The Gingerbread Man by MAGGIE SHAYNE Page A

wasn’t altogether sure he even trusted the man yet.
    Finally, the chief realized he wasn’t going to get any more information, and took Holly home.
    It was a relief to be alone. For a long moment, Vince just stood on the small porch, arms braced on the railing, staring out at the water and trying to get a grip on his blood pressure. If he’d needed a warning, this had been it. He hadn’t talked a woman through a panic attack since the runaway teen he’d tried to help last year. He’d known better than to get too involved, but he had let the kid hole up at his place until he could get her into a good halfway house. Why? Because she was needy. Homeless, unstable, and had the crap beat out of her the night she stumbled onto his path. He did not do well with needy women. He’d put his heart and soul into seeing Shelly through her crises, and he thought he’d helped. He really did.
    Until she turned up on a restroom floor with her wrists slashed.
    And here was another one—maybe not just like Shelly. None of them were just alike. But he’d been around long enough to know damaged goods when he saw them. Red was on shaky ground, and there were deep secrets haunting her eyes.
    He had a weakness for needy women. A tendency to get involved, to try to fix things for them. He knew it, recognized it as a character flaw, and recently had managed to walk the other way every time a needy woman had crossed his path. Up until he met Sara Prague.
    He wasn’t going to make that mistake again. No more playing the hero. No more promises that would haunt his nights when he couldn’t keep them.
    Cute or otherwise, Holly Newman was strictly off-limits. It was important that he acknowledge this up front. It would save complications later on. He hated complications.
    What he needed to do was analyze the woman’s behavior from a purely objective point of view. She was obviously nervous about him being in town. She’d come out here to snoop and apparently had interrupted someone else who was also nervous about him being here, and snooping. Or she’d imagined the intruder, which seemed just as likely. There was no evidence anyone had been inside the cabin. The lock hadn’t been broken, but it wasn’t much of a lock. He supposed Holly could get hold of a key easily enough, since her uncle owned the place. He wondered if she had been inside rummaging through his stuff. Nothing too revealing in here. Not yet anyway.
    Her fear had been real, though. Whether she was lying, imagining, or had really seen someone, she had been scared into a panic attack. And it seemed unlikely a shadow and a snapping twig were enough to bring that on all by themselves. No, they’d probably acted as a trigger for something else. Something old. She told him as much when she admitted she hadn’t had an attack in years.
    He wondered briefly about the source of her fear-the kind of fear that could come back to knock her flat on her ass, years later, at the slightest scare. Then he reminded himself that was beyond his strictly defined area of interest. Back on track.
    Just suppose there actually had been someone in the cabin. Who could it have been? Hell, he’d only been in town just over a day. Who could know what he was up to? He headed out to his car, unlocked it, and slid his laptop case out from under the passenger seat. He noticed his groceries still scattered in the dying grass out by the side of the cabin. A can of coffee. Coffee filters. A six-pack of beer and a few other essentials. They would have to wait.
    Inside the cabin he dialed his cell phone while he waited for the laptop to boot up. A woman picked up on the fourth ring.
    “Katie? It’s Vince, I need to talk to Jerry.” He could hear his partner making motor sounds in the background, his four-year-old twins mimicking him and squealing with delight.
    “Nice to hear from you, too, Vince,” Kate muttered.
    Chagrined, he said, “Sorry. How are you, hon? How are the kids?”
    “Molly wants her