Every Little Thing

[Natasha]

Yay...updates! A great fic...I've been wondering what happened with this one.

[Frankie]

That was a great update Penny...my heart was in my mouth ther for a second when that knife appeared....the question is....is Josh a goodie or a baddie ...

[chatter box]

What a lovely surprise to find some updates. I don't get time to log on very often these days.

I very much like the way that you are describing your characters, and how you allow us to see into their heads and their hearts. The journey your characters are taking is a painful one and you are enabling us to be with them every step of the way. It is very effective. This is very mature writing, you really are very gifted. I am very impressed.

P.S. Mean Jack is also a winner.

[Frankie]

This is very mature writing, you really are very gifted. I am very impressed.

She really is isn't she.... I quite agree...but for some reason she doesn't seem to believe us...still maybe when she wins the Booker prize she will...and we can say we knew her before she was famous.

[buffygirl]

This is very mature writing, you really are very gifted. I am very impressed.

She really is isn't she.... I quite agree...but for some reason she doesn't seem to believe us...still maybe when she wins the Booker prize she will...and we can say we knew her before she was famous.

All im going to say here is i totally agree with the above posts in everything they have said.

Penny please believe in yourself ok your a great writer ok!

[chatter box]

I was hoping there would be some more, as I have not logged on for a while. Never mind. It was nice to read it all again.

I hope that your Mum is feeling better Penny.

[Gypsy & Will Fan]

I'm sorry for the delay, Chatterbox, got a bit distracted with me following England around last week, next update tonight. Nearly finnished it

Mum's doing fine, just prepearing her wedding, thanks for asking!

[Gypsy & Will Fan]

Chapter Eight.

Barry sat in the same booth that he sat in the night before, sipping decaf and glancing at his watch again: 2:45. Irene had been late last night, but not this late. Still, he wasn't ready to give up on her, not yet.

He'd been tempted to make an appearance at the carnival again, in spite of Irene's orders - just to catch a glimpse of her, to see what her reaction to him would be. Was she still wary? Or would he get another one of those dazzling smiles?

She was an admitted con artist who laughed and kissed with abandon one minute and ran from him the next, who declared with finality that their get together wasn't a date, and with her next breath asked her to meet with her again. He didn't understand her. Maybe his confusion was part of the con, a kind of distraction.

2:57 a.m. He started to get worried. What if she'd decided to walk again? Summer Bay had always been quiet, peaceful place, but in this town it was no longer safe for any woman to be out alone at night.

Barry leaned back against the red vinyl seat, trying to relax. The customers at the diner were much the same as the night before; different faces, same eccentric types. Only one face was already the same: that of the big tattooed guy, Tank.

Barry waited for as long as he could before glancing at his watch again: 3:15. She wasn't coming. He decided to drain the last of his coffee and decided to go looking for her. At the very least he could check the side of the road between the diner and the carnival site. He leaned forward, suddenly and truly concerned. She could've sprained her ankle, or been hit by a car...

You've been stood up. Barry calmed himself and slid down in his seat. He'd never waited an hour for a woman before, not even Kerry. But then, he'd never known a woman like Irene. No woman had ever looked at him like she did, smiled at him like nothing else mattered but the moment they lived in. Foolish thoughts. He couldn't expect anything of her. In a few days the carnival would move on to the next town, and Irene would look into another mans eyes and touch his soul. And probably his wallet, as well.

The waitress poured another cup of coffee without asking if he wanted it. "You waiting for that girl that was here last night?" she asked in her normal, toneless voice.

Barry nodded.

"Doesn't she work in that carnival down the road?"

"Yes, she does." Barry looked up at the waitress, a tall woman with brown over permed hair and dark red lipstick. Some of that lipstick had somehow ended up on her teeth. Leah hadn't said two words to him last night, and he'd gotten the same treatment so far this evening. Being a pariah did have its advantages.

"Lonnie McGrath was in here before you showed up."

Barry didn't even try and hide his disgust.

"He said a woman got attacked tonight, one of the carnies." Leah's eyes glittered as she indulged in her favourite past time: gossip. "Somebody came at her with a knife right their on the fairgrounds, and they figure it was the same guy that... you know." She looked at him over with a healthy dose of curiosity and scepticism, wondering what everyone else wondered, speculating and coming to her own conclusion. "If you hear any details let me know."

