Illegal Possession

by Kay Hooper

  “If you insist.”

  “And while you’re being so generous,” he went on in the same calm tone, “could you answer one small question?”

  “Which is?”

  “Is the fact that my sister had—business—in every city of Tom Elliot’s twelve-city concert tour a coincidence?”

  “I plead the Fifth Amendment,” Troy said immediately.

  Dallas lounged back on an elbow and stared at her impenetrable expression. “Sweetheart?”

  “Uh-huh?” she said warily.

  “Have you been matchmaking behind my back?”

  Troy leaned forward suddenly and kissed him, her fingers toying with the towel knotted at his hip. “Have you been seduced lately?” she murmured provocatively.

  Temporarily distracted, he mused, “There was a crazy lady in my shower this morning.”

  “Mmm…blow in my ear, and I’ll follow you anywhere,” she promised huskily, forgetting all about distractions and concentrating only on the marvelous feelings that were always new and exciting.

  He didn’t exactly blow in her ear, but she followed him anyway to a place outside themselves, a place they both treasured.

  A long time later Dallas stirred slightly and tightened his arm around Troy. “You didn’t answer my question,” he noted with a yawn.

  Her voice was muffled against his neck. “What question?”

  “Have you been matchmaking behind my back?”

  “I never do anything behind your back.”

  “Troy.”

  “I introduced them. Sue me. Can I help it if they happen to like each other?”

  “It sounds,” Dallas said, “more like she’s chasing him to me.”

  “That’s a nice brotherly remark.”

  “I know my sister. When she wants something, she puts on the gloves and steps into the ring.”

  “Jumps into the ring.”

  “She is chasing him?”

  “Well, if you must know, we worked out a campaign.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “I warned her that Tommy’s a slippery customer, but that just seemed to feed the fire.”

  “How would you know he’s a slippery customer?”

  “After ten years of friendship I’ve seen a lot of girls come and go.”

  “This is not something a brother needs to hear.”

  “Don’t worry; Andy’s got him.”

  “Is that definite?” Dallas asked politely. “I mean, will she wave a diamond in my face the next time she breezes in?”

  “The engagement ring’ll be a sapphire,” Troy said knowledgeably. “Tommy’ll want to match her eyes. But the wedding band will probably be beside it.”

  “Already?” Dallas said, startled.

  “I introduced them three months ago; they’re cautious compared to us, darling.”

  “They’ll elope?”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it. Otherwise Tommy’s press agent will probably try to turn it into a circus.”

  “Has the press agent met Andy?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He doesn’t know that he’s about to meet his match, then?”

  “Nope. It should be fun to watch.”

  “Only from a concrete bunker.”

  Troy giggled suddenly. “Speaking of which, did you notice Bryce’s shell-shocked expression when we got home?”

  “I thought it was my imagination.”

  “No. While you were taking a shower, I cornered Mrs. Bradley in the kitchen and asked what was going on.”

  “And?”

  “She’s trapped him.”

  “What?”

  “Her words—not mine.”

  “You mean…?”

  “Uh-huh. They—or rather she—is planning a civil ceremony, and we’re invited.”

  Bemused, Dallas said, “You told me Bryce had never married.”

  “True.”

  “And Mrs. Bradley’s divorced two husbands?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who got who drunk?” Dallas wanted to know.

  “I think it was a joint effort.”

  “Bryce may sneak in tonight and murder us.”

  “No.” Troy choked on a laugh. “He won’t have the energy.”

  Dallas sighed. “What is this—an epidemic of matrimony?”

  “Nice, isn’t it?”

  “Mmm. Sweetheart?”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “Have I told you today how much I love you?”

  “No; we were rushed this morning, and you were too mad at me at the party,” she said judiciously.

  “My excuses?” he asked in amusement.

  “Well, I told you today. During lunch in your office. But then you got distracted….”

  “That couch comes in handy sometimes,” he murmured.

  “So you haven’t told me today,” she reminded reprovingly.

  He pulled her easily over on top of him, smiling up at her in the lamplight. “I love you, lady cat burglar. And one day I’ll tell our grandchildren that the only thing you ever stole for yourself was my heart.”

  “And I’ll tell them,” she whispered adoringly,

  “that scrupulously legal Dallas Cameron is the only thief who ever beat me at my own game….”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  KAY HOOPER is the award-winning author of Blood Dreams, Sleeping with Fear, Hunting Fear, Chill of Fear, Touching Evil, Whisper of Evil, Sense of Evil, Once a Thief, Always a Thief, the Shadows trilogy, and other novels. She lives in North Carolina, where she is at work on her next book.

  Read on for a special preview of

  the next thrilling Bishop/Special

  Crimes Unit novel, the first in

  Kay Hooper’s new

  Blood trilogy

  BLOOD

  DREAMS

  KAY HOOPER

  Available now from Bantam Books

  BLOOD DREAMS

  On sale now

  PROLOGUE

  It was the nightmare brought to life, Dani thought.

  The vision.

  The smell of blood turned her stomach, the thick, acrid smoke burned her eyes, and what had been for so long a wispy dreamlike memory now was jarring, throat-clogging reality. For just an instant she was paralyzed.

