Call Me Killer by Linda Barlow Page A

over the years, plenty of them, but they were hookups, not people with whom I shared my living space.
    I didn't seriously believe that Rory could uncover anything new about Hadley's disappearance. I didn't like cops, but I gave them their due—they'd done a decent investigation. Gathered all the threads and followed all the angles. The case was ice cold now that almost a year had passed. Rory could poke through it all again, but what was she going to learn? Nothing, nada, zip.
    I knew the only reason I hadn't taken Rory by the scruff of her neck and forced her out my front door was that my dick was starting to do my thinking for me. Ever since I'd come home from work and found her back, I'd been extra-aware of her movements, her voice, her faintly feminine smell.
    I liked the way her thick brown hair bounced on her shoulders when she shifted her weight or turned her head. I liked her legs, which were long in proportion to the rest of her body, and her feet, which were dainty and small and always visible because she padded around barefoot. She was wearing chipped black polish on her fingers, but her toenails were unpainted. I wondered how she'd look in a pair of crazy-high heels.
    The game was a blowout. During a commercial break, I muted the sound. Rory took this as a signal to restart the interrogation. She pushed the desk chair back from the computer table and whirled it around so she could look at me. She had pulled one leg up with her heel resting on the front of the seat and her chin leaning on her bent knee.
    She gave me her big irresistible smile again, and this time it had a deja vu quality about it. For a moment she reminded me of someone else with a smile like that, although I couldn't fathom who.
    “So what's this job you have to go to, Griff? What kind of work do you do?”
    “Construction.”
    I could feel her checking me out again. “Guys who work construction usually have good bods.” I couldn't tell from her tone whether she thought I fell into this group or not. Probably not. I used to work out regularly with weights and run cross-country, but it had been a while since I'd done either. Work kept me in shape, but I was no longer in tiptop condition.
    “At least I don't sit in front of a computer screen all day.”
    “True,” she said cheerfully. “I'll probably be toting lard by the time I'm your age.”
    “I'm not that much older than you.”
    She laughed. “I know exactly how old you are.”
    Yeah, and how much I had in my bank account, too. Not to mention what kind of porn I liked.
    “What I don't get is, how come you have so many textbooks?” She nodded to a couple of bookcases up against the far wall. “You've even got some literary classics along with all the science fiction and fantasy stuff.”
    “I can fucking read,” I snarled. I loved to read, in fact.
    “If I didn't know better, I'd figure you were in college yourself. You're obviously not stupid.”
    “Gee, thanks. We can't all have an IQ of 204.”
    She waved a hand as if that were insignificant. “Those tests aren't that accurate, anyway.”
    “Don't worry. I'm not threatened by intelligent women.” This was actually true. I had a lot of hang-ups about women, but brains wasn't one of them. I'd gone to a good high school and I'd known plenty of smart girls. Hadley had been an honors student.
    Rory glowed when she heard this. When she lit up like that, it was as if she were channeling sunshine. She seemed to be remarkably cheerful considering her friends were prostitutes and their boyfriends were gun-toting wackos.
    “Are you working construction because of some fallout from your girlfriend's disappearance? Is that why you dropped out of college?”
    Yeah, and she knew that, no doubt, because she had access to my whole fucking life. Sunshine or no sunshine, I was starting to get irritated.
    “Maybe you could think about finishing school? So you're not stuck in a dead-end job for the next forty years?”
    “You know what?