Page 11 of If She Sensed

The dessert arrived an hour and fifteen minutes after they had sat down: a single slice of almond cake with a quenelle of mascarpone and a thin drizzle of honey across the top of the plate.It was almost too pretty to eat.Donna took out her phone before she touched it and photographed it from above, then sent the image to her friend Rachel with four emojis.Rachel would understand.Rachel had been asking about this date for three days.

"Did you just document your dessert?"Vincent asked, with a smirk.

"It warranted documentation."She set her phone face-down on the table."I have a friend who has been very invested in how this evening went."

"And what will you tell her?"

Donna picked up her dessert fork."I'll tell her the halibut was remarkable."

He laughed at that.It was a real laugh, unguarded and genuine, and she found herself smiling back without having decided to.

She lifted a small bite of the almond cake and let her gaze drift past him for a moment toward the bar.She was starting to wonder if maybe they could extend this dinner with one more glass of wine.The bar ran along the back wall, dark wood and low light, four or five people seated along its length.Her eye moved across them without much purpose, and then it stopped.

There was a man at the far end of the bar.He was sitting with a drink in front of him, but he was not looking at the drink.He was looking at her.It was not a glancing look, either… not a distracted sweep of the room.He was looking directly at her with a stillness that registered somewhere below the level of thought, the way a sound outside a window register before you've decided whether it means anything or not.

She held his gaze for less than a second before she looked away.Her attention went back to Vincent, who was saying something about the mascarpone.She smiled and agreed with whatever it was.

When she looked toward the bar again a few moments later, the stool at the far end was empty.

She scanned the length of the bar once, found nothing, and let it go.A busy restaurant on a Wednesday night and a man who had glanced across the room.It was nothing.She was not someone who invented things to worry about.She had spent enough of the past few years worried about real things to have any energy left over for imagined ones.

Vincent was refilling her wine glass from the bottle they had ordered with dinner.Just a few inches, because they were both driving.She frowned internally.Maybe that one extra glass is out of the question, then.But really, she was only trying to think of ways to extend the date.

"I was going to suggest we take a walk," he said, setting the bottle back."But it's gotten cold out.So maybe just the check?"

"The check," she agreed."And maybe we do this again when it's warmer."

He looked pleased at that, in a quiet way, without making a production of it."I'd like that.But…soon?Friday, maybe?”

Donna nodded, well aware that she was blushing.She picked up her wine glass and looked at the remaining inch of it, at the way the candlelight moved inside the red.Fourteen months since the divorce.Four years before that of a marriage that had made her feel invisible in her own home.And now this: a candlelit restaurant, a plate of beautiful food, a man who laughed genuinely and looked at her like she was… like she wassomething.

It was not a large thing.She understood that.But after the stretch of time she'd been through, a not-large thing felt like exactly what she had needed.

She finished the wine and set the glass down gently.

Outside, through the restaurant's front window, the street was dark and quiet and completely still.And when they left ten minutes later, with Vincent’s hand on the small of her back, she had completely forgotten about the strange man sitting by himself at the end of the bar.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Kate was twenty minutes from the office when her phone rang through the car speakers.She glanced at the dashboard clock and saw that it was 8:40.She saw that it was Sloane and answered through Bluetooth.She wondered if there had been a break the night before and this case would be wrapped before the second day even fully began.

“This is Agent Wise,” she answered.

"Good morning, Kate," Sloane said.“Looks like we’ve got another one.”

“Another body?”

"Yeah.A woman named Donna Holt.Fifty-three years old, lives alone.Her son found her this morning… she wasn’t answering his calls, so he stopped by on the way to work.Local PD called it in to us about twenty minutes ago.According to the son, Donna was on a date last night… with someone new.Based on what the lead detective told me, the son claims this was the first time she had met this man in person."

The highway stretched out ahead of her, straight and gray in the early morning light.Kate thought about Carol Paige's back door.The unlocked latch, the wine glass, the lamp still burning.

"Are you headed there now?"Kate asked.

“Yeah.The address is 1491 Miller Street.”

“I’m about fifteen minutes from there,” Kate said.She knew the areas; it was on the east side, a sort of well-to-do neighborhood.“See you there.”

She instantly started connecting the pieces as she drove.Two women.Both had been on first dates the night before, both had come home alone afterward, and both were now dead.So far, it appeared to be the same general window of time.The MO at Carol's scene had been clean and deliberate, no ransacking, no forced entry, nothing disturbed beyond the immediate area around the body.If this scene looked anything like that one, then what she was driving toward was not a coincidence.It was a second occurrence, which meant it was a pattern, and a pattern meant someone was choosing these women specifically.Not opportunistically or randomly.