At that moment Barry didn't care what Leah thought, didn't care what anyone thought. "She's dead?" The question was a whisper, a hesitantly spoken nightmare. He should've known, dammit, he should've known.

It took him a moment to realise that Leah was shaking her head. "No, she fought him off, but he got clean away. Lonnie said Peter Baker was going to - "

"Why didn't you say something sooner?" Barry snapped, throwing a couple of dollars on the table.

Leah shrugged her broad shoulders. "I didn't know the girl you were with last night was a carny, Tank just mentioned it a minute ago." She nodded her head to the tattooed man.

He practically pushed Leah aside as he left the booth. There was gnawing in his gut, a blinding, an aching light behind his eyes. He knew it was her. He knew that somehow Irene had become a victim of the man who was making a career of carving up the women in Barry Hyde's life.

[Frankie]

Great update penny...at last... ....poor Barry thought he had been stood up....bless...and LONNIE McGrath? love that .

I am really intrigued now...who would want to carve up the women in Barry's life?

You had better update this soon

[Gypsy & Will Fan]

Chapter Nine.

Irene took a deep breath to calm herself, as she told her story for the tenth time. The telling hadn't changed, it was just delivered in a voice steadier than it had been when she'd first leaned against the trailer and told a deputy what had happened.

Her hair was matted to her head, and she sat before Peter Baker wearing a costume ripped at the shoulder and covered with tiny bits of grass and dirt that reminded her of her brief struggle. She didn't want to be reminded. All she wanted to do was go back to the trailer, make a pot of coffee, take a long shower, and try to forget the man that had attacked and tried to kill her.

She might as well forget about Barry, while she was at it. The clock on the wall behind the sheriff's desk told her it was nearly three thirty. Surely he'd gone home by now, dismissing her as a flake who couldn't make up her mind.

A man like Barry wouldn't take kindly to being stood up. She could probably find him and explain why she hadn't shown up at The Diner - but she wouldn't. No, her problem with Barry Hyde had taken care of itself. Just as well.

For a moment she thought she'd conjured up a vision of Barry just by thinking about him, but she realised in a heart beat that he was all too real. He pushed his way past a couple of deputies and stopped in the doorway to the sheriff's office, staring at her as if Peter and his deputies didn't exist, as if there was no one else.

"Are you hurt?" he asked gruffly.

Irene shook her head, and Barry closed his eyes for a moment. He leaned against the doorjamb and relaxed; it looked as if the tension had left his body all at once.

"Well, isn't this interesting?" Peter said, placing his forearms on the littered desk and pushing his face forward. The overhead light shone down on a bald head, and Irene had an inappropriate stray thought, that skin shouldn't be so shiny.

"Miss Roberts." He addressed her. - as he had all night - with the kind of tone a patient man might use with a child. "Are you aquainted with Mr. Hyde?"

"Yes."

"Could it have been Mr. Hyde that attacked you tonight?"

"No!" She answered fervently, coming out of her chair.

Peter Baker wore a satisfied smile, and he leaned back with his hands linked together behind his bald head. "What makes you so certain?"

"For one thing," Irene snapped, "the man who jumped me was much heavier than Barry."

"How much heavier?"

She didn't know - she only knew the man weighed a ton... suffocating her, smashing her into the ground. "I'm not sure. A bit."

"How much is 'a bit,' Miss Roberts? Ten pounds? Twenty? Fifty?" He asked the questions, relentlessly.

"I don't know!" Irene barked, her normally husky voice growing rough. "And besides that, the creep was surprised to find that I was wearing a wig. Barry knows that I wear a wig when I'm working."

"Oh, he does, does he? How does he know that?"

Suddenly Irene decided that she disliked the smug Peter. She placed her hands on his desk, pushing aside a short stack of forms, and leaned forward. She was tired, she was dirty, and the only man she'd cared about in five years waited in the doorway, watching intently as she stood over Peter's desk with smudged make up and matted hair and a neon yellow bandage sporting the image of a prancing duck on her throat.

"We had a date, Peter," she said softly. "We had coffee."

"And pie," Barry muttered.

She looked over her shoulder to see that the fear had faded from his eyes. He watching a trace of wry amusement on his face.

