Alexandria sat on her bed, daydreaming yet again. It was Saturday, so she wouldn't have to go to work. Thank God for that. She put the TV on mute and sat back against the headboard, munching on chocolate as she so often did when she didn't have to do anything. "Here's to the finer things in life," she would joke to herself. Always to herself though, being that she was single—very single.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was open on her lap, but she'd stopped reading it a while ago to focus on painting her nails. Multi-tasker, she tended to be. Everything was quiet, just the way she liked it. She put the finishing touch on the final nail and set the bottle of nail polish on her nightstand. Just as she was laying her hands flat to dry, the phone rang beside her. She sighed and glared at the phone. It was very unlike her to leave the phone ringing when she's home, so she decided to risk ruining her nails to answer the phone.
"Hello?"
A very masculine voice replied. "Yo, Alex, what's up?"
Alexandria had to physically take hold of her own wrist so that she wouldn't hang up on him. "Hi, Nick. And here I was thinking it was some one important."
"Oh, that's cold, sweetheart." There was a scuffling on the other line and his voice came back. "Aren't you glad I'm back?"
"You left? You should have sent me a note so I could have celebrated." She examined the nails on her free hand. The thumb was smudged beyond repair. "You better have a good reason for calling me on my day off. I sacrificed my nails for you."
Nick faked a concerned gasp. "Don't make me feel important," he muttered, "it just makes it hurt more when you shoot me down again." She laughed triumphantly. "Anyway, I just saw something that might interest you. It was about cats, and I know how much youlove cats." The sarcasm was most apparent. She hated cats. "People are claiming to have seen a really big, black panther in Detroit."
At hearing this, Alexandria almost choked on a piece of chocolate. "You're kidding."
"Got you're attention, didn't I?"
"You're an asshole." Slowly, she recovered the shock and put a bookmark in her book and set it on the nightstand next to the nail polish.
"I'm serious, though. It was all over the news this morning. Some kid was chased all the way through a subway station. Three other people saw it—or so they're saying."
"Well, thank you, Roger. Thank you for making me lose my appetite. Now if you'll excuse me, fuck off." She flipped the phone off before hanging it up. Things like that just pissed her off. Of all the things he could do with his time, why annoy her? Seriously, he needs to—was that Murphy?
Alexandria grabbed the remote and turned the mute off the TV. She was apparently watching something like America's Most Wanted, and sure enough, Murphy's face was up in the corner of the screen next to some other guy about his age and a really old guy. "…wanted for over twenty murders in Boston. All of the victims have been criminals, which earned these men the nickname, The Saints. Authorities have put out a reward of one thousand dollars for anyone willing or able to bring these three men in. They were most recently spotted in the Detroit area and—" She shut off the TV.
Out of all the things Alexandria had been expecting today, she had not expected that. She had expected the cat thing more than that. A murderer? That means that she…with a…oh Christ.
She pulled a pair of jeans over her underwear and then a jacket against the cold and took off out of her apartment in the blink of an eye. Strangely, she had no idea where she was going. She knew only one thing—the TV had not been the second time she'd seen Murphy, but the third.
"Alfred!" she entered the bar quickly and stole over to the counter, stepping in some one's way just in time to get there before it was too crowded. "Alfred, I have to ask you something."
"Hey, girl, didn't I just see you in here this morning?" Alfred, the bartender, only barely looked up at her, but she forgave him. It was getting to be the busy time of day.
"Yeah, you did, I do live right upstairs. Do you remember that Irish guy?"
"The one you left with?"
She winced inwardly, feeling like a slut for a moment. "Yes the guy I left with. You wouldn't happen to know anything about him, would you?"
Alfred set a shot glass and a bottle of whiskey in front of a customer and then gave her a sly smirk. "I'm assuming you're asking because you don't know anything about him?" He laughed in good humor, while collecting a glass and a tip left on the counter for him. "No, actually I've never seen him before tonight. It really seems to me like you'd have been the first to see him. I thought you guys might have met at the hospital."
"What do you mean?"
"You didn't notice the blood on his jeans? Well, I suppose you wouldn't have. You were too busy snogging in the men's room."
Alexandria rolled her eyes, but she couldn't help smile at him. "Thanks anyway, Alfred, I'll let you get back to work now." She left without another word, very perturbed at this new information that was still settling in her mind. She didn't even know what she planned to do when she found Murphy, but whatever it was, it wouldn't be pretty.
Women are complicated. As she thought about it, Murphy really had no responsibility to tell her—though it would've been nice. Maybe she was just freaking out. Like that lady in the emergency room the other day. The one who said she was Murphy's girl. She was the stereotypical girlfriend, except she wasn't particularly pretty.
'Well, I'm not gorgeous either,' Alexandria thought, feeling slightly vain. The more she thought about it, the more that girl started to look familiar. That face was definitely some one she had seen before. And then it struck her. "Toni?"