LITMIR.BIZ

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you have on your payroll?” Vonner asked.

      “Oh, I’m glad you’re still here,” Dr. Rosenthal said as he rushed back into the room. “Thank you for waiting for me.”

      The gray-haired coroner’s admiration and awe physically washed over Trent, drawing a smile from him even as Vonner’s disgust and distrust pummeled him from the other side of the room. But he experienced none of Alaina’s emotions. He could only feel her, like a touch on his skin, a kiss on his lips….

      Dr. Rosenthal held out a book and a pen to Trent. “Do you mind signing my copy for me?”

      Trent steadied his hand as he reached for the book, the same edition that had been spattered with blood at the crime scene. Even though this cover was clean, he could see the blood again on his hand.

      How was he involved in all of this? It was more than mere coincidence. He knew this. And so did she.

      Vonner snorted and turned on his heel, leaving the room. Trent noted his exit, but Alaina didn’t so much as glance at her partner. Instead, she stared at him, as if trying to figure out who he was or where she’d seen him before.

      An image chased through Trent’s mind. The curve of a woman’s throat as she arched her neck. Her hands, with slender, red-tipped fingers, cupping and caressing her own breasts as she moved her hips, rocking back and forth on his pulsing erection. Then her cry of pleasure as she came. The woman had red hair and green eyes; she looked nothing like Alaina. But to him, she felt the same.

      “Mr. Baines,” the coroner said, glancing from him to Agent Paulsen. Confusion wrinkled his brow. “Do you mind autographing …?”

      “Not at all,” Trent assured him, flipping through until he came to the title page. Then he scrawled the doctor’s name, some platitude and his own, although sometimes he didn’t feel as if his name was really his. Even though he hadn’t taken a pen name, Trent Baines felt like an alias; he felt as if he was really someone else.

      “So, Dr. Rosenthal,” Alaina said, drawing the coroner’s attention away from him, “when will you have the autopsy report ready?”

      “I need more time,” Dr. Rosenthal said, his face flushing with color.

      “How long?” Alaina asked sharply, her impatience with the doctor’s lack of professionalism obvious.

      “I can’t tell you how long it will take me,” the doctor said. “It’s getting late….”

      “How long has she been dead?” she clarified.

      “I did a liver temp. Twenty-four hours.”

      She glanced at Trent. No doubt he was back on her suspect list. Then she turned to the doctor again and advised, “Let me know as soon as you finish the autopsy. And don’t call me again if you don’t have any information for me.”

      Dr. Rosenthal sputtered, “B-but I didn’t—”

      “I called you,” Trent admitted, irritation gripping him that the male agent had answered her phone.

      “Why?” she asked.

      “Because I can tell you what happened to her.”

      She said nothing, only turned that unfathomable stare on him again.

      He continued, anyway. “She was raped, then strangled until she nearly blacked out.”

      Dr. Rosenthal gestured toward the victim’s throat. “There is bruising around her neck that supports that.”

      “And then she was stabbed,” he said with a twinge in his chest as he relived the woman’s pain. He drew in a ragged breath before finishing his assessment, “And her heart removed from her chest.”

      The doctor did not need to point out the gaping hole and missing organ in the mutilated corpse. Dr. Rosenthal only added, “His M.O. is just like that of the protagonist in your books, just like the Thief of Hearts.”

      “Exactly like the Thief of Hearts,” Alaina agreed, her eyes unblinking as she studied Trent.

      Did she expect a confession?

       Chapter 4

      “I want to talk to you,” Alaina said from the shadows of the dimly lit corridor. She’d waited for Trent outside the morgue, unwilling to watch the coroner continue to fawn over the author. And she’d been unable to stand beside the body of the red-haired woman who’d died such a violent death—the same death Alaina was certain she had experienced.

      Trent grinned as if not a bit surprised to find her in the hall, waiting for him. Then he reminded her, “I warned you that you wouldn’t be able to stay away from me.”

      Heat flushed her skin as she remembered what he’d told her when she’d left him that morning. Then another memory flashed through her mind: a thumb stroking across her bottom lip, back and forth. A hungry mouth sliding down her throat, nibbling along her collarbone before skimming over the slope of her breast to the nipple that peaked, begging for attention. His attention.

      She swallowed hard, choking down the desire that overwhelmed her. “I only want to talk to you.”

      His naughty, sexy grin widened as he stepped closer to her, trapping her against the wall. “Why waste our time talking?” he asked, his voice a seductive purr. “I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear.”

      “What’s that?” She leaned her head back, away from the temptation of his lips. “What do I want to hear?”

      “That I’m the killer.”

      “If only it were that easy …” She sighed, bone-deep weary from a day that had started with her and Vonner on the road at dawn, driving up to Trent Baines’s remote castle in the Upper Peninsula. Now, night had fallen and she was back where she’d started in Detroit … only with Trent Baines. Just as he’d said, she couldn’t stay away from him.

      The image flashed through her mind again—lips tugging at her nipple, a tongue flicking across the tip, hands caressing her back, then along her sides to the curve of her hips. She arched and parted her legs, silently begging for him to take her….

      But he pulled back.

      Trent stepped away from her and asked, “Killers don’t spontaneously confess like on television?” His green eyes sparkled with feigned innocence.

      “No one who’d actually committed a crime ever spontaneously confessed to me.” She crossed her arms across her chest. It was cold in the hall, but her skin was hot, flushed with desire for the man in her mind.

      And maybe the one in the hall …

      “Innocent people confess?” he asked.

      “Innocent? I don’t know how innocent they are when they interfere with an investigation just to get attention. Screwed up, yeah.” But then, so was she, to be attracted to a man who might be a killer.

      He lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug. “Well, I’m not going to confess either my guilt or innocence. You’re wasting your time talking to me.”

      “And you’re wasting your time going to the crime scene, visiting the morgue.” Tension pounded at her temples and knotted the muscles in her neck and shoulders. “What are you doing here in the middle of my investigation?”

      “I got clearance.”

      “But why would you ask for it? Why would you want to go to a crime scene or visit the morgue?” She had to know. “Is this what you do? Is this how you research your novels?”

      “That’s what the director thinks,” he admitted with a wink. “But I’m really not one to do much research.”

      “Then I’ll ask you again. What are you doing here?” Trying to cover up evidence that might have implicated him? Sure, the crime scene had already been processed, the evidence collected,

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