Revenge of Innocents by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

“The house numbers are on the trash cans. Shit, I can’t read them. Wait, I’ve got it. It looks like 954. Tell them I’m driving a black Viper with a yellow racing stripe. They can’t miss it.” Once she completed the second call, he asked her, “Did you get a good look at the guy?”
    “Not with his shoe in my face,” Carolyn told him, messaging her arm. “Promise me you won’t say anything to Marcus. He was pressuring me to quit my job even before Veronica was murdered.”
    “Now you know why I’m single,” Brad said. “Tell him he can’t have you all to himself. We need you. You better make sure you know what you’re getting into, Carolyn. This guy sounds selfish.”
    “Because he doesn’t want me to get hurt?” she argued. “That’s ridiculous. Marcus is one of the most generous men I’ve ever known.”
    “Hey, just remember I warned you. Rich men have a tendency to be demanding. You’ve been on your own for a long time. I can’t picture you kissing up to any guy. Well, me maybe, but I’m not in the running.”
    “God, am I going to have a bruise on my face?” She reached for the visor, thinking it had a mirror, then remembered that the Viper wasn’t a luxury car.
    “Let me take a look at you.” He turned on the interior light, then placed his finger under her chin.
    They were so close, Carolyn could feel his warm breath on her face. At one time, they had loved each other. He linked eyes with her, cleared his throat, and then turned away. “You’re going to feel like a train wreck tomorrow, but you’ll be fine. If there’s a bruise, you can cover it with makeup.”
    “You saved my life.”
    “Don’t humor me,” Brad told her. “As a marksman, I suck. I don’t think I could have hit the guy if he’d been standing a foot away wearing a neon target. I got terrible news from the doctor the other day.”
    “My God, are you sick? Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I didn’t want anyone to know.”
    Carolyn put her hand on his shoulder. “Please, Brad, I’m your friend. You don’t have some kind of disease, God forbid.”
    “I need glasses.”
    Carolyn knew him well enough to know he wasn’t joking. “Do you realize how incredibly vain you sound? You’re forty years old. Since you don’t seem to realize it, youth doesn’t last a lifetime. A few years down the line, and you’ll need a lot more than glasses.”
    His eyes expanded. “Not Viagra.”
    Carolyn laughed. “You guys finally have something to be embarrassed about now. Women have been trying to be something we aren’t for years. We’ve worn push-up bras, false eyelashes, fake hair, and that was before women closed out their Christmas accounts and spent the money on plastic surgery. Why won’t you need Viagra, Brad? I want to hear this one.”
    “I just won’t,” he said, a stubborn look on his face. “You’ve slept with me. Do you think a guy like me would ever need Viagra? I’m a machine, man. I’ll never lose it. My dad’s still going strong and he’s almost eighty. Men in my family don’t have those kinds of problems.”
    “Someone just tried to kill me, and you’re worried about glasses and Viagra. Give me a break, Brad.”
    They saw the headlights of a vehicle. “Call the PD and see if that’s them behind us,” he said. “We’re a sitting duck if it’s the guy who jumped you.”
    Before Carolyn could punch in the numbers, Hank Sawyer pulled up alongside them in his unmarked unit, speaking to them through the open window. Even now that he’d slimmed down, he still sat in the car the way a heavy man would, spread out and slouched. After they told him what had transpired, she said, “His voice sounded strange, Hank.”
    “In what way?”
    “At first I thought I knew him. Now I’m not sure. His voice was muffled, as if he were trying to disguise it. I thought I heard some kind of accent.”
    “From where?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, feeling foolish that she couldn’t remember more.