenn asked.
    I shook my head, sipped my wine.
    “You wanna tell me about it?”
    I wasn’t certain which it she was talking about. The intruder? My father? The murder? Bobby Doucet? Didn’t matter.
    “Nope.” I took a seat in the living room and continued to sip.
    “You should take the plunge.”
    I frowned.
    “With the detective.”
    I was still confused. It was October. Not a good time for swimming.
    “Raye, sometimes I worry about you.”
    “Sometimes I worry about me too.” I drank. The wine was nearly half gone. Damn.
    “You’re twenty-seven and still a virgin.”
    Suddenly I understood her reference to “the plunge,” and I nearly complimented her clever euphemism. But that would only encourage her.
    “I am not!”
    “Once doesn’t count,” Jenn said.
    “Technically, it does.”
    Even without the oversharing on the part of that eternal ass, Jordan Rosholt—whoops, guess I’d named him—the incident hadn’t been intriguing enough to repeat. It had been awkward, uncomfortable, and other words I didn’t want to think about let alone do. But, as Jenn had told me the single time I’d discussed it, we must not have been doing it right. I didn’t know there was a wrong way, but then I didn’t know much.
    “The detective is into you,” she continued. “Or…” She waggled her eyebrows. “He wants to be.”
    Apparently she needed no encouragement.
    “Who says I’m into him?”
    “You’d have to be blind, deaf, and dumbass not to be.” She drained her glass. “And if you don’t tap that, I will.”
    The idea of Jenn sleeping with Bobby Doucet bothered me more than it should. I had no claim on the man, even if I had seen him first.
    Still, he had run straight toward danger at my request. Not that there’d been any danger, but he hadn’t known that at the time.
    Jenn set her glass on the coffee table. “You haven’t had a date in nine months.”
    “Ten,” I corrected.
    “But who’s counting?”
    “It’s not like one of the guys I’ve known all my life is suddenly going to become more appealing.” Or learn how to keep his big