  It was all coming true.

  Despite everything she had done, everything she had tried to do, despite all the warnings, once again it was all—

  “Dani?” Hollis seemingly appeared out of the smoke at her side, gun drawn, blue eyes sharp even squinted against the stench.

  “Where is it?”

  “I—I can’t. I mean, I don’t think I can—”

  “Dani, you’re all we’ve got. You’re all they’ve got. Do you understand that?”

  Reaching desperately for strength she wasn’t at all sure she had, Dani said, “If somebody had just listened to me when it mattered—”

  “Stop looking back. There’s no sense in it. Now is all that counts. Which way, Dani?”

  Impossible as it was, Dani had to force herself to concentrate on the stench of blood she knew neither of the others could smell. A blood trail that was all they had to guide them. She nearly gagged, then pointed. “That way. Toward the back. But…”

  “But what?”

  “Down. Lower. There’s a basement level.” Stairs. She remembered stairs. Going down them. Down into hell.

  “It isn’t on the blueprints.”

  “I know.”

  “Bad place to get trapped in a burning building,” Hollis noted. “The roof could fall in on us. Easily.”

  Bishop appeared out of the smoke as suddenly as she had, weapon in hand, his face stone, eyes haunted. “We have to hurry.”

  “Yeah,” Hollis replied, “we get that. Burning building. Maniacal killer. Good seriously outnumbered by evil. Bad situation.” Her words and tone were flippant, but her gaze on his face was anything but, intent and measuring.

  “You forgot potential victim in maniacal killer’s hands,” her boss said, not e
ven trying to match her tone.

  “Never. Dani, did you see the basement, or are you feeling it?”

  “Stairs. I saw them.” The weight on her shoulders felt like the world, so maybe that was what was pressing her down. Or…“And what I feel now…he’s lower. He’s underneath us.”

  “Then we look for stairs.”

  Dani coughed. She was trying to think, trying to remember. But dreams recalled were such dim, insubstantial things, even vision-dreams sometimes, and there was no way for her to be sure she was remembering clearly. She was overwhelmingly conscious of precious time passing, and looked at her wrist, at the bulky digital watch that told her it was 2:47 P.M. on Tuesday, October 28.

  Odd. She never wore a watch. Why was she wearing one now? And why a watch that looked so…alien on her thin wrist?

  “Dani?”

  She shook off the momentary confusion. “The stairs. Not where you’d expect them to be,” she managed finally, coughing again. “They’re in a closet or something like that. A small office. Room. Not a hallway. Hallways—”

  “What?”

  The instant of certainty was fleeting, but absolute. “Shit. The basement is divided. By a solid wall. Two big rooms. And accessed from this main level by two different stairways, one at each side of the building, in the back.”

  “What kind of crazy-ass design is that?” Hollis demanded.

  “If we get out of this alive, you can ask the architect.” The smell of blood was almost overpowering, and Dani’s head was beginning to hurt. Badly. She had never before pushed herself for so long without a break, especially with this level of intensity.

  It was Bishop who said, “You don’t know which side they’re in.”

  “No. I’m sorry.” She felt as if she’d been apologizing to this man since she’d met him. Hell, she had been.

  Hollis was scowling. To Bishop, she said, “Great. That’s just great. You’re psychically blind, the storm has all my senses scrambled, and we’re in a huge burning building without a freakin’ map.”

  “Which is why Dani is here.” Those pale sentry eyes were fixed on her face.

  Dani felt wholly inadequate. “I—I don’t—All I know is that he’s down there somewhere.”

  “And Miranda?”

  The name caused her a queer little shock, and for no more than a heartbeat, Dani had the dizzy sense of something out of place, out of sync somehow. But she had an answer for him. Of sorts. “She isn’t—dead. Yet. She’s bait, you know that. She was always bait, to lure you.”

  “And you,” Bishop said.

  Dani didn’t want to think about that. Couldn’t, for some reason she was unable to explain, think about that. “We have to go, now. He won’t wait, not this time.” And he’s not the only one.

  The conversation had taken only brief minutes, but even so the smoke was thicker, the crackling roar of the fire louder, and the heat growing ever more intense.

  Bitterly, Hollis said, “We’re on his timetable, just like before, like always, carried along without the chance to stop and think.”

  Bishop turned and started toward the rear of the building and the south corner. “I’ll go down on this side. You two head for the east corner.”

  Dani wondered if instinct was guiding him as well, but all she said to Hollis, was, “He wouldn’t take the chance if he had it, would he? To stop and think, I mean.”

  “If it meant a minute lost in getting to Miranda? No way in hell. That alone would be enough, but on top of that he blames himself for this mess.”

  “He couldn’t have known—”

  “Yes. He could have. Maybe he even did. That’s why he believes it’s his fault. Come on, let’s go.”

  Dani followed, but had to ask. “Do you believe it’s his fault?”

  Hollis paused for only an instant, looking back over her shoulder, and there was something hard and bright in her eyes. “Yes. I do. He played God one time too many. And we’re paying the price for his arrogance.”

