LITMIR.BIZ

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it in silence, and in private. Just because I’m not clawing your eyes out at the moment, Reaper, don’t assume I’m docile. It could be a dangerous mistake.”

      He sighed, and she felt his eyes on her for a long moment. She’d never raised her voice, nor infused it with any particular inflection. She’d spoken to him matter-of-factly, in the same monotone that she’d been using for days now, when she spoke at all.

      She heard him sigh as he settled down beside her to rest. And then, just before she fell asleep, he whispered, “I’d give a lot to have you trying to claw my eyes out. Better than this damn zombie you’ve become.”

      “Fuck you, Reaper.”

      “That would be even better.” She heard him flip open his cell phone, heard the tones as he dialed a number. Then she heard the recorded voice of Topaz’s voice-mail message.

      Reaper muttered, “She must not be near her phone,” and sighed. “Topaz, it’s Reaper. Just checking in. Briar and I have headed north. We’re just past Virginia Beach at the moment. I think we lost whoever was on our tails in Savannah. You can reach me at this number. I’ll keep it turned on and monitor the voice mail. I hope you’re all right. Call if you need me.”

      Briar breathed slowly, deeply, her body growing heavy with the lethargy brought on by the approaching dawn. “Pretty fond of the princess, aren’t you?”

      “Jealous?” he asked.

      She made a choking sound, then rolled away from him and went to sleep.

      When Jack arrived just after sundown, as she could have predicted he would, Topaz was sitting on the plush sofa with the file folders spread out around her, the DVD of her mother’s life flashing across the television screen in front of her, and her own notebook open beside her.

      He didn’t bother knocking. Nor did he need to; she’d felt his approach long before he picked the locks with his mind and walked in as if he owned the place.

      “Miss me?” he asked.

      “Like a toothache.” She didn’t bother looking up to speak to him. “You know, you’re very good at that, Jack.”

      He crossed the room toward her. “You’re going to have to be more specific, hon. I’m good at so many things.”

      “Unlocking doors without a key.”

      He shrugged. “Psychokinesis. Any vampire can move things by mental manipulation.”

      “Yes, but I’ve seen very few who could open a lock in less than two seconds. It normally takes a bit more concentration.”

      He plunked himself onto the far end of the sofa, carelessly enough to appear casual but managing not to disturb a single sheet of her research in the process. “That should show you that I have a very strong will and am a very powerful vampire.”

      “What it shows me is that you’re a crook through and through. That your strongest skill is breaking and entering really says it all, doesn’t it?”

      “Oh, Topaz, that is far from my strongest skill. As you well remember.”

      She just barely bit her lip in time to keep from smiling. And even then, she couldn’t keep the delicious tingle of awareness from slithering up her spine. She remembered very well. Too well.

      “So have you learned anything new?”

      She sighed, raising her head to look him in the eye. Big mistake. When their eyes met, it was always a mistake. How a man could be so phony, so unable to feel true emotions, and yet look at her like that—well, it defied explanation. “I really don’t want your help with this, Jack.”

      “Yes, you do. And I’m not leaving. This is the perfect way to kill time until Reaper’s ready to reconstitute the gang and make another try at Gregor. At which time I’ll get all your money back to you—if you let me stick around now.”

      “Oh, now there are conditions? I thought you promised to give me back my money either way, Jack. What happened to that?”

      “You’re right. How about if I add interest?”

      “Twenty-five percent of the total, every month until you give it back.”

      “Are you a vampire or a loan shark?”

      This time she let herself smile.

      Jack sighed. “Ten percent of the half I still owe you, for every month until I give it back.”

      “Twenty.”

      He reached out a hand, stroked her hair where it had fallen forward over one cheek, tucking it back behind her ear, and whispered, “Fifteen,” as if he were whispering words of love. Sensation sizzled through her, and she knew he knew it, even as she pulled back from his touch.

      “I’ll take the ten if you’ll promise to keep your hands off me for the duration.”

      “I’ll give you the twenty-five if you won’t make me promise that.”

      They stared at each other for a long electric moment.

      “I’ll compromise,” he said at last. “Fifteen percent and I won’t touch you until you ask me to.”

      “Like that’s gonna hap—”

      “I’m not finished.”

      She clamped her lips and waited.

      “I won’t touch you until you ask me to. But you have to feel free to touch me any time you want. In any way you want to. Fully secure in the knowledge that I won’t touch you back unless you want me to.”

      She frowned as she let the images of what he was suggesting burn through her mind. Then she said, “You don’t have the willpower.”

      “Try me.”

      She thought about leaning closer, maybe trailing her lips over his neck, just to prove her point. Because she had no doubt that he would wrap his arms around her, flip her onto her back on the sofa and mount her within about five seconds.

      Or maybe it wasn’t his reactions she didn’t trust. Maybe it was her own.

      “Chicken,” he whispered. “Ten percent, then. Take it or leave it.”

      “And if I leave it?”

      “I’ll stay and help you anyway, return your money with no interest at all—as soon as I can lay my hands on it, that is—and touch you whenever the urge strikes me—knowing damn well you want it as much as I do.”

      She drew a breath and sighed. “Fifteen percent, your conditions.” She held out a hand for a shake. “Deal?”

      “Deal.” He held his hand out, too, but he didn’t take hers. He just waited. She finally closed her hand around his to seal the bargain, and when she took her hand away, she skimmed her fingertips over his palm and thought she felt him shiver.

      Sighing, Jack managed to keep his control. But he was wondering, even before the touch of her hand on his had faded, what he’d gone and promised. The impossible, probably. Was he testing her—or himself?

      Time for a new subject. “So you’ve read up on the men in your mother’s life?”

      “Yeah.” She gathered her papers, shuffling through to the photos, and laid them out one by one. “The police seem to have focused on the men she was rumored to have been sleeping with in the year prior to her death.”

      “Including your father?” he asked.

      She lowered her eyes, shielding them. “I don’t know which of them is my father. There were a couple whose blood types made it possible, but there was no DNA testing back then, so the courts awarded me to the one they felt was most likely to provide a stable home.” She picked out a five-by-seven black-and-white photo of the man who’d raised her, taken back in his younger days. “Thomas Martin, businessman.”

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