Hand in hand, Brenda and I jogged to catch up with her.

I'd never been in a recovery room before, never seen anyone fresh out of surgery. Swathed in a sea of white sheets, Richard looked ghastly, his skin tinged an odd green. Startled, I paused. Brenda's grip on my hand tightened-she pulled me closer to the gurney. A cardiac monitor beeped in rhythm with his heart. IV bags hung overhead.

My stomach tightened. This was me, four weeks before.

As though sensing our approach, a groggy Richard opened his eyes.

"My two favorite people," he rasped. We both reached for his hand. He captured one or two fingers from each of us.

"How do you feel?" Brenda whispered.

"Horrible."

"You'll be okay," I said, trying to keep my voice from cracking. "The shoe's on the other foot. When you get home, I can bully you around."

"Don't even think about it."

My throat tightened. Sorrow and remorse threatened to choke me. "Why'd you do it, Rich? Why'd you shove me aside and make yourself a target?"

He squeezed my fingers ever so slightly. "You're my kid brother . . . I couldn't let her hurt you." His eyes closed and he was asleep.

Brenda and I hung around the hospital for another three hours until Richard was taken to his room-the best in the hospital-and sleeping peacefully.

We took the elevator downstairs, exited, and walked straight into a mob of reporters with video and still cameras.

"Give us a quote!"

"What's your relationship with Sharon Walker?"

"No comment," I said, pushing Brenda through the crowd.

I thought we'd successfully left them behind when a voice called out, "Jeff Resnick!"

I turned: Sam Nielsen, his eyes bright with anticipation, waited.

Though I might regret it, I made my decision. "Give me an hour to shower and eat, Sam. I'll call you at your office."

"Exclusive," he demanded.

"Yeah." I turned, took Brenda's arm, and guided her away.

The clouds were gone, the crescent moon a slash of pure white light in the cold, dark sky. We pulled up our collars against the cold and, hand-in-hand, headed for Richard's car.

Read on for more about the author and her books, plus a SNEAK PREVIEW of DEAD IN RED, the second Jeff Resnick Mystery.

Chapter 1 of Jeff Resnick's second adventure.

DEAD IN RED.

by L.L. Bartlett My footsteps echoed on the pavement that cold night in early March. Huddled in my old bomber jacket, I dodged the mini skating rinks that had once been puddles on the cracked pavement. Preoccupied. By the creepy thing I'd experienced only minutes earlier. By thoughts of a new job. Of the fifty bucks I'd just won playing pool at the little watering hole near my apartment. Five months of unemployment had cleaned me out. I was on a roll and determined not to let anything spoil it.

Then two imposing figures stepped out of the darkness, demanded money. I gave them what I had. It wasn't enough. One of them grabbed me, decided to teach me a lesson.

Not if I could help it. I yanked my arm back, kicked one of them in the balls-and paid for it.

Backlit by a streetlamp, I saw the baseball bat come at me, slam into my forearm, delivering a compound fracture that sent skyrockets of pain to obliterate my senses.

Couldn't think, too stunned to move as the bat slammed into my shoulder, knocking me to my knees.

The bat came at me from the left, crashed into my temple, sent me sprawling. My vision doubled as I raised my head and the bat walloped me again.

"My cousin's dead."

The voice brought me out of my reverie, or rather the nightmare memory that claimed me at inopportune moments.

Tom Link's bottom lip quivered and he looked away. Heavyset, with a barroom bouncer's countenance, I hadn't expected him to reveal any trace of what I was sure he would call weakness.

My fingers tightened around the cold pilsner glass as something flashed through my mind's eyes: The image of a sparkling red, woman's high-heeled shoe.

I tilted the glass to my lips to take a gulp of beer. Bursts of insight-if that's what they are-bring with them a certain creep factor, something I doubted I'd ever get used to.

I concentrated on breathing evenly as I sipped my beer and waited for Tom to continue. It isn't often a bartender confides to a customer. I know. Years before I'd spent time on that side of the counter, listening to the stories of lonely men-and women-who had no other confidants.

Tom wasn't just a bartender at the little neighborhood sports bar that teetered on the verge of going under-he was also the owner of The Whole Nine Yards. I'd been patronizing the unassuming place for the past couple of months, getting the feel of it, a part of me hoping I could one day be a part of it.

I'd heard about but hadn't known the murdered man-Walt Kaplan. He'd opened the bar early in the day, whereas I'd never been there before eight p.m.

"How can I help?" I asked.

Tom's gaze shifted to take in a group of regulars crowded around the large-screen TV bolted to the wall, before turning back to me. "You said you used to be an investigator-"

"Before I got my head caved in," I said, referring to the mugging I'd suffered some three months before. I'd read about Walt's murder in the paper, but Tom probably knew more about it than the news had reported. "What happened?"

Lips pursed, Tom ran a damp linen cloth over the old scarred oak bar. "Walt worked here part-time. He left here on Saturday afternoon and never came back." His worried brown eyes met mine. "Your name's Resnick. We're landsman, Jeff. Would you be willing to look into it? I'll pay you."

We weren't "landsman." I was a lapsed Catholic, not Jewish, but now wasn't the time to dispute that. Besides, the idea intrigued me. I'd been hanging out at the little neighborhood tavern with the idea of eventually asking Tom for a part-time job, and now he was offering an employment opportunity far different than what I'd anticipated.

"What about the cops? Don't you trust them?"

"I've been robbed four times in the last twelve years. Did they ever catch the guys? No."

Part of me-the smart part-knew if I accepted his offer I'd be sorry. Another part of me wanted to jump at the chance to feel useful again. I tried to keep my eagerness in check. "Tell me more about Walt."