  Again, Dani followed the other woman, her throat tighter despite the fact that, as they reached the rear half of the building, the smoke wasn’t nearly as thick. They very quickly discovered, in the back of what might once have been a small office, a door that opened smoothly and silently to reveal a stairwell.

  The stairwell was already lighted.

  “Bingo,” Hollis breathed.

  A part of Dani wanted to suggest that they wait, at least long enough for Bishop to check out the other side of the building, but every instinct, as well as the waves of heat at her back, told her there simply wasn’t time to wait.

  Hollis shifted her weapon to a steady two-handed grip, and sent Dani a quick look. “Ready?”

  Dani didn’t spare the energy to wonder how anyone on earth could ever be ready for this. Instead, she concentrated on the only weapon she had, the one inside her aching head, and nodded.

  Hollis had only taken one step when a thunderous crash sounded behind them and a new wave of almost intolerable heat threatened to shove them bodily into the stairwell.

  The roof was falling in.

  They exchanged glances and then, without emotion, Hollis said, “Close the door behind us.”

  Dani gathered all the courage she could find, and if her response wasn’t as emotionless as the other woman’s, at least it was steady.

  “Right,” she said, and closed the door behind them as they began their descent into hell.

  One

  You had that dream again last night, didn’t you?”

  Dani kept her gaze fixed on her coffee cup until the silence dragged on a minute longer than it should have, then looked at her sister’s face. “Yeah. I had that dream.”

  Paris sat down on the other side of the table, her own cup cradled in both hands. “Same as before?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Then not the same as before. What was different?”

  It was an answer Dani didn’t want to offer, but she knew her sister too well to fight the inevitable. “It was placed in time. Two forty-seven in the afternoon, October twenty-eighth.”

  Paris turned her head to study the wall calendar stuck with South Park character magnets to her refrigerator. “The twenty-eighth, huh? This year?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s three weeks from today.”

  “I noticed that.”

  “Same people?”

  Dani nodded. “Same people. Same conversations. Same burning warehouse. Same feeling of doom.”

  “Except for the time being fixed, it was exactly the same?”

  “It’s never exactly the same. A word changed here or there, a gesture different. I think the gun Hollis carried wasn’t the same one as before. And Bishop was wearing a black leather jacket this time.”

  “But they’re always the same. Those two people are always a part of the dream.”

  “Always.”

  “People you don’t know.”

  “People I don’t know—yet.” Dani frowned down at her coffee for a moment, then shook her head and met her sister’s steady gaze again. “In the dream, I feel I know them awfully well. I understand them in a way that’s difficult to explain.”

  “Maybe because they’re psychic too.”

  Dani hunched her shoulders. “Maybe.”

  “And it ended—?”

  “Just like it always ends. That doesn’t change. I shut the door behind us and we go down the stairs. I know the roof has started collapsing. I know we won’t be able to get out the same way we go in. I know something terrible and evil is waiting for us in that basement.”

  “But you go down there anyway.”

  “I don’t seem to have a choice.”

  “Or maybe it’s a choice you made before you ever set foot in that building,” Paris said.

  “Maybe it’s a choice you’re making now. The date. How did you see it?”

  “Watch.”

  “On you? You don’t wear a watch. You can’t.”

  Still reluctant,
Dani said, “And it wasn’t the sort of watch I’d wear even if I could wear one.”

  “What sort of watch was it?”

  “It was…military-looking. Big, black, digital. Lots of buttons, more than one display. Looked like it could give me the time in Beijing and the latitude and longitude as well. Hell, maybe it could translate Sanskrit into English, for all I know.”

  “What do you think that means?”

  Dani sighed. “One year of psychology under your belt, so naturally everything has to mean something, I guess.”

  “When it comes to your dreams, yes, everything means something. We both know that. Come on, Dani. How many times now have you dreamed this same dream?”

  “A few.”

  “A half-dozen times that I know of—and I’m betting you didn’t tell me about it right away.”

  “So?”

  “Dani.”

  “Look, it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve had the dream. It doesn’t matter because it isn’t a premonition.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  Dani got up and carried her coffee cup to the sink. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t your dream.”

  Paris turned in her chair but remained where she was. “Dani, is that why you came down here, to Venture? Not to keep me company while I go through a messy divorce, but because of that dream?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The hell you don’t.”

  “Paris—”

  “I want the truth. Don’t make me get it for myself.”

  Dani turned around, leaning back against the counter as she once again faced the rueful knowledge that she would never be able to keep the truth from her sister, not for long.

  Paris wore her burnished copper hair in a shorter style these days—she called it her divorce rebirth—and she was a bit too thin, but otherwise looking at her was like looking into a mirror. Dani had long since grown accustomed to that, and in fact viewed it as an advantage; watching the play of emotions across Paris’s expressive face had taught her to hide her own.

  At least from everyone except Paris.

  “We promised,” her sister reminded her. “To leave each other our personal lives, our own thoughts and feelings. And we’ve gotten very good at keeping that door closed. But I remember how to open it, Dani. We both do.”