CHAPTER 17
IT WAS A cold December night when I first saw him.
I glanced up at the sky as I hurried down the street, my footsteps soft in the darkness. The lack of clouds meant the temperature would drop a few degrees yet. The clock in the pawnbroker’s window chimed the witching hour as I passed, muffled by thick glass and a security grille. My mouth opened in a yawn, and I didn’t bother to cover it. Why fight the exhaustion? It festered inside me, the one constant in my life since childhood. A nemesis I’d never beat.
The eight to late shift was a killer, and in five hours I’d be up and working again, bleary eyed and faking a smile until I knocked off to study at one thirty. I’d have dearly loved to pack in my second job, the one in the evening, but it paid better than the first so I was
