Back in the old days, Ruthie had been the only African American within thirty miles. She hadn’t cared. Amazingly, no one else had either. Ruthie was like that.
People who would have walked across the street to avoid a… well, let’s not say the word, took to Ruthie like a long-lost auntie.
Nowadays a few more colors had popped up amid the Caucasians, though the majority of the names still ended in ski.
Twenty minutes later, I parked at the curb and contemplated the only two-story house on the block. Things appeared quiet. Why wouldn’t they? At this time of day, the kids were in school. Ruthie might not even be here.
However, I’d learned over the years that whenever I felt the urge to see Ruthie there was always a damn good reason.
I got out of the car and headed up the walk.
Ruthie was a no-nonsense throwback to a time when patents ruled with love and an iron fist. Once Ruthie took you in, she never gave you up. She understood that part of the problem for throwaway kids was the being thrown away. She was the only mother I’d ever known— or perhaps the only one 1 allowed myself to remember.
1 reached the porch before I saw it—that tiny sliver of shadow creeping onto the cement through the half-open door. My hand automatically went to my hip, but my gun hadn’t been there in months. I missed it then more than 1 ever had before.
Though I knew better, I pushed open the door and began to call her name. “Ruth—”
The scent and sight of blood caused the word to stick in my throat.
I found her in the kitchen, lying in a puddle of sunshine and blood. She’d always loved the sun, really hated blood.
I dropped to my knees. I wanted to check for a pulse but her throat… She didn’t have much of one left.
“Lizbeth.” Her eyes opened. “I knew you’d come.”
“Don’t try to talk.” How could she talk? “I’ll call—”
“No.” She closed her eyes, and for an instant I thought she was gone. What would I do if I lost her? She was the only person who truly loved me on this earth.
“Ruthie!”
“Shh.” She patted my knee, leaving a bloody splotch. Strange, but her hand looked as if it had been bitten, mangled. For that matter, so did her—
“I’ve been waitin’ for you to come around, but you haven’t.”
I winced. I’d been working a lot of hours. What else did I have to do? Except visit the woman who’d taken me in off the streets.
“I’ll come more often. I promise.”
Her gaze suddenly bored into mine. “When I’m gone, it’s up to you.”
“Ruthie, don’t—”
“The final battle,” she managed, though her voice was fading, “begins now.”
She grabbed my hand in a surprisingly strong grip for a dying old lady, then my skull erupted in agony and everything went black.
Chapter 2
When I awoke from the coma more had changed than the weather. I distinctly recalled going to Ruthie’s house on a clear, spring day.
Post-coma, the windows of the hospital room revealed swirling snow. I experienced a moment of panic, thinking I’d lost nearly a year, then remembered where I lived.
In southern Wisconsin, April sunshine sometimes brought May blizzards.
A movement in the room caused me to turn my head. A blinding flash of pain made me close my eyes, and what I saw when I did made me open them again.
“Whoa,” I muttered. “That’s new.”
Sure, I was psychic, but I’d never had a vision. If that’s what the horrific scene I’d just flashed on had been.
No. Couldn’t be. I’d seen monsters. Tooth and claw, lots of blood and death—and I’d seen them at Ruthie’s place.
That hadn’t happened, couldn’t happen except in a—
“Nightmare,” I mumbled, my tongue dry and thick. Who knew what meds they’d been giving me. There was no such thing as monsters—unless you counted those who preyed on the weak and the innocent, which, of course, I did.
I tried to remember what had happened when I’d gone through that open door, seen the blood, started screaming Ruthie’s name. But I couldn’t remember, and trying only exhausted me so much I slipped back into the soft, dark place where safety beckoned.
Funny, I hadn’t needed a safe place since before I’d come to Ruthie’s.
When I awoke again, Laurel and Hardy had drawn two chairs next to my bedside.
Their names were really Hammond and Landsdown, but one was tall and thin, kind of dopey-looking, the other was shorter, fatter, even dopier. They were homicide detectives and about three thousand times smarter than they appeared.
“What do you want?” I reached for the bed controls to raise my head and shoulders. If there were anything seriously wrong with me, the doctors wouldn’t have let these guys darken my door.
As soon as I was upright, my mind flashed on what had happened to put me here. Suddenly I remembered everything, or almost everything.
“Who in hell hit me?” I demanded.
Hammond’s eyes widened. “Hit you? When?”