Justice by Karen Robards

Author:Karen Robards
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2011-07-26T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“What the hell happened in there? You went white as a sheet.”

Mark’s hand clasped her elbow as he steered her back down the sidewalk toward the Suburban, which thankfully seemed to be in one piece. The gang on the corner had left. The usual suspects were on the sidewalks, but singly or in pairs, which made them seem not as threatening.

Jess said nothing until they were both back inside the Suburban and it was turning left two blocks away, on Lamont. It wasn’t that she was deliberately ignoring Mark. It was simply that she was still processing the possibilities. And, okay, admit it, also because she was still in something very closely resembling shock.

She finally answered his latest sharp “Jess?” with “I think I saw Allison Howard in my office this morning.”

“So?”

“Then she vanished.”

“What?”

“When I walked in this morning, Allison Howard was standing there behind my desk—her desk—kind of looking out the window. I said something like, oh, sorry, thinking I had disturbed her, and she looked at me over her shoulder. Then she vanished. As in, disappeared. You know, no longer there. Gone. Just like that.”

“What?”

“See, this is why I don’t tell you things. You’re too damned slow on the uptake.”

“I’m slow on the uptake?” Mark shot her a disgusted look. “You just told me you saw a woman vanish. That takes a little processing.”

“So process.”

“You ever think that maybe Allison Howard was actually in your office this morning? Maybe she stopped by to pick up some things, or to visit somebody, or, well, who knows? That’s entirely possible. What isn’t possible is that she vanished. Just like that. Think about it.”

“I have been thinking about it. Believe me, I’ve been thinking about it all day. I even tried to convince myself that what I thought was a vanishing woman was a plant that didn’t vanish.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” Jess stared unseeingly at the blazing orange sun that was just beginning to sink below the horizon. “If that really was Allison Howard in my office this morning, then how did she disappear? I was standing in the doorway. The only other way out is to fall out the window, which she didn’t, because I checked.”

“You checked.”

“Yes, I checked. Of course, I didn’t know who the woman was until I saw that picture just now in Shelter House. Now I know it was Allison Howard. She looked just like her picture, except she was wearing black pants and a black-and-white kind of animal-print striped top. She was standing there in my—her—our office, she looked at me, and then she vanished.”

“You realize that if she wasn’t really in your office and you didn’t just somehow miss her exit, what you saw was probably a trick of the light. Or a reflection, or a shadow, or something like that.”

Jess shifted sideways in her seat and leaned earnestly forward so that the seat-belt strap pulled tight against her shoulder.

“That’s what I thought at first. I mean, what other explanation could there be? I thought I imagined that a woman was standing in front of the window in my office.

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