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the uniformed officer as he held out a plastic baggie packed with several ice cubes.

    26
    Gracie C. McKeever
    "It'll help," he said when she didn't respond.
    "Thank you." She took his offering and immediately plopped the baggie on her cheekbone. The cold did help, soothing the pain and slowing the throb to a dull tingle. Nova caught one of the officer's hands before he could leave, prepared to ask if the kid's parents had arrived, but was electrified with a sudden flash of familiarity at the brief contact.
    She’d seen him before, and in this very police station!
    "Ma'am?" He frowned down at her.
    Nova stopped gaping long enough to return his look. She swallowed hard, tried to hide her confusion. She’d almost blurted out her realization, and that would never have done. She couldn't let the men in white coats take her away now, when she was so close to meeting him .
    Curious, she moved the homemade ice pack away from her face and searched the floor for the auburn-haired detective. When she found him shaking hands with someone near the entrance, the ice pack slid from her grasp and dropped to the floor.
    "Ma'am, are you all right?"
    "I'm fine, officer." She was more than fine now, for making his way across the crowded floor, right behind the auburn-haired detective, was the stranger from her visions.

    Between Darkness and Daylight
    27

    Chapter 3

    Right about now was the time when Zane would be popping a cigarette into his mouth and lighting up. But he’d given up the sticks soon after being diagnosed with aplastic anemia nearly twelve years ago. He couldn't have continued with such an unhealthy habit and wasted his sister's gift-of-life bone marrow donation.
    Not that he wasn't supremely tempted at times, now being one of them.
    Zane pulled a pack of sugarless gum from a khaki pocket, unwrapped and popped a stick in his mouth. Not exactly the nicotine rush he was looking for, a rush he still missed after all these years, but it would have to do.
    "Youngblood!"
    Zane recognized the voice, spotted the plainclothes officer waving a hand as he wound his way through the crowd towards him.
    Almost three years ago, Dwyer Leary had been one of the detectives who caught and worked Sinnead's homicide case. He’d been incredibly sympathetic through the entire ordeal, bringing Zane in to identify his wife's body, questioning him—the husband was generally the most likely suspect—and finally identifying a viable suspect, who happened to be the irate husband of one of Zane's clients.
    Once that suspect had been interrogated and eliminated, the police hadn't had any more leads to follow. An artist and photographer of moderate success, Sinny hadn't had many enemies to speak of. Back to square one, the police had resorted once more to questioning Zane and his and Sinny's friends, co-workers, and clients. By the time they’d zeroed back in on the original suspect—the abusive husband of the client whom Zane had helped place, along with their two children, in a women's shelter—the man had disappeared, presumably leaving the city, if not the country.

    28
    Gracie C. McKeever
    To this day, Sinny's murder remained unsolved, labeled a random act of street violence in the commission of a robbery because her purse and jewelry had been taken from the crime scene. Officially, the case was closed.
    Unofficially, it remained open, a cold case Leary worked in his spare time and gave Zane periodic updates on when he had the chance. Leary's main suspect remained MIA. But he—and therefore Zane—remained hopeful that the man would make a mistake or resurface.
    "How're you, Leary?"
    "Fair to middling. But that's normal around here." Leary clamped a hand on his shoulder, dwarfing Zane's six-foot-two by several inches.
    "What about you?"
    Zane shrugged. "Surviving." He thought about mentioning the prank calls and the vandalism in his neighborhood and at the school, but figured Leary already had enough on his plate without the added complication