"Don't make me out to be cheap," he added.

"And pie," Irene added unneccesarily as she returned her attention to Peter. "I'll swear on a stack of Bibles, if you'd like, that it was not Barry who attacked me. I don't know who it was. Finding that out is your job, not mine."

Peter looked from her to Barry and back again. Irene didn't like the calculating gleam in the older man's eyes. He drawled lazily, and slumped his shoulders now and again, but he was no slouch. He saw everything.

"Well," he finally drawled, "I want to put you up in a hotel so I can keep a close eye on you, for the time being."

"Like hell you will. I'm going back to my trailer, and I don't want to talk about this anymore." She didn't want to talk about it or even think about it. After five years of practise, she was darn good at ignoring the facts. Irene Roberts was the queen of denial.

"If you refuse to co-oporate - " Peter stood and took a deep breath. "Well, I'll just be forced to make a visit to that carnival. I seem to recall that there were several safety violations. Small things, mostly, but I can't overlook infractions. And those racet games, well, they just - "

"We'll move on to the next town," Irene interrupted, suddenly afraid that Peter might decided to run a background check on on her if she didn't cooperate, if he didn't like the answers she gave.

"I have friends in the next town," Peter countered. "And in the next, and in the next." His countenance was deadly serious. "This man has killed three women in the past eight months. This is my county, Miss Roberts, my home - and I will catch him. You know what they call him?" He stared her down. "The newspapers call him the Summer Bay Ripper. Much as I dislike sensationalism, Ripper is a fitting name, Miss Roberts."

He was trying to scare her. He succeeded.

"He's coming back for you," he added, "and I aim to be there when that happens."

Behind her, Barry cursed under his breath.

Newspapers. A new fear gripped her. This was a sensational story. What if someone put her picture in the newspaper? What if a wire service picked the story up and her picture went out in the papers all over the country? She shivered. "You can't be sure it's the same man..." Irene finished her protest weakly. Peter's arguement had taken the wind out of her sails. The creep - the Ripper - had said he'd be back. What if he didn't stop when the carnival moved on? Irene Roberts knew how to disappear, but Lady Roberta would be easy to find.

"Its the same man," Peter Baker said. "I know it here," With two fingers he tapped the massive chest above his heart. "And here ," he pointed to his bald head. "I can't tell you why I know this to be fact - not right now - but Miss Roberts your life is at serious risk. A hotel for a few days, thats all I ask."

"All right," Irene said tiredly, "Can I pick up some things from my trailer?"

"I'll send a deputy to fetch your stuff for you." Peter stood and looked over Irene's shoulder to Barry "Where were you tonight at midnight? 12:15?"

Barry hesitated before he answered. "Home."

Peter nodded knowingly. "Alone, I reckon."

"Yes."

"That's a shame, Hyde." He shook his head slowly. "You ought to get out more. Socialize. Why, every time I ask you where you've been and who you've been with, the answer's always the same. 'Home. Alone.'"

The tension in the room had climbed the moment Peter Baker started speaking directly to Barry, and Irene couldn't stand it anymore. She turned from Peter and walked right into Barry's arms. It was a move made without thought. Instinctive.She needed the comfort of another humans heartbeat, and Barry was her only ally. She needed him.

Dammit, she wasn't supposed to need anyone. For years she'd embraced her solitude, her independence, her separation from the rest of the world. Don't get involved, and you won't get hurt. Don't rely on anyone and you won't be disappointed. How could one man change that so quickly? Right now she didn't want to ask questions she couldn't answer. Barry closed his arms against her protectively, and she buried her head against his chest. He was firm and warm and real, and she could spend all night right here.

"So now it's a date," he whispered with a touch of humor, his mouth near her ear - and for a moment she and Barry were all alone, and the night, the horror, faded to nothing. She closed her eyes and drank in the sensations of having Barry so close. His scent, his warmth, his strength, - she absorbed it all. This was dangerous, but right now it was the only comfort she knew, the only comfort she wanted.

"Miss Roberts?"

Irene lifted her head and glanced at Peter, but that was her only move. She wasn't yet ready to release Barry, wasn't nearly ready to step from the shelter of his arms. Heaven help her, would she ever be ready?

Peter Baker waited until she looked directly at him before he spoke again. "Be very careful, Miss Roberts."