Every Little Thing

[Frankie]

That was another great chapter Penny. I love the old, balding Peter. This is getting really intriguing, they both have secrets...which you aren't letting on......you tease.. and I am totally hooked.

And two chapters in one day...you have to keep this up

[buffygirl]

Yess I pop in on the off chance update and a great one.

Better get back on topic lol

That was awsome so typical of our dear Peter slams into the first guy he see's nah we know Peter he's always wrong

[Gypsy & Will Fan]

Chapter ten

Irene slid her body deeper into the hotels deep bath tub, rinsing the shampoo from her hair. The water was cool, now, but when she first stepped in, it had been steaming hot. She still wasn't ready to leave the tub. She wanted to soak until she forgot what that creeps hands had felt like on her mouth and neck, what the prick of the knife had felt like at her throat.

She couldn't understand why Peter might believe Barry was responsible for attacking her, for murdering three women. The whole thing was incomprehensible to her, an impossibility - and she barely knew Barry Hyde. Surely she wasn't so addle-brained as to dismiss a warning because Barry's arms comforted her, because a kiss aroused a part of her that she thought was long dead.

No, it was more than that. Irene trusted her instincts. That was what made her a good palmist. She opened herself from what ever the person across emitted - fears, loves, insecurities. People were so usually so easy to read. She would bet her life that Barry was no killer.

She had to remind herself that her instincts were not infallible. She'd had no instinct that Mud was any different from the kind, loving man that he presented to her and the rest of the world - not until it was too late. She'd been wrong about him. Was it possible that she was wrong about Barry?

When the water was too cold too bear, Irene stepped out from the bath tub and wrapped herself in a coarse, white hotel towel. She dried herself vigorously, rubbing life into her chilled limbs and towel drying her hair.

Why was it even in the middle of the summer, hotel rooms were so damn cold? The air conditioner ran, noisily and effectively. Her skin felt like ice. She grabbed a thin blanket from the top shelf of the wardrobe and wrapped it around her chilled body, hugging the stiff wool blanket close to her chest like a child's security blanket. She made her way to the air conditioner unit by the window. With a twist of her wrist, a pop and a low roar, the icy air stilled. Irene parted the curtain slightly. A patrol car was parked directly outside the window, and Jack who sat in the driver's seat lifted his hand and waved to reassure her. McGrath - an older, fatter man - slept in the passenger seat. The only way into this room was past the police and through the door. Still, she didn't feel safe.

The sun was coming up, and that meant it was time for her to get to bed. Even with the bathroom light on and the sun in the sky, sleep would not come easily - not with the knowledge that some pervert was just waiting to get his hands on her again.

She looked past the patrol car to the other side of the car park, to an old blue Ford with a dented fender and a rust spot the size of a cricket ball on the hood. A dark figure hunched behind the steering wheel. She couldn't make out the features from this distance and the dim light, but that dark figure was Barry. She knew it.

A smile crept across her face and she felt, for the first time that night, a calm that rushed through her body like the blood through her veins.

She let the curtains fall closed, and she turned to the bed. Suddenly she felt tired, and she knew she could sleep, after all. The blanket dropped to the floor, and she slipped between the crisp white sheets and closed her eyes. No damn Ripper would dare bother her when Barry Hyde was on watch.

[Frankie]

Thanks Penny...I do like the slow burn of this story..it keeps is guessing .....and you are getting inside thier heads really well.

[Gypsy & Will Fan]

Chapter eleven

Saturday was usually the busiest time for the carnival in any case, but tonight every curious citizen of Summer Bay wanted a look at the woman who had fended off the serial killer who'd been terrorizing their small town. Peering into morbidly inquisitive faces and remaining calm exhausted Irene.

Jack had been posted inside the tent with her. He tried unsuccessfully to be inconspicuous. Jack Holden looked as if he should be playing high school football instead of wearing a gun and trying to appear rugged. He was too young and much too pretty to pull of rugged. Two others watched from a distance, she'd been told, and of stood near the entrance - as if they expected a man in a Halloween mask to get in line.

Barry's car had been gone when she'd finally awakened late in the morning. She didn't really expect him to watch over her twenty four hours a day, could she? But when she'd looked into the car park and seen the waiting patrol car and no Barry, she'd been afraid. Dammit, she wasn't supposed to be afraid of anything anymore. Nothing scared her.

Her strength had faltered since the carnival had arrived in Summer Bay.

She smiled when Barry appeared in the tent entrance, even though he glowered. Without even glancing at Jack, he sat across the table from her. Her smiled widened, for him.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I had to wait in line. Forty-five minutes," he added.

"I'm a popular lady tonight."

Barry finally looked over her shoulder to Jack. "Does our watchdog have to stay?"

"Take a break, Jack." Her eyes never left Barry.

"Sorry, Miss Roberts, I got my orders - "

"I told you to call me Irene," she said impatiently. "Now, would you get me a lemonade? Please?"

"I can't leave you alone with him," Jack said, and the intensity of his words made it clear that he might leave her alone with someone else, but not with Barry Hyde.

Irene shrugged. "I guess he does have to stay."

"Are you all right?" Barry asked, his voice soft and for her alone. "I was surprised when I drove by the hotel this afternoon and you weren't there."

"I couldn't stand to just sit," Irene admitted. "Besides," she added with a smile, "this is good business."

Barry laid his hand on the table, and Irene took it. She didn't bother looking at his palm. "Thank you," she whispered, rubbing her thumb over his palm in an easy rocking motion. It was too instinctive, too deep - this need for his touch. The need scared her as much as any Ripper, at the same time she wanted it more than she'd ever wanted anything.

"For what?"

