The Impostor

by Cassie Miles

  “Don’t talk to anybody else.”

  “Are you giving me an order?” She felt the blood rush to her face in a sudden flush. “How dare you tell me what to do?”

  “Until we learn differently, everyone is a suspect. Do you understand?”

  “I suppose so, but—”

  “Elizabeth!” This time, he spoke her name like a whip cracking. “Promise me. You won’t talk to anyone else.”

  She stood up to him. Though his rage was formidable, her furious energy protected her. After years of frustration, her will was strong. “I can take care of myself.”

  The fire within him seemed to roar louder than a furnace. White-hot rage emanated from him, surrounding him like a halo. Then he blinked. A muscle in his jaw twitched. He seemed to physically contract, as if he were reining in his energy. The flames were banked and under control. He said only one word. “Please.”

  “All right.” She readily agreed, not wanting to continue this battle of wills. “I won’t do any more investigating on my own. Not until tonight.”

  He pivoted and left her office with the door standing open.

  Liz sank down in the chair behind her desk. She was breathing hard. The blood surged through her. The vein in her temple beat hard as a jackhammer, and she massaged that spot with her fingertips. Calm down.

  Leaning her head back, she inhaled deeply, expanding her lungs until her rib cage hurt. She needed more breath. It was as if Dash had sucked all the air from the room, as if the fire of his anger had burned away all the oxygen.

  She exhaled in a prolonged gasp, forced herself to relax.

  Strangely, she’d felt no fear in his presence. In spite of his ferocity, it had never once occurred to her that he might hurt her. His motives were good. He wanted to protect her.

  And even in this stormy battle, there was a silver lining. Dash had said we. He’d said, “Until we learn differently.” That wasn’t the way a man without a partner talked.

  Slowly, a smile curved her lips, and hope flickered within her. Whether he knew it or not, he’d begun to think of her as a cohort, as someone he could confide in. Already, she’d found a chink in his armor.

  LIZ LEFT WORK EARLY—partly because there was nothing going on and partly because she wanted to get in half an hour of jogging before she got ready for the dinner at Sarah’s.

  She changed quickly into her shorts, T-shirt and running shoes. Though she dressed her scraped knees with salve, she left off the bandages so the air could soothe the last remnants of pain. Loosening up, she trotted the six blocks to the Big Lake at City Park and began her circuit.

  Running always seemed to help her think, and she had a lot to consider. There was a list of suspects she’d come up with. And the niggling thought in the back of her mind that she made too many mistakes in her conversation with the doctor. What would happen if she expanded her circle of interrogation? Accusing her co-workers of murder probably wasn’t a good way to advance her career at OrbenCorp.

  As she ran, her brain chugged through the several gears. Who killed Agatha? Was she poisoned? Above all, she thought about Dash.

  There was something elemental about him. He was like a force of nature—like wind, fire and air. Earlier today, when he was angry, he seemed to have stepped from another time and place, blazing with fiery, passionate heat. In the coffee shop, when he touched her hand, his grasp was as gentle as dew on a lily.

  However, Liz reminded herself as she circled the far end of the lake, Dash was also very weird. He’d claimed to be an angel. And his real profession, private eye, wasn’t exactly defined by the parameters of stability.

  No matter who or what he was—she was anxious to see him again tonight. His presence would make dinner at Sarah’s bearable.

  Her pace was slower than usual, and a couple of other afternoon joggers passed her. Liz slowed to a walk, then started her second lap around the lake. Gradually, she became aware of someone behind her, and she turned to look. There was a man dressed in a baggy black nylon running suit. He was about thirty yards behind her on the running path, so his features were indistinct. And he was wearing a black knit cap.

  Liz faced forward again. The cap was unusual, but not too much so. There was a brisk wind this afternoon. The man in black was probably just another city dweller out for some exercise.

  And yet she sensed danger, an aura of menace that caused the muscles in her back to tense. She picked up her pace, hoping to outdistance him before she headed toward home.

