LITMIR.BIZ

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I…I can’t.”

      Sighing, she looked at Jack. “Make him tell me, Jack.”

      Nodding, Jack said, “I was getting hungry anyway.” Then he bared his fangs and jerked the man out of bed by the collar of his pajamas. Jack held him a foot above the floor.

      The man’s scream was pathetic and loud.

      Jack gripped Les’s chin and tipped his head back, moving closer to his throat.

      “Don’t! Don’t. I’ll tell you! It was Argent.”

      Topaz blinked in shock. “Kimber Argent? The woman who owns Avalon?”

      “No. Her husband, Albert. He recognized you as soon as he saw you.”

      “We never met face-to-face,” she said.

      “He’s right next door in the apartment. Besides, he has cameras all over that place. He feeds me stories all the time. Makes more money for me than any other source. Hell, that villa of his is bugged till hell won’t have it. There’s video surveillance, too, but Argent says it’s malfunctioning or something. Celebrities stay there all the time, and I get a ton of gossip on them from him.”

      Topaz muttered, “I should have guessed. So who broke in there tonight? Was it you, looking for more dirt?”

      “Someone broke in?” he asked, wide-eyed.

      “Yes, someone broke in. Was it you?” she repeated, growing impatient.

      “No!” He swung his gaze from her to Jack and back again, afraid, she thought, that they didn’t believe him. “I wouldn’t need to break in, Argent would let me in if I asked him. But I haven’t asked. And I won’t.” He was clearly terrified. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were—whatever the hell you are. I’ll fix it. I’ll print a retraction, say it was all a mistake.”

      “I’m afraid the damage has been done, Mr. Adams,” Jack said. He dropped the man back onto the bed. “You’ll sleep now. You’ll remember this as a bad dream, nothing more. And you won’t run any more stories about Tanya DuFrane, no matter how tempting those stories might be.”

      “I won’t. I promise. I—”

      “Sleep.” Jack said the word firmly, with a piercing gaze, and the man sank back onto his pillows. His eyes fell closed. “It was a bad dream,” Jack whispered, leaning closer. “It was nothing but a nightmare. We were never here.”

      Topaz touched his arm. “You could have used that same technique to get him to talk in the first place, you know.”

      “Of course I know. But scaring the hell out of him was much more fun. Besides, he had it coming. Bottom-feeding slug.”

      She didn’t entirely disagree with him, she thought as they walked out of the man’s house.

      “Where are you taking me?” she asked as Jack drove through the rapidly fading night. “This isn’t the way back to Avalon Mansion.”

      “It’s almost dawn. Surely you don’t want to spend the day there.”

      “That was the plan.”

      He sent her a look of disbelief. “We’re completely defenseless when we sleep. You have no idea who broke in there, and they could come back.”

      “What for? They already searched the place and took what they wanted.”

      Jack drew a breath. “Unless what they wanted was you.”

      “Don’t be melodramatic.”

      “I’m not. Topaz, consider what you’re doing here. You’re trying to unmask a killer, a person who has spent the past thirty-six years believing he got away with murder. You don’t think that tabloid story made him nervous? You don’t think he’s still capable of killing to protect himself?”

      She didn’t answer, only lowered her head.

      “You know I’m right,” Jack insisted.

      “Maybe.” She sighed. “So where are you taking me, then?”

      “My place. It’s not much, but it’ll have to do. We’ll have time tomorrow night to make alternate arrangements. Right after I have a conversation with Mr. Argent.”

      “All right.”

      She didn’t think he required her consent at this point, but she gave it. It was odd how it felt almost as if he were trying to protect her. It would be easy to believe that—too easy. So she refused. There had to be something in this for Jack. In the end, there always was.

      At least she knew for sure now that he hadn’t been the one selling information on her to the tabloids.

      Jack pulled the car into an empty parking area off the side of the road. They got out, and he locked it up, pocketed the keys and said, “This way.”

      “Oh, Lord. We’re not sleeping in the woods, are we? You didn’t find a cave or a hollow tree or something equally putrid, did you?”

      He looked at her briefly and kept on walking, up a hill, across a tree-dotted field, into the woods and then out of them again. The sky was beginning to fade to a lighter shade of gray. Sunrise wasn’t far off.

      Then she saw the cemetery and stopped in her tracks. He kept right on walking through, right up to the biggest crypt in the entire place. It was huge, ornate, made of gray stone, and came complete with a gargoyle guarding its roof.

      “You have got to be kidding me.”

      “Do I?” He opened the heavy door and looked back at her. “It’s quite cozy inside. Come on now, you don’t have time to be fussy.”

      “I’m not being fussy, but for God’s sake, Jack, could you have come up with anything more clichéd?”

      “Nope. I tried, but this was the best I could do. Come on. We don’t have all day. Or all night.”

      Shaking her head in disgust, she walked inside. He closed the door behind her, but it didn’t matter; she could see perfectly well in the darkness. There were blankets and pillows spread over a bier, a lantern on the floor, and his backpack leaning in one corner alongside a cooler with the Red Cross’s logo on the front.

      “Sustenance?” she asked, nodding at it.

      “Help yourself. Unless…well, if you want you could, um…” He tipped his head back a bit and ran his forefinger over his jugular. “Eat me.”

      “In your dreams, Jack.”

      “Sometimes, yes.”

      She punched him in the shoulder and moved toward the cooler to take what she needed from inside. “Any bodies in here?” she asked.

      “Nothing recent. I think the newest has been here fifty years.”

      “That’s a relief, at least. No decomposing corpses to sleep with.” She finished the blood and returned the empty plastic bag to the cooler, to be disposed of later. Then she stretched her arms over her head as the lethargy began to creep in. She reached for a blanket, tugged it from the bier.

      Jack gripped the corner and pulled it from her hands. “It’s safe to sleep with me, Topaz. We’ll both be dead to the world in a few minutes. There’s no time for me to seduce you, even if I was planning to break our deal—which I’m not, by the way.”

      “So sue me for not trusting you.”

      “You’re not fooling either of us. It’s yourself you don’t trust.”

      “Oh, please, you’re not all that hard to resist.” She let go of the blanket, and then, to prove her point, she peeled off her clothes, stripping down to her bra and matching panties, and climbed into the makeshift bed. It was surprisingly soft, and she realized he’d equipped it with an air mattress. “Nice touch.”

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