Shooting Star by Kaje Harper

Author:Kaje Harper [Harper, Kaje]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

***

2 days later

The day after Christmas was always a letdown, but this year it truly sucked. I woke in a hotel bed to an overcast gray morning and considered not bothering to get up. I was short of sleep anyway. Christmas Eve had run deep into the early morning hours, after I rattled around the SUV for a rough two-hour ride, was checked over by an ER resident, and then questioned over and over by three different sets of cops in varying versions of bad suits.

Eventually they’d decided that I really had whacked the dead guy in the throat in self-defense, and that I knew nothing useful. They’d stashed me in this hotel room, with a warning that I should keep a low profile until all their suspects had been rounded up. No going out, no using my credit cards, no phone calls. As if there was anyone I wanted to call. Except the one guy whose number I didn’t have.

I’d asked about Officer Joe Kingsley, but got nothing more than blank looks. As sleep-deprived as I was by then, I couldn’t tell if they were real or not. Maybe the people questioning me were some other branch of the law.

I’d hit the clean if low-threadcount sheets at three AM, and surprised myself by sleeping six hours without a dream I could remember.

But then it had been Christmas morning. Alone, bored, dreary, sore— the highlight of my holiday was a half-hour-long hot shower, and a clean T-shirt and sweatpants from the hotel gift-shop, charged to my room. The low-light of the day was a visit by a set of federal agents asking the same questions all over again. At least they had better suits. I spent the bulk of the day watching bad holiday TV, trying to suppress my memory of the gunman’s gasp as I hit him with the better memory of broad shoulders and strong arms, and waiting.

Not that I expected anything. Joe would be up to his ears in his case. Or maybe even in a hospital bed with IV fluids and antibiotics to keep his hands from getting infected. I cheered myself up slightly by picturing him declining pain meds so he could work, dammit. But as Christmas Day wore into evening, and all that changed was the level of inanity in the movies I wasn’t really watching, I had to admit I was disappointed. I hadn’t expected anything, but somewhere down deep I’d hoped.

I finally went to bed and dozed fitfully, waking from dreams of being chased through endless woods, and seeing Joe’s real body dancing in a hail of gunshots. The time on the bedside clocked ticked over a slow eternity, until the daylight grew behind the curtains.

And now it was happy-returns day. The stores would be full of harried salespeople and lines of customers trading gifts in for cash. Even if I hadn’t been ordered to stay put, I wouldn’t have braved those crowds to buy clothes, although this maroon fleece was not my color and shopping was definitely on my agenda.

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