Another policeman called from his place by one of the assailants, the one Quinn had thrown. Our two patrolmen went to answer the summons, and we were briefly alone.

"Smart," Quinn murmured into my ear.

"Mmmm," I said, snuggling against him.

He tightened his arms around me. "You get any closer, we're going to have to excuse ourselves and get a room," he whispered.

"Sorry." I pulled back slightly and looked up at him. "Who you reckon hired them?"

He may have been surprised I'd figured that out, but you couldn't tell by his brain. The chemical reaction that had fueled my tears had made his mental snarl extra complicated. "I'm definitely going to find out," he said. "How's your throat?"

"Hurts," I admitted, my voice raspy. "But I know there's nothing really wrong with it. And I don't have health insurance. So I don't want to go to the hospital. It would be a waste of time and money."

"Then we won't go." He bent and kissed my cheek. I turned my face up to him, and his next kiss landed in exactly the right spot. After a gentle second, it flared into something more intense. We were both feeling the aftereffects of the adrenalin rush.

The sound of a throat clearing brought me back into my right mind as effectively as if Officer Boling had thrown a bucket of cold water on us. I disengaged and buried my face against Quinn's chest again. I knew I couldn't move away for a minute or two, since his excitement was pressed right up against me. Though these weren't the best circumstances for evaluation, I was pretty sure Quinn was proportional. I had to resist the urge to rub my body against his. I knew that would make things worse for him, from a public viewpoint—but I was in a much better mood than I had been, and I guess I was feeling mischievous. And frisky. Very frisky. Going through this ordeal together had probably accelerated our relationship the equivalent of four dates.

"Did you have other questions for us, Officer?" Quinn asked, in a voice that was not perfectly calm.

"Yes, sir, if you and the lady will come down to the station, we need to take your statements. Detective Coughlin will do that while we take the prisoners to the hospital."

"All right. Does that have to be tonight? My friend needs to rest. She's exhausted. This has been quite an ordeal for her."

"It won't take long," the officer said mendaciously. "You sure you've never seen these two punks before? Because this seems like a real personal attack, you don't mind me saying so."

"Neither of us knows them."

"And the lady still refuses medical attention?"

I nodded.

"Well, all right then, folks. Hope you don't have no more trouble."

"Thank you for coming so quickly," I said, and turned my head a little to meet Officer Boling's eyes. He looked at me in a troubled way, and I could hear in his head that he was worried about my safety with a violent man like Quinn, a man who could throw two boys several feet in the air. He didn't realize, and I hoped he never would, that the attack had been personal. It had been no random mugging.

We went to the station in a police car. I wasn't sure what their thinking was, but Boling's partner told us that we'd be returned to Quinn's vehicle, so we went along with the program. Maybe they didn't want us to have a chance to talk to each other alone. I don't know why; I think the only thing that could have aroused their suspicion was Quinn's size and expertise in fighting off attackers.

In the brief seconds we had alone before an officer climbed into the driver's seat, I told Quinn, "If you think something at me, I'll be able to hear you—if you need me to know something urgently."

"Handy," he commented. The violence seemed to have relaxed something inside him. He rubbed his thumb across the palm of my hand. He was thinking he'd like to have thirty minutes in a bed with me, right now, or even fifteen; hell, even ten, even in the backseat of a car, would be fantastic. I tried not to laugh, but I couldn't help it, and when he realized that I'd read all that clearly, he shook his head with a rueful smile.

We have somewhere to go after this, he thought deliberately. I hoped he didn't mean he was going to rent a room or take me to his place for sex, because no matter how attractive I found him, I wasn't going to do that tonight. But his brain had mostly cleared of lust, and I perceived his purpose was something different. I nodded.

So don't get too tired, he said. I nodded again. How I was supposed to prevent exhaustion, I wasn't sure, but I'd try to hoard a little energy.

The police station was much like I expected it to be. Though there's a lot to be said for Shreveport, it has more than its fair share of crime. We didn't excite much attention at all, until officers who'd been on the scene put their heads together with police in the building, and then there were a few stolen glances at Quinn, some surreptitious evaluations. He was formidable-looking enough for them to credit ordinary strength as the source of his defeat of the two muggers. But there was just enough strangeness about the incident, enough peculiar touches in the eyewitness reports… and then my eye caught a familiar weathered face. Uh-oh.

"Detective Coughlin," I said, remembering now why the name had sounded familiar.

"Miss Stackhouse," he responded, with about as much enthusiasm as I had shown. "What you been up to?"

"We got mugged," I explained.

"Last time I saw you, you were engaged to Alcide Herveaux, and you'd just found one of the most sickening corpses I've ever seen," he said easily. His belly seemed to have gotten even bigger in the few months since I'd met him at a murder scene here in Shreveport. Like many men with a disproportionate belly, he wore his khaki pants buttoned underneath the overhang, so to speak. Since his shirt had broad blue and white stripes, the effect was that of a tent overhanging packed dirt.

I just nodded. There was really nothing to say.

"Mr. Herveaux doing okay after the loss of his father?" Jackson Herveaux's body had been found half-in, half-out of a feed tank filled with water on an old farm belonging to the family. Though the newspaper had tap-danced around some of the injuries, it was clear wild animals had chewed at some of the bones. The theory was that the older Herveaux had fallen into the tank and broken his leg when he hit the bottom. He had managed to get to the edge and haul himself halfway out, but at that point he had passed out. Since no one knew he'd visited the farm, no one came to his rescue, the theory went, and he'd died all by himself.

Actually, a large crowd had witnessed Jackson's demise, among them the man beside me.

"I haven't talked to Alcide since his dad was found," I said truthfully.

"My goodness, I'm sure sorry that didn't work out," Detective Coughlin said, pretending he didn't see that I was standing with my date for the evening. "You two sure made a nice-looking couple."

"Sookie is pretty no matter who she's with," Quinn said.

I smiled up at him, and he smiled back. He was sure making all the right moves.

"So if you'll come with me for a minute, Miss Stackhouse, we'll get your story down on paper and you can leave."

Quinn's hand tightened on mine. He was warning me. Wait a minute, who was the mind reader around here? I squeezed right back. I was perfectly aware that Detective Coughlin thought I must be guilty of something, and he'd do his best to discover what. But in fact, I was not guilty.

We had been the targets, I'd picked that from the attackers' brains. But why?

Detective Coughlin led me to a desk in a roomful of desks, and he fished a form out of a drawer. The business of the room continued; some of the desks were unoccupied and had that "closed for the night" look, but others showed signs of work in progress. There were a few people coming in and out of the room, and two desks away, a younger detective with short white-blond hair was busily typing on his computer. I was being very careful, and I'd opened my mind, so I knew he was looking at me when I was looking in another direction, and I knew he'd been positioned there by Detective Coughlin, or at least prodded to get a good hard look at me while I was in the room.