Because, of course, she couldn’t have a cell phone like everyone else. She didn’t leave paper trails for anyone to follow. Next time, if there ever was a next time that she was stupid enough to go on a date, she would take her own car and she would do the dumping.

A forty-five-minute wait for a cab. Bravado would only carry so far. She was not going to wait forty-five minutes in the dark surrounded by rats. No way. How incompetent of the taxi service not to have planned their resources better.

In a fit of temper she slammed the phone in its cradle, giving only a fleeting thought to the dispatcher’s ear. Saber kicked the side of the booth and nearly broke her toes. Howling, jumping around like an idiot, she vowed eternal revenge on Larry.

She should have stayed in the car and faced him down instead of letting him drive off. He was a worm crawling his way across the earth, but he was no monster. She knew monsters intimately. They dogged her every step, and soon-far too soon if she didn’t leave-they would find her again. A slimebag like Larry was a prince in comparison. Larry certainly hadn’t recognized the monster in her. If he had touched her…She pushed the thought away and made herself think normal. She should have decked him though, just once, for all the other women who would be put in the same situation because he liked power. She was fairly certain most women would have had the desire to at least punch the bastard.

Saber sighed softly and shook her head. She was putting off the inevitable. She wasn’t walking home and she couldn’t very well stay where she was. She was going to pay royally for this, but what was one more lecture out of several hundred? Fighting for a deep controlling breath, she punched in the numbers, her fingertip unconsciously using a rather vicious stabbing motion on the blameless telephone.

Jess Calhoun lay sprawled out full length on the wide, leather, specially built futon, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness.