Max shrugged and averted her eyes. “So shoot me for thinking undead meant evil. It seemed like a logical assumption. Besides, it all worked out okay. He changed her. She won’t die now. Ever.”
“Still and all,” Lou said. “You’ve barely had time to digest all that. You’re suddenly unsure about everything you ever believed. What’s real and what’s not. The lines that used to be clear are all blurry in your mind.”
Max looked at him intently. “That’s pretty good.”
“I know it is. Don’t think I haven’t been going through a lot of the same stuff, Max. But here’s the thing. With all that fueling it, your imagination is bound to be stuck in high gear. Even more so than usual.” She sent him a smirk but he kept on talking. “So Stormy—after damn near dying on you a few months ago—goes off the road, scares the hell out of you, and you rush back there, your emotions heightened to the breaking point, and the sun hits her eyes in a certain way, and bam! There you have it.”
She tilted her head. Her copper-red curls brushed past her shoulder on one side, fell behind her neck on the other. He tried not to notice, and noticed, anyway. “You really think that’s all it is?” she asked.
“I really do.”
Max sighed, nodding slowly. “I suppose you could be right.”
He almost gaped in surprise, until she added, “But I doubt it.”
Yep, that was the reaction he’d expected. The two of them were so opposite it was predictable. “I suppose you have a theory of your own?”
“I’m working on one.”
“And I suppose it’s something flaky.”
“By flaky you mean…?”
“Paranormal. Supernatural. Otherworldly. Extra—”
“Yeah, something flaky.”
He sighed, disliking the way this conversation was going. Now that one of her far-fetched theories had been proved correct, there would be no talking her down from the next one. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“Then don’t. It’s still in development.” She shrugged, dropping the subject. “I’m really sorry I made you miss your fishing trip.”
“No you’re not.” Hell, he wasn’t, either. He would rather spend time with Max, far-fetched theories and outrageous flirting and all, than in a boat with a fishing pole. But he would be damned if he’d admit it. It would only encourage her.
“You’re right, I’m not.”
At least she was honest. For the most part, though he had no doubt she was even now plotting ways to get him to stay longer than he intended.
Stormy came in then, a suitcase in each hand. “Isn’t this the best place in the universe?” She dropped the cases inside the door. “Are the phones turned on yet? We’re supposed to call my parents when we arrive.”
“I haven’t checked,” Max said. Then the two of them headed across the great room and through the double doors off the right of it, into the office.
Lou watched them go. Watched Max, mostly. The girl was hell on wheels. If he thought for one minute her constant flirting was a sign of serious interest he would…
He would what? he asked himself. He wouldn’t do anything but brush her off as gently as possible and head for home. He liked Max too much to subject her to a relationship with him. He was hell on women, and he knew it. A miserable failure at that sort of thing. Every woman he’d dated in the past decade had dumped him in short order, most of them accusing him of being about as emotional and romantic as a dying trout. Then again, he hadn’t really tried with any of them. Hadn’t ever tried since his divorce.
He hadn’t wanted to. He still didn’t. And Max deserved better.
Sighing, Lou followed them into the office. It was pretty much as Morgan had left it, furnished in her elegant style. A computer was already set up on the antique mahogany desk. Stormy was replacing the telephone receiver on its hook when he came in. “Got a dial tone. Phones are up and running.” Then she frowned at the