  When she looked again, he was still following at the same distance. Apparently, he had imitated her speed.

  Though she told herself she was imagining the threat, that it was purely paranoid to worry about a jogger, she couldn’t help thinking of danger. Dash had been so certain there might be jeopardy. What if he was right?

  She slowed again and cautiously glanced back. The man who followed kept his distance. Surely, he wouldn’t try to attack her here in the park. There were witnesses all around. But if he trailed her to her home, she might be in trouble.

  What should she do? She couldn’t keep running forever.

  Liz veered toward Seventeenth Street.

  When she looked back, the man was still following.

  Instead of crossing the street, she kept running along the curb. Usually, there were police cars patrolling. But now? Nothing! The traffic was even lighter than usual.

  When she’d faced Dash, she’d felt no fear. But now, the black-clad jogger instigated a dark terror in her heart, a premonition. Who was he? It made sense that he might be one of the suspects she’d considered. If he was someone she knew, he’d stay far enough away that she couldn’t make out his features. But who?

  She might stop right now and face him. Then she would know who had killed Agatha. But that was a terrible risk.

  He might flee from her. He might run up beside her and feign surprise that they were both on the same jogging path. Or he might hurt her, might eliminate her. It would be easy, she thought. He could run up beside her, jam a pistol in her face and fire before anyone had a chance to react.

  Finally she spied a police car waiting at the stoplight. She ran toward the vehicle, waving her arms. Gasping with the exertion of her run, she shouted for help.

  The driver turned on the lights and glided to a stop at the curb beside her. The uniformed officer got out of his car. “What’s the problem, ma’am?”

  “That man is following me.” She turned and pointed. “He’s a suspect in a murder and he’s—”

  He was gone. Vanished among the gold-leafed trees and autumnal foliage.

  Chapter Four

  At six twenty-five that evening, Dash strode along the sidewalk on the street where Liz lived. He regretted his outburst of anger this afternoon. Usually, he had better control. But when he’d sensed that Liz was in danger, that she’d placed herself in jeopardy by playing private eye, he couldn’t help the power surge, the raw instinct of rage.

  One thing was dead certain. She was off the case.

  He needed this investigation to be over. Tonight, at the dinner party, he would glean useful clues about the murder of Agatha Orben. He’d keep his wits about him. He’d be cool as ice. Yeah? Sure! He’d be cool if he could stop thinking about Liz.

  Elizabeth. The sound of her name ricocheted in his brain like a bullet from a forty-five.

  Spending time with her was more dangerous than facing a room full of crooks. In her smile, she had the power to knock the legs out from under him. With a flash of her bright blue eyes, she could turn his tough-guy attitude to mush.

  Dash couldn’t let that happen. Not for her. Not for himself. He went inside the foyer and pushed the bell for her apartment. Through the intercom, she told him to come on up.

  This was it, Dash told himself, he was going up there and laying down the law. No more investigating. But when she opened the door to her third-floor apartment and he saw her, Dash felt like he’d been belted by a roundhouse right from the heavyweight champ. She was
a knockout.

  She wore a simple black over-blouse and a short skirt that flirted above her knees. Black tights. High-heeled shoes. Her long brown hair tumbled past her shoulders in graceful, shimmering waves. She looked soft. She smelled good.

  Dash had had more than a lifetime to practice selfcontrol, but he was melting faster than a snowball in hell. “Hi, precious.” He paused. “Elizabeth.”

  “Come on in for a minute, Dash. I have something I want to show you.”

  When she turned, her hair rippled enticingly, and his fingers itched to touch that hair, to glide through that silky texture. He’d been tempted before, but it was nothing compared to this. The welling desire in his angel heart was almost painful.

  He braced his hands against the doorframe. Holding back with all his strength, he fought the magnetic pull she exerted without even trying. “We gotta go. I got a job to do.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about.” She swirled away from him, almost dancing, delicate as a moonbeam. “Five minutes won’t make any difference.”

