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Being with him like that, not on a date or anything, just being, had felt somehow… right. Watching him sleep. Enjoying the sound of his breathing. And not daring, not yet, to put the L-word to what she was feeling. It was too soon, and she was still too wary from past experiences to blindly trust that this excitement when she was with him would last forever. Her wariness was also the real basis for her reluctance to sleep with him. Yeah, frustrating him was fun and she enjoyed the heat in his eyes when he looked at her, but deep down she was still afraid to let him get too close to her.
Maybe next week.
“Hey, Jaine!”
She looked up as Dominica Flores stuck her head in the door, her eyebrows raised in query.
“I just caught part of the thing on television this morning; I had to leave before it was finished, but I set the VCR. It was so cool
! You looked hot, really hot. Everyone looked good, y’know, but, wow, you were great.”
“I didn’t see it,” Jaine said.
“Really? Wow, if I were on national television, I’d stay out of work to watch myself.”
Not if you were as sick of the whole thing as I am, Jaine thought. She managed a smile anyway.
At eight-thirty, Luna called. “Have you heard from Marci?” she asked. “She hasn’t come to work yet, but when I called her at home, there wasn’t an answer.”
“No, I haven’t talked to her since Friday.”
“It isn’t like her to miss work.” Luna sounded worried. She and Marci were pretty tight, surprisingly so considering the gap between their ages. “And she didn’t call in late or sick or anything.”
That really wasn’t like Marci. She hadn’t reached her position as head of accounting by being unreliable. Jaine frowned; now she was worried. “Have you tried her cell phone?”
“It isn’t on.”
The first thought that sprang to Jaine’s mind was that there had been a traffic accident. The Detroit traffic was horrendous during rush hour. “I’ll call around and see if I can find her,” she said, not voicing her sudden concern to Luna.
“Okay. Let me know.”
As she hung up, Jaine tried to think of who to call to find out if there had been a traffic accident somewhere on the freeway between Sterling Heights and Hammerstead. And did Marci come down Van Dyke to hit I-696 or avoid Van Dyke and take one of the Mile roads over to Troy where she could pick up I-75?
Sam would know whom to call.
Quickly she looked up the number of the Warren Police Department, dialed it, and asked for Detective Donovan. Then she was put on hold. She waited impatiently, tapping a pen against the desktop, for several minutes. Finally the voice came back to say that Detective Donovan wasn’t available, would she like to leave a message?
Jaine hesitated. She hated to bother him for something that could easily turn out to be nothing, but she didn’t think anyone else at the department would take her concern seriously. So a friend was half an hour late to work; that wasn’t generally cause enough to call out the troops. Sam might not take her seriously either, but he would at least make an effort to find out something.
“Do you have his pager number?” she finally asked. “It’s important.” It was important to her, though it might not be to them.
“What does this concern?”
Irritated, she wondered if women regularly called Sam at work. “I’m one of his snitches,” she said, crossing her fingers at the lie.
“Then you should have his pager number.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Someone could be hurt or dead—”She caught herself. “Okay, so I’m pregnant, and I thought he’d like to know.”
The voice laughed. “Is this Jaine?”
Oh, my God, he’d been talking about her! Her face flamed. “Urn—yes,” she mumbled. “Sorry.”
“Not a problem. He said if you ever called to make sure you got in touch with him.”
Yeah, but how had he described her? She refrained from asking and jotted down his pager number. “Thanks,” she said.
“You’re welcome. Uh—about this pregnancy thing …”
