Adri_9780553589375_3p_all_r1.qxp
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2/9/07
2:54 PM
Page 128
LARA ADRIAN
just set something off in her. Although, now that she was thinking about it, she couldn’t even be sure the guy she saw in the park actually was the clerk she’d seen at the precinct house. And so what if he was? Maybe he was out in the Common having lunch, enjoying the weather like she was. No crime in that. If he was staring at her, maybe he thought she looked familiar, too. Maybe he would have come over and said hi to her, if she hadn’t charged after him like some paranoid psycho, accusing him of spying on her. Oh, and wouldn’t that be lovely, if he went back to the station and told them all how she’d chased him several blocks into Chinatown? If Lucan were to hear about that, she would absolutely die of humiliation. Gabrielle resumed cleansing her scraped palms, trying to put the whole day out of her head. Her anxiety was still at a peak, her heart still drumming hard. She dabbed at her surface wounds, watching the thin trickle of blood run down her wrist. The sight of it soothed her in some strange way. Always had. When she was younger, when feelings and pressures built up inside of her until there was nowhere for them to go, often all it took to ease her was a tiny cut. The first one had been an accident. Gabrielle had been paring an apple at one of her foster homes when the knife slipped and cut into the fleshy pad at the base of her thumb. It hurt a little, but as her blood pumped out, a rivulet of glossy bright crimson, Gabrielle hadn’t felt panic or fear. She’d felt fascination.