Deadly Impulse by Olga Bicos released on Aug 30, 2005 is available now for purchase.

Deadly Impulse

By Olga Bicos

MIRA

Copyright © 2005 Olga Bicos
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0778322114

Piper Jordan sat up in bed, suddenly awake. The client files she'd fallen asleep reading tumbled to the floor as she slumped forward, knees to chest, catching her breath. Lightning flashed against the windowpane, briefly setting a match to the room as the patter of rain turned into a harsh, pitting hail.

As if it were a message from her dreams, Piper knew something was wrong.

"Simon," she whispered, shoving aside the covers.

Piper Jordan realized what silence might mean in her house during a storm.

She ran down the stairs, the floorboards biting cold. A camera flash of lightning flickered, making the portraits in the hall light up like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.

Don't panic. Don't let him see you freaked out.

Only hours ago, she'd tucked Winnie the Pooh covers under her son's chin and set the snooze function on the VCR to say good-night. She'd kissed her daughter and cleared the floor of Mandy's report due next week, stacking the note cards and books on her desk.

He'll be there. Simon's fine.

Down the hall, the door to her son's room stood ajar. The light from the hallway bled inside, Simon's version of a night light. Or, more likely, he wanted the connection to Piper sleeping down the artery of the hall. In either case, it seemed suddenly not enough...the room too far, her son too alone. She wanted more than anything to tuck him in bed beside her and fall asleep to the sound of his breathing.

Another flash of lightning painted Simon's room a nearwhite. The hall lights flickered — the house went dark. A blackout.

That's how she felt seeing Simon's empty bed, the covers puddled on the floor. Blackout.

"Mom!"

Piper turned to see her daughter. She almost collided with Mandy, then followed her frantic hand-waving down the stairs.

Around the corner, she saw the large oak door swinging open with the wind. Rain splattered on the tile inside.

She thought she would have heard something — the bolt on the front door, snap, click — his tiny bare feet on the floor. Anything.

By the time she reached the tiled entry, she knew her son had long since slipped over the threshold.

Standing in the rain, she screamed his name. The sky lit up, brilliant. At the end of the street, a palm tree blazed with fire from a direct strike as rain poured — a fire engine's siren wailed in the distance. Her heart pounding, she ran up and down the street, searching.

Please, please, let me find him!

In Piper's experience, it was when things seemed most urgent that the world had a trick of slowing down. The night Kevin had died, as she'd listened on her cell phone to Mandy crying, Piper had raced her Suburban through the storm to reach the house. She couldn't make the car drive fast enough. Couldn't click her heels and wish herself at her husband's side. She'd arrived too late, finding only the pulsing red of the ambulance light beating against the door.

Tonight felt the same. Slow motion. Piper turned in a circle, round and round, the fire engine flashing the same ugly red as she searched the manicured lawns and neatly trimmed yards of the cul-de-sac for her son...and found him.

He stood just down the street, his small body almost vanishing into the embrace of a man kneeling over him. Piper stepped forward, her heart suddenly too big for her chest. She couldn't see who it was — a neighbor, a stranger — only that Simon clung to him, his little arms tight around the man's neck.

Lightning like a flare overhead ignited the street. The man turned to look at her.

Some images don't make sense right away. They catch you by surprise so that you have to squint and wonder what's wrong or off or just plain impossible.You have to consider why the puzzle pieces don't fit. Like Clayton Chase holding her son in the middle of a rainstorm, some things just can't be....

"Simon!"

She rushed forward, the asphalt ripping into her feet, the rain dousing her soaked cotton-knit pajamas, none of which mattered to Piper. She could only think about Simon standing alone in the rain with Clayton Chase.

Clayton Chase. One of the names printed on the patient files Piper usually kept downstairs in her office — the very same folders that now lay scattered across the floor in her bedroom. Just that afternoon, Clay had been here at her home office for his session.

Reaching her son, she acted more out of instinct than smarts. She scooped the eight-year-old up in her arms and took several steps back. Standing there in the cozy, middle-class suburb, frozen and silent, she thought: Clayton Chase has come sneaking around my house in the middle of the night.

But Clay appeared just as surprised as Piper by the situation. Battered by the driving rain, he looked like something out of an old-time horror movie, Dr. Jekyll facing the fruits of his nightly escapade. His eyes grew wider at the sight of her, his shoulder-length hair soaked and slick against the collar of his bomber jacket.

She considered the possibility that Mr. Chase had come to her door by coincidence. She almost smiled at him, inviting an explanation, which from experience she knew would be a long time in coming. His last two months of sessions with Piper had been more perfunctory than insightful, making her wonder at times why he bothered to come at all.

For his part, Simon stretched his hand toward Clay, not in the least intimidated by a man rumored to have gotten away with murder — a tabloid bad boy famous enough to earn her small practice a mention in the papers. Caught off guard by her son's smile, she watched his tiny fingers disappear into the other's grasp.

She heard Clay say gently, "I got you, big guy."

For the last two years, Simon had lived in morbid fear of lightning. Half a dozen times he'd woken from a deep sleep to race screaming into the mouth of the squall where Piper would find him staring at the sky, half defiant, half frozen in fear. But now, lightning arced and branded the blackness overhead and she couldn't feel so much as a shudder from her son.

The three of them stood in the rain, a tableau. The palm tree still ablaze, a fire truck throbbed its beat as firemen hustled to douse the flames before the fire spread to the adjoining homes. She didn't know what to say, adrenaline zinging through her veins, her amazement at odds with her confusion.

Clay shrugged off his coat. He angled his athlete's body so that he managed to shelter both her and Simon from the rain as he wrapped the bomber jacket around them.

To Simon in her arms, he whispered, "I think maybe you scared your mom, running out like that. Time to let her tuck you in and do all that good stuff moms like so much."

Her son took her face in both hands, turning her head so that she looked right at him. He didn't say a word, but in his eyes she could see what he wanted to tell her: I'm not scared.

Clay touched the boy's shoulder to get his attention and then raised his hand for a high five. Simon complied. "Just remember what I told you, okay?" Clay said.

Continues...

Excerpted from Deadly Impulseby Olga Bicos Copyright © 2005 by Olga Bicos. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the...