Cassidy and the Princess. Patricia Potter

leaving dusk. It was eight. “I’ve got to go home,” he said, “or Janie will divorce me.”

      “It’s been a long night and day,” Cassidy said. “You go. I’ll call Miss Merrick.”

      After his partner left, he called Marise Merrick’s room. He’d feared the mother would pick up the phone. Instead, he heard the slightly slurred words of Miss Merrick. He silently cursed himself. He should have realized she would be asleep.

      “I’m sorry if I woke you,” he said.

      “That’s all right.”

      “Is your fiancé with you?”

      “He will be. He and Mother went out to get something to eat.”

      “I’ll be there with the artist at eight in the morning.

      “That’s fine.”

      A silence.

      “Well, good night, then.” He hung up before he made any more of a fool of himself.

      At least someone would be with her tonight.

      Marise chased her mother and Paul out after they returned from supper, convincing them to return to their hotel. She feigned exhaustion; most of all, she needed breathing room.

      The last time she’d wanted breathing room she’d nearly been killed. But she felt safe in this lighted hospital with attendants checking on her frequently, and she wanted to be by herself. She needed to think, particularly about Paul. She’d felt suffocated today when she’d heard her mother and Paul making decisions for her.

      How long had she permitted that?

      It had been insulting that she’d not even been consulted about their decision to slip her out of Atlanta, that they had turned away the police who’d wanted to help her and the other victims.

      She was twenty-four years old and had been self-supporting since she was eighteen, when she’d turned professional. She made good money these past years since rules had loosened and the line between amateur and professional had disappeared. Between competitions, she and Paul were featured in ice spectaculars throughout the country. But she’d always felt she owed allegiance to her mother.

      She had, after all, been responsible for her mother losing her husband and first-born child. And had spent her life trying to make up for it.

      Her thoughts went to the detective who had been in earlier. He’d filled the room with restless energy. There had also been a rough kindness he tried to hide, and that made her want to help him. Help herself. She wanted her assailant found and convicted. She’d tried to suppress her anger, knowing it wouldn’t do any good, but it was deep inside her. Boiling. It wouldn’t go away until her attacker was in prison.

      She still felt his hands on her, felt his hot breath against her face. She shivered with moments of terror revisited. Four other women dead. She could have been one of them.

      That realization only added to her growing dissatisfaction with her life. She knew now that she couldn’t marry Paul. She liked him tremendously. You couldn’t skate in pairs for five years without liking each other. Each became attuned to the other, intuitive even of the other’s feelings. Paul, though sometimes possessive, was usually aware of hers. In many ways, they were a good match.

      But though she liked him, she simply didn’t love him.

      And neither, she feared, did she love skating the way she once had. She wanted a house of her own. A life of her own. Not one dictated by others. But how to break away without breaking her mother?

      A nurse came in to check Marise’s vital signs. When she left, closing the door behind her, Marise turned off her light and closed her eyes.

      She woke to fear. To panic. The room was dark but the odor was there. The cloying odor she remembered. She reached for the call button. A hand stopped her, pushing it off the bed. Another stuffed something in her mouth.

      He was on the side of the bed with the table. The other side’s gate was down. She’d asked Paul to lower it since she was a restless sleeper and often threw out her legs during the night. Now she thanked God she had.

      She struggled fiercely against his hold, and he hit her across the face. She stopped moving immediately as if stunned. Would it work again? She’d read that men like him liked to bully women. Liked the fear. She would let him feel hers.

      She heard him exclaim, “Bitch.” One of his hands left her for a moment. Then in the dim light, she saw a needle and his face. A surgical mask hid the lower half. She willed herself to stay still even as the gag was pressed deeper into her mouth. But though he leaned his body over hers to pin it, one of her arms was free.

      With one desperate movement, she grasped a pitcher from the bedside stand and swung it at his head. Then she threw all her weight into turning and tumbling off the bed. His hand sought to halt her, but the momentum carried her crashing to the floor with a sheet twisted around her body. She drew her arms around her head to protect it and relaxed her body so the actual impact was minor. She screamed and rolled under the bed, hoping the attacker would be momentarily trapped by the table. Frantically, she searched for the call button that had fallen on the floor. She screamed again.

      She heard a muffled curse, then the sound of a door opening. No retreating footsteps. Her assailant must have been wearing tennis shoes of some kind.

      The light went on. She heard a worried voice. She rolled from beneath the bed. A woman in a jacket populated by cartoon figures leaned over her. “What…on earth…?”

      Marise tried to keep her voice steady. “Someone…was here. He had a needle. It was the man who attacked me the night before last.”

      The nurse grabbed the phone. “Security. Room 414 immediately.” Then she leaned back down, looking first at Marise’s bandaged head, then at the rest of her. “I don’t think you should move until a doctor sees you.” She reached for the phone again and called for a doctor on duty.

      “I’m all right,” Marise said. “But will you please call Detective MacKay at the Atlanta Police Department. I think his number is on the table…” She suddenly realized she wanted the detective more than she wanted Paul. Or her mother.

      She got to her feet, disregarding the nurse, and sat on the bed. She saw a needle in the corner of her room and shuddered. Her entire body trembled. Delayed reaction. She used to do that when she first started in competition. She would skate, then nervousness would seize her as she sat waiting for her marks, knowing how much her mother lived for that judgment.

      The nurse saw her hands, too. Instead of saying anything, she made the call to the police department, just as a security guard came into the room.

      Marise answered questions over and over again. A doctor came in, checked her and left.

      She only wanted one person, though. She didn’t know why. She only knew it was so.

      Cassidy knew he should go home. But he couldn’t let the case go.

      Instead he poured over the reports on the killings, then every word Marise Merrick had said. If only she could produce a description for the police artist.

      He looked at the clock. Eleven-thirty. He needed to leave and get some sleep or he wouldn’t be any good tomorrow. He hadn’t gotten any sleep last night. Yet his thoughts kept turning to his only witness.

      Only. He sat back in his chair. Damn. He should have asked for a police guard. Not that there had been anything in the news about her. Both the Merricks, and he and Manny, had wanted to keep this out of the media. Her mother had even asked the business office to admit her daughter under another name.

      She should be safe enough.

      Except that he had a gnawing feeling in his gut. He should have asked for protection.

      Cassidy told himself he was foolish. And yet…

      He looked at his watch. Then he called his captain at home.