Chapter Two

And she did…sort of…forget it. However, the feeling of being watched lingered…when she walked out of the morgue to her car or from her car to the morgue. She was still chalking it up to her overworked paranoia and was trying to deal with it. Finally, one day, while walking out with Lily after work, she saw him again…theman with the brown hair. "Lily, have you ever seen that guy before?" she asked.

Lily glanced over at the man. "No…I don't think so…I don't know for sure, though. There are so many people that work in these buildings now. Why Jordan? Has he done something to make you uncomfortable?"

Jordan thought for a minute. "No…no, not really. I just see him a lot now when I leave in the evenings, and I don't remember seeing him before….I was wondering if it was just me finally noticing him, or if he had been here a while."

Lily considered Jordan for a moment. "I wouldn't worry about it too much. There are hundreds of people that work in this complex. Think of all the employees that come and go…hired and fired…but if you don't feel comfortable, you can always get one of the security guards to walk you out."

Jordan shook her head. "No…I'm okay. I just…well, you know me. I leave work and I'm so tired most of the time I just don't pay attention to anything around me. He just caught my eye a couple of times and I didn't recognize him."

"You think he's cute?"

"No. I just didn't recognize him."

"Good….I'd worry about you if you thought he was cute…because he's not."

Jordan nodded. The guy was average…average height…average looks…nothing outstanding about him. Not that she was really noticing the way he looked anyway. She was still somewhat smarting over Woody's silence to her. She determined the next time she saw the man, she would speak to him and find out where he worked…or if he worked nearby.

That happened three nights later. She was getting back in her El Camino after working a double and saw him out of the corner of her eye. Determined to get to the bottom of the situation to ease her paranoia, she called out, "Hey…you…" She turned in the direction she saw him….only he wasn't there anymore. She could have sworn she saw him. Swallowing hard and deciding it was her over active imagination and tired brain playing tricks on her, she got in her car and began her drive home.

Only to see him behind her in his car a few blocks away from the morgue. Still tamping down her overactive paranoia, she turned off Commerce onto Peace Street. The man's car turned with her El Camino. She quickly turned from Peace onto Revolution. Once again, the man followed her. Beginning to feel the waves of panic wash over her, she turned off of Revolution onto Main, finally loosing him in the traffic. Pulling over into the parking lot of a fast food place, she put her El Camino in park and tried to calm herself down.

She was shaking…from head to foot and was breaking out into a cold sweat. Running a hand down her face, she told herself to calm down…it was mere coincidence…she was beyond this now…she was over the suffocating feelings that whenever anything strange happened, it was someone out to get her… to hurt her in some way. Cautiously looking around for his blue Ford and not seeing one, she slowly pulled back out into traffic, not heading back to her apartment, but heading to a place of at least some semblance of security….the Pogue.

"Hi, Dad," she called, entering the bar and shutting the door behind her.

"Jordan," Max returned the greeting, without a great deal of enthusiasm.

"I promise I won't bother you. I only need a beer…and I just wanted to see you."

"Anything wrong, Jordan?"

"No…no. I just haven't seen you in …"

"Six weeks. We haven't talked in six weeks."

"Has it been that long?" she tried to quip back at him, giving him a brittle smile as he sat a Guinness in front of her.

"Yes," was all he answered, as he went back to his bar duties and other bar customers, but he watched his daughter out of the corner of his eye. He had pretty much taken a hands-off approach to Jordan since returning from his extended vacation. He had returned to find the bar in ship-shape order, but his relationship with his daughter in tatters. She had taken care of the Pogue as well as he could have…even showing a tidy profit during his absence. She had worked her butt off, according to his employees. But the minute he had set foot back in Boston, she had relinquished all the bar's responsibilities and its title back to him and they had barely spoken since.

She looked upset…and she wasn't going to tell him what about, he was sure. Maybe she just needed somewhere safe to think some things through. He wasn't certain. He did know she was pale. And he would swear her hand was trembling as she lifted the beer to her mouth. "Are you okay, Jordan?" he finally asked.

She looked up, startled. Her dad's deep voice brought her out of her thoughts about being followed…if she was followed. "I'm fine. Just tired…"

"Then go home and go to bed."

Sensing her father had once again dismissed her, Jordan got up and laid a five dollar bill on the counter to cover the beer. She put her coat back on and was opening the door to leave when she nearly ran into Woody. He stepped aside so she could pass him by and make her way up the steps. They didn't speak, but his eyes followed her up the stairway.

"That was odd….seeing her here," he said to Max as he took his usual place at the bar.

"Yeah. She came in about a half an hour ago. Said she just wanted to see me."

"How long had it been?"

"About six weeks. She didn't have a lot to say, though. Other than the fact that she was tired…come to think of it, she really didn't say anything at all… Guinness, Woody?"

"Yeah." Woody sipped his beer and wondered what she had been up to….He had been the one to cut off communication with her. It had been an accumulation of a lot of things…the break in…her insistence that the robbery of the locket meant more than it did…even though she later backed down from that statement. But it seemed like a good time to reassess his relationship with her…if you could call it that. It was hard to call it a relationship when you couldn't even get a good night kiss out of the woman. He had decided to let go of her and any dreams he had of them before he invested anymore time and effort into ….whatever it was they didn't have. He took a long swallow of his beer, dismissing her from his mind and concentrating on the red-head at the end of Max's bar.