For making me feel this way. She couldn't very well tell him that. "For waiting in line forty-five minutes. For watching over me last night. I looked out the window and saw your car in the car park, and it really did make me feel better. Safer." Barry's unwavering attention gave her a chill, a prickle of caution that crept down her spine. The chill was quickly replaced by a rush of warmth, an intense sensation that should have warned her much more clearly than Peter's words of caution. She had so many questions to ask Barry - about the murders, about the reason they suspected him, about the way he'd sent her life into a tailspin. She had a glib tongue with her customers; she could spin a yarn without stammering once. The truth came much harder.

"I don't like this," Barry finally whispered.

"What's that?"

His hand tightened around hers. "You're vulnerable here." He glanced around the tent. "It would be too easy for someone to slice their way through the back for the tent, or charge past everyone to get to you."

"Has he done that before?" Her heart skipped a beat. It had haver even occurred to her that the Ripper might try to attack her in the open. He was a coward who wore a mask and jumped women from behind.

"No," Barry whispered.

Kenny, Josh's youngest and her orange soda partner in crime, poked his head into the tent. "Dad said hurry it up in here. The line's clear to the sausage stand." Never shy, Kenny turned to a wide grin to Barry.

"Your little friend," Barry said with a trace of sarcasm.

Irene ignored the comment. Tongue-tied as she was, there just wasn't enough time for the questions she needed to ask, much less another defensive explanation of her actions the night they met. "I meant what I said. Last night, this morning, I didn't rest until I saw your old banger."

Barry shrugged his shoulders, but he was far from casual. Tense and tight, as if were ready so spring from his chair at any moment. "These days the Police Department in the county is next to worthless." He glanced past her to Jack who, amazingly, remained silent as he and the department were insulted. "You'd better get used to seeing that old banger around, because I don't trust them to keep you safe."

"And you can?" She waited, without breathing, for the answer. Barry's eyes latched to hers, and once again it was as if they were alone. Jack faded into the background, insignificant.

"I'm going to try."

There was no way they could sit here all night holding hands like smitten teenagers, even through that was exactly what Irene wanted to do. A line of customers - clear to the sausage stand - awaited, tickets in hand, to have their palms read by the woman who had bested a serial killer.

She lifted Barry's palm to her lips and lightly kissed the sweat-dampened skin there. Then she rubbed her thumb against the spot she had kissed and lifted her eyes to his.

He looked at her so damn hard that her heart skipped a beat.

"I trust you, Barry," she whispered, not knowing exactly why she felt the need to say those words, or how she knew he needed to hear them.

[Frankie]

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww....thats lovely.... ....and as far Jack....well ...what a prick Another great update Penny...keep 'em coming

[chatter box]

These are some very good updates. I enjoyed reading them very much. Thank you.

Oh, and Penny, good luck to you and especially your Mum with the wedding, is it soon?

[buffygirl]

Aww..Penny great updates.

Touching hands and the mental conflict of Irene so realistic and Barry watching yess so realitic for them both..

Thanks Penny. oh yes hope your mums day went well.

[Gypsy & Will Fan]

Chapter twelve Part one.

Irene felt oddly defenseless, looking at the two glass walls of the diner and the night beyond. She was well guarded, so there was no reason for her unease. Barry sat across from her, and two deputies, McGrath and Jack, sat in a booth on the other side of the diner. Their eyes never left her.

"They don't like you much, do they?" she asked softly. She tried to make her tone light, playful. But Barry didn't smile.

"No, they don't he answered her simply.

"Why do they think your the - a suspect?" She'd been about to say killer, but then thought better of it.

The smile he gave her was crooked and cynical, a poor attempt of making light of the subject. The attempted smile made him appear suddenly cruel. "They don't think I'm a suspect - I am one. The only one."

Irene waited for him so say more. When he didn't, she prodded. "Why?"

Barry hesitated, staring at her all the while with those storm cloud gray eyes as if he was trying to stare right through her. A muscle in his cheek twitched, and Irene thought for a moment he didn't intend to answer.

But finally, he did. "My ex wife was the first victim, eight months ago. The second murder took place two months later, the third after another four months had passed. But the first attack was by far the most brutal, Kerry and I were divorced four years ago, and it was a rather messy divorce. It all started with her."

Husbands and ex husbands were always considered suspects in a woman's murder, Irene knew. She shivered. With good reason. "And that automatically makes you a suspect."

"That and the fact that I -"

He hesitated, and she saw a flicker of frustration on his face.

"I found her, not long after she was killed."

"I'm sorry," she whispered. He shrugged as if it didn't matter, but she could see it did matter, very much. Knowing that they called this killer the Ripper gave her an idea on what Barry had found, how horrible it must of been for him.

"If there had been a murder weapon at the scene, I'd be in jail awaiting trial right now," he explained. "But there was no weapon, no physical evidence to connect me to the crime, They tried, though. They tried."

"But the other victims..."

"They think I'm trying to throw them off the scent by making it look like Kerry was a random target by a serial killer." He frowned, and no longer looked directly at Irene. "The other two that died? I knew them, too. Thats not really remarkable," he said gruffly. "I was born and raised here in Summer Bay, and so were they."

"Couldn't there be two or even three different killers?" Irene leaned forward over the table that seperated them. "I mean, in a good size city, three murders in less than a year wouldn't be considered unusual."

There were moments when Barry was handsome and easy to read, an open book, and she felt nothing but safe in his company. There were other moments, like this one, when his face and his eyes turned unyielding, and he closed himself off from her. From everyone, she suspected.

[Frankie]

Excellent Penny. I like the furtiveness, the frustration and the way he bottles it all up. You are conveying the sense of anger and resentment.... which must inevitably come from being turned on by the people you grew up with... really well. Lets have part 2 and then chapter 13 - 40 pdq please