Tom's jowls sagged. "You woulda liked him. He was a lot like you."

My stomach twisted. "How so?"

A small smile twitched Tom's mouth. "Quiet. A loner. He wasn't one to talk about himself. You've been coming here for a couple months now and I know your name and what you used to do before your accident, but that's all."

He had me pegged there. Spilling my guts to strangers wasn't in my program. At one time I'd been a top insurance investigator, but office politics weren't my forte. I screwed myself one time too many and ended up on the unemployment line. On the eve of starting a new job, I'd been mugged by a couple of street thugs. The resulting brain injury had changed my life forever.

"The newspaper said Walt was found by the Old Red Mill. That he was stabbed and had apparently been robbed."

Tom nodded. "His wallet was missing. So was a big diamond ring he always wore. His father gave it to him when he graduated from high school. I went to the mill. Nothin' much to see but some crime tape." His gaze met mine, hardened. "But you'll get more than I did."

Get more? The words made my insides freeze. How did he know? I could count on one hand the people who knew I was-that I could . . .

Cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck. The word "psychic" didn't really apply to me. Since the mugging, I'd been able to sense strong emotions. Not from everyone I met-but sometimes from those who were no longer alive. Sometimes I just knew things-but not always. It was pretty much haphazard and damned disconcerting when it happened. And often these feelings and knowledge brought on migraines that so far drugs hadn't been able to quell.

Tom's gaze bore into mine.

"Get more?" I prompted, afraid to hear his answer.

"Being a trained investigator, I mean."

I heaved a mental sigh of relief. "Yeah."

"When can you start?"

As a teenager I'd ridden my ten-speed all around Snyder and Williamsville, and could still recall some of my old routes. The area behind the Old Red Mill had always been weedy, with a steep embankment that loomed near a rushing stream. No way would I risk my neck to take a look in the dark. "Tomorrow morning."

Tom nodded. "It wouldn't hurt for the regulars to get to know you. Dave"-he indicated the other bartender drawing a beer at the brass taps across the way-"doesn't want Walt's early shift. You up to working here at the bar three or four afternoons a week?"

I looked at my reflection in the mirrored backbar. My hair had grown back from where some ER nurse had shaved it, but the shadows under my eyes and the gaunt look and sickly pallor were taking a lot longer to fade. I'd been living with my physician brother for the past three months. While I was grateful he'd rescued me, allowing me to recover at his home, I was tired of the enforced inactivity he'd insisted upon. The idea of actually having something to do and somewhere to go appealed to me.

"I'd like to try."

"Okay. Show up here about eleven tomorrow and I'll give you a run down on how we operate." He turned, took a cracked ballpoint out of a jar and grabbed a clean paper napkin, on which he scribbled a few lines. "This is what you have to do. I don't need workers' comp or the IRS breathing down my neck."

My hand trembled as I reached for the napkin. Who would have thought that a part-time job in a neighborhood bar would make me so nervous? A warm river of relief flooded through me as I read the short list. "I can do this. Thanks, Tom."

"A bartender?" My half brother, Richard Alpert, looked up from his morning coffee, his expression skeptical. His significant other, Brenda Stanley, lowered a section of newspaper to peer at me. The three of us sat at the maple kitchen table in the home Richard's grandparents had built decades before in Buffalo's tony suburb of Amherst, the egg-stained breakfast dishes still sitting before us.

"I need a job."

"Okay, but why a bartender?" Richard asked.

I'd been rehearsing my answer for an hour. Now to make it sound convincing.

"I've done it before. It's pretty much a no-brainer, which is something I can handle right now."

Richard scowled, studied my face. Being twelve years older than me, he's felt the need to look after me since the day our mother died some twenty-one years earlier. Back then I was an orphaned kid of fourteen and he'd been an intern with generations of old money behind him. "Have you thought about the consequences of this kind of social interaction?" he asked.

I frowned. Consequences?

"Touching peoples' glasses, taking their money. What if you get vibes about them? Stuff you don't want to know."

I knew what he was getting at. Truth was, I hadn't thought about that aspect of the job, although I had been counting on the somewhat erratic empathic ability I'd developed after the mugging to help me look into Walt Kaplan's death. I couldn't read everyone I encountered-Richard was a prime example. We were brothers-okay, only half brothers-but he was a total blank to me, yet I could often read Brenda like an open book.

I met his gaze, didn't back down. "I guess I'll have to deal with it."

He nodded, still scrutinizing my face. "And what's the rest of it?"

"Rest of it?"

"Whole Nine Yards-isn't that where the bartender who was murdered last week worked?"

My half-filled coffee mug called for my attention. "Uh. Yeah. I think so."

"You know so."

"Okay, I'm taking his job."

"And . . . ?"

Talk about relentless. "And the owner asked me to look into things. Nothing official. The guy was his cousin."

Richard's mug thunked onto the table. "Jeff, don't get involved."

"I'm not."

Richard's gaze hardened. "Yes, you are. The question is why?"

Brenda folded the newspaper, all her attention now focused on me, too.

How much of a shit did it make me to admit I wanted the dead man's job? And that I was willing to endure a certain amount of unpleasantness to get it probably said even more. It's just as well that Richard's MD wasn't in psychiatry, not that I was about to admit any of this to him.

"Okay, as you won't answer that question, then when do you start?"

"Today. Afternoon shift."

He raised an eyebrow.

"You'd better tell me if you'll be late for dinner-not that you eat enough to keep a sparrow alive," Brenda said.

"How long a shift will you work?" Richard asked.

"I didn't ask."

His other eyebrow went up. "How much will you make an hour?"