  Full of apprehension, he stepped inside her apartment. Like the rest of this renovated Victorian mansion, her rooms on the third floor had kept the charm and lost the cobwebs. The ceiling was high. The dimensions were gracious. There was a front bay window and a window seat. The south wall had two more arched windows. The walls were white. In southern light, her houseplants flourished.

  The place looked like her. Light, airy and clean. A beige and blue patterned rug decorated the gleaming wood floor. The furniture was simple. Framed prints and paintings hung on the walls. A glance at the titles on her bookshelf showed him that she liked the same mystery fiction he preferred. She had the collected works of Dashiell Hammett in hardback.

  There was a small kitchen behind a clean counter. In the dining area was an oblong, light wood table beneath a stained-glass lamp.

  Through an open door, he could see into her bedroom where there was a brass bed and antique dresser. From her bathroom, he smelled the fragrance of her perfume. Apart from a couple of flowery feminine touches, he wouldn’t have minded living here himself.

  He cleared his throat. “Nice joint you got here.”

  “It suits me. Everybody tells me I ought to buy a house because it’s a good investment, but I like this apartment. I’m not ready to settle down into a house. Not just yet.”

  He went to the bay window and looked out at the faded pink skies of a Rocky Mountain sunset. The yellow autumn leaves of a cottonwood tree shivered in a breeze. In here, it was safe and warm. Homey.

  Sometimes Dash missed the reassuring pleasures of domestic life. A dinner on the table. A soft bed.

  He didn’t have a place of his own, except for a closet in the basement of the Avenging Angels offices where he kept the same wardrobe he’d conjured together in the 1930s. As a spiritual being, he didn’t need an apartment. When he was on the job he worked twenty-four hours a day. Other times, he relaxed into invisible limbo. Sometimes he allowed himself the sheer pleasure of angelic perfection, soaring on his giant wings into the cosmos, touching the edge of the Milky Way, then descending through the atmosphere, luminous as a falling star. Sometimes he rested in a church on the front pew, lying on his back and looking up at the marble statues of saints who never laughed and never moved. If people on earth believed heaven was that static, so bereft of vitality, why would anybody want to go there?

  During the infrequent times he wasn’t on a case, he returned to the heavenly realms for contemplation and renewal. Dash frowned. He hadn’t enjoyed that respite in a long time. He needed a vacation, but Dash was good, the best detective in the Rocky Mountain region, and he was always in demand. As the millennium approached, there was a lot of evil in the world.

  He rubbed his forehead. Though he didn’t experience pain and headache in a mortal sense, there was a heaviness around him. Weighing him down. He needed a break. Maybe that was why he felt so tempted. He’d been too close to humanity for too long.

  Liz stood beside him. “What’s wrong, Dash?”

  “I’ve got to make this clear, precious, before we go any further. You’re not working with me. It’s dangerous.”

  “Okay,” she said, easily.

  Too easily, he thought. He studied her falsely innocent expression, and he knew she was lying about her intentions. Humans could get away with that. Sometimes, he thought, mortals had all the advantages. “I mean it, Liz.”

  “And I heard you. I don’t want to be in danger.” This afternoon in the park had convinced her of that. Even though she might have been imagining the threat, her fear had been very real.

  Liz would have to rethink her ideas about becoming a private investigator. She wasn’t giving up on the plan, but she would proceed with extreme caution. “However,” she said, “I really wouldn’t be in any kind of peril if you’d tell me what to do.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on, Dash. Take me under your wing. At least tell me what a private eye does.”

  “Most of the work is boring, digging through other people’s garbage for dirty little secrets. And you’re always hanging around with the bad guys. There’s a high sleaze factor.”

  “Not this time,” she said. “All the people from OrbenCorp that I consider to be suspects aren’t sleazy.”

  “Why? Because they have bankrolls and estates?” His lips thinned, exactly like Bogie’s, and he said, “Money’s no guarantee of purity, sweetheart.”

