"There aren"t any more recent ones."
"But you haven"t changed...except-"
"I"m paler, I know. I am not, Mr. Adams, pink. Now, will you tell me what I need to know?"
He shook his head. "No. 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. h.e.l.l, that villa of his is bugged till h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d"s sake, Jack, could you have come up with anything more cliched?"
"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."
Smiling to himself, Jack peeled off his clothes, as well, and got in beside her, wearing only his boxer-briefs. He pulled the covers over them both, but he was careful not to touch her. There was a mere inch of s.p.a.ce between them, and he rolled onto his side, facing her, so close she could feel his breath on her cheek.
"You can kiss me good-night if you want to," he said.
"Why on earth would I want to?"
He shrugged. "To thank me for my help. To show some grat.i.tude that I"m trying to keep you safe. To-"
"To shut you up?" She rolled onto her side, facing him, and pressed her lips to his. It was a peck. It was brief, and firm, but when she pulled back, she could still feel those lips under hers. He had the softest lips. He always had. Her heart softened a little, and she leaned in again. This time she pressed her mouth gently against his, pulling back when he parted his lips and began moving them in that way he had that always drove her wild.
She could still taste him.
"Sleep well, Topaz," he whispered.
"No choice about that." Thank G.o.d, she thought. Because if there were, she knew she wouldn"t sleep at all. Not with him this close. Not with every night they"d ever spent wrapped around each other replaying in her mind.
She felt the sun"s energy rising, and with a rush of grat.i.tude, she let her eyes fall closed.
5.
When her eyes fluttered open at sunset, Topaz stretched and rolled onto her side. Someone was there-a familiar someone- and, still half-asleep, she nuzzled his lips with her own. His hands buried themselves in her hair, and his mouth captured hers. A mouth she knew, one she relished, one she loved kissing. And so she did. Her lips parted, her arms wound around him, and the kiss heated and grew until they were trying to devour each other.
And then, suddenly, she pulled free and lay there gasping, panting, hungering-and wide awake.
"Don"t stop," Jack murmured. "Baby, don"t stop. Not now." He reached for her.
She held up a hand, palm facing his chest. "You promised you wouldn"t touch me, Jack."
"And I haven"t."
"What do you call trying to swallow my tongue just now, then?"
"You started it."
"I did not." "You kissed me first, Topaz." He got off the bier and pushed both hands through his hair, heaving a sigh. "h.e.l.l, woman, I"m only human."
"No, you"re not."
"You know what I meant."
Reluctantly, she nodded, unable to meet his eyes, knowing he would see the naked hunger glowing from her own.
"Topaz, come on. We both want to. You know it"s the truth."
"Forget it."
"You can"t deny what just happened. It"s freaking explosive, what"s between us."
"So"s dynamite. Doesn"t mean I"m going to put a stick down my pants and light the fuse." She shook her head hard, trying to drive her insistence into her own mind as much as his. "You broke my heart, Jack. I"d be stupid to give you a chance to do it again."
"So keep your heart out of it. You hate my guts now. It shouldn"t be too hard. Let"s just have s.e.x."
She shot him a look, then got up. Without another word, she located her clothes and put them on.
"Fine," he said. "Deny it. Delay it. But it"s gonna happen. Sooner or later, it"s bound to happen, Topaz, and I think you know that every bit as well as I do and want it just as badly as I do. It"s inevitable."
"Not if you leave."
"I"m not leaving."
She finished dressing, then s.n.a.t.c.hed his clothes up and handed them to him. "Get dressed, will you?"
"Can"t resist me without my clothes on, right?"
"I want to get back to the mansion. Take a shower, get some fresh clothes, do my hair and makeup."
"And what do you have planned for after midnight?"
"Very funny. I want to start talking to the men who were in that file. The ones the police thought looked good for my mother"s murder."
"And your landlord?"
"I haven"t decided what to do about him yet. If we tip him off that we know about the bugs in the house, he"s liable to throw us out, or, worse, let us stay and find some other method of eavesdropping."