Twilight Hunger. Maggie Shayne

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      Frowning, Maxine walked over to where he stood. He didn’t wait. Instead he turned, stepped out onto the porch. When she joined him there and closed the door behind her, he said, “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. We can talk there. All right?”

      “Sounds serious.”

      “Yeah. I need your help with something. It’s sorta right up your alley, Max, or I’d never ask.”

      “Why not?”

      “Why not what?”

      “Why would you never ask?”

      He drew a breath, sighed heavily. “‘Cause you’re brand-new at this kind of thing, and I sort of had it in mind to start you out with something a little more milk toast. Background checks on suspects, shit like that.”

      “Got that much faith in me, do you?”

      “You’re a kid.”

      “I’m twenty-five.”

      “Like I said …”

      “Shut up, Lou.” She yanked open his car door and sat beside him. He didn’t take her to the coffee shop, as she had expected. Instead he pulled around the drive-through window of a fast food joint and got two large coffees, one black, one with two creams and three sugars. She smiled as he rattled off the order without asking her. He knew exactly how she liked her coffee.

      His bones, she mused, were practically jumped already.

      He drove to the nearest parking area, shut the car off and turned in his seat to face her.

      “Gee, Lou, if you want to take me parking, maybe we should aim for something just a little more secluded.”

      His face colored. “Yeah, right.”

      “There’s this old gravel bed south of town where everyone used to go to make out back in high school. You know it?”

      He avoided her eyes. “Of course I know it.”

      “Mmm. So you’ve been there?”

      “Yeah. Shining lights on kids who ought to know better and sending ‘em home to their mammas. Now, do you wanna talk business or do you wanna play, Maxie?”

      She wanted to play. With him. Now. But she’d obviously pissed him off. He always got pissed off when she flirted with him, even a little bit. “Fine. Business. Go ahead.” She sat back in her seat and sipped her coffee.

      “Okay. There’s this woman. She’s a friend of mine. A good friend.”

      Fingernails raked across a chalkboard inside her head, and Maxine sat up straighter.

      “Her name is Lydia Jordan. She runs Haven House.”

      Max blinked now as her mind filled in the blanks. “That’s that girls’ shelter downtown? For runaway teens in trouble?”

      He nodded.

      “But I thought that was run by a pair of former prostitutes.”

      Again he nodded.

      She lifted her eyebrows and stared at him. “This friend of yours is a hooker?”

      “Was a hooker.”

      “And how the hell is it that you know her so well?” she asked, and she really didn’t care how bitchy it sounded.

      He smiled at her. “Hell, Maxie, if I wasn’t old enough to be your father, I’d almost think you were jealous.”

      “You’re nowhere near old enough to be my father.” He was, technically, but she wasn’t about to admit it.

      He sighed, shaking his head. “I met Lydia the first time I picked her up for soliciting. I was a rookie, and she couldn’t have been more than eighteen. I must have brought her in a dozen times over the years before she finally got herself straightened out. I didn’t know Kimbra as well. But the two of them met on the streets, became best friends and helped each other start over.”

      “That’s the partner? The other half of the dynamic duo?”

      He nodded. “They got legitimate jobs, took classes, and once they had themselves taken care of, they reached back down to help other girls like them. I think they’d both spent some time at Haven House before they took it over. Anyway, none of that matters right now.”

      “Of course it matters. Just how close are you to this Lydia person, Lou?”

      He sent her a look she rarely saw on him. An angry one that told her very clearly that she was crossing some unseen, unspoken boundary line and that she’d damn well better back off.

      She sighed and looked away.

      “Kimbra Sykes is dead. Murdered. And Lydia has somehow got it into her head that some kind of supernatural forces were involved.”

      Maxine was unimpressed. “Did a lot of drugs while she was turning tricks, did she?”

      “No. But she’s always been incredibly superstitious.” She wanted to ask him why the hell he thought she should care how superstitious this ex-whore might be. She hated the woman. Instantly, automatically hated her. “So what makes you think I can do anything to help her?”

      He put a hand on her shoulder. “Max, have I done something to make you mad at me?”

      “No.” She didn’t even look at him as she spoke. “Well then, how come you’re sitting there puckered up like a prune?” He only sighed when she refused to answer. Then he shook his head. “I just thought that—hell, you know all about this kind of stuff. Remember that woman who thought her house was haunted, and how she hired that Internet ghost-buster to come clear it out for her?”

      “And it turned out he was the one haunting it? Yeah, I remember.”

      “You knew. You knew right off the bat it was a hoax. And you were able to convince that woman, mostly because you knew so much about the subject. You went in there telling her that a real ghost would never behave the way hers was—remember? Had her eating out of your hand!”

      She shrugged, warming just a little at his praise. “I’m pretty good when I know my subject.”

      “And you know this subject. You and your skeptical mind, always having to dig into anything you come upon that doesn’t seem quite right. Learn all you can about it and then proceed to debunk it.”

      She shrugged. “It’s not that I don’t believe in the paranormal. I just know that ninety-nine percent of the ghosts, goblins, psychics and channelers out there are con artists. I believe what I can see with my own eyes, not what people tell me. And even when I see it with my own eyes, I don’t believe much of what the government or any other authority figure tells me. If that makes me a skeptic, then I’m a skeptic.”

      “You’re a skeptic.”

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