  “But they’re not Mafia hit men or gangsters. I don’t think of people at OrbenCorp as being bad because I know them.”

  “All murderers are evil.”

  “Evil, Dash? Isn’t that rather a dramatic description?”

  “I don’t know another word for it. A murderer steals the most treasured possession the victim can own—earthly life. Murder is an offense against God and nature.”

  He seemed to be surging toward anger again, that intense elemental rage she’d seen in her office, and Liz wanted to derail him before he got started. “You’re absolutely correct. On the other hand, this particular murder—a well-planned poisoning—isn’t typical of a psycho or a serial killer.”

  “They could still be that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If the murderer is threatened, they will kill again.”

  She thought again of the jogger in the black suit. Had he been pursuing her? Why? All she’d done was talk to Dr. Clark and suggest the possibility of poisoning.

  Frowning, Liz realized that her chat with the kindly old doctor was tantamount to announcing her intentions over a loudspeaker. Dr. Clark was a terrible gossip. She wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to discover that he’d tracked down Jack and told him she was having a nervous breakdown. Or he might have called Sarah. Or, if she considered every possibility, Dr. Clark himself could be the killer.

  “This is complicated.” She sighed, wishing there was some infallible method for telling when someone meant to do you harm. She’d give a lot to know whether the man who was following her in the park was an innocent jogger or…something else.

  Should she be frightened? Should she forget it?

  “A penny for your thoughts,” he said.

  “They’re not worth much more than that.” She definitely wasn’t going to tell Dash about the incident in the park. Every instinct warned her that he wouldn’t react well. He’d probably lock her in her apartment and post an armed guard outside her door. “Okay, Dash. When you’re on a case, how do you know which suspect is the killer?”

  “I don’t know. Not until I’ve got proof.” He smiled ironically. “Too bad we aren’t in Biblical times. Then we’d have the mark of Cain branded across a murderer’s forehead. We could tell.”

  “But now, everybody is innocent until proven guilty. Which is as it should be. It’s not right to condemn people on a suspicion. And nobody deserves to be branded. After all, nobody is all, one-hundred-percent bad, are they?”

  “There are some.” Dash had seen the cold face
of evil—sheer, horrible, unredeemable evil. A soul that was not only lost, but had purposely turned away from good.

  “How can you tell when somebody is completely bad?”

  “Instinct.” He shrugged. “The shrinks call it psychosis. They say somebody’s a sociopath, that they’re disturbed, they can’t tell right from wrong. But it’s worse than that.”

  “How?”

  “Think of evil as a flame. Everybody has an occasional spark.”

  “Even you?” she teased.

  “That’s right, precious. Even me.” As an angel, he knew better than to violate the code. But when it happened, when he gave in to the impulse to tell a lie or to swear, the consequences were disastrous. Like immediate karma.

  “So, what do you think happens when the spark gets out of control?”

  “It feeds on wrongdoing. A person does one evil deed, then another and another until the flame becomes a holocaust. The fires consume every bit of good, and all that’s left is a charred, deformed shard of obsidian coal.” He clenched his hand into a fist. “No light can penetrate the surface. An evil person has no pity, no generosity, no forgiveness, no love.”

  Evil was hard to explain to a mortal, but she was nodding as if she understood.

  “You catch my drift?” he asked.

  “Not entirely.” Brightly, she continued, “By the way, I made a list of suspects.”

  “Why?”

  “If we’re going to figure out who killed Agatha—”

  “Hold it right there, sweetheart. You’re not hearing me. We? We aren’t doing anything. I am investigating. By myself. I work alone. Always have, always will. Got it?”

  “Sure, of course. But this list might save you some time.” She went to a writing desk beneath a window and picked up a lined yellow legal tablet. “These are just the people I know from OrbenCorp. Agatha’s circle of acquaintances was much wider than this. She worked with a lot of charities.”

  “I know,” Dash said. That was why she got the heavenly red carpet treatment. “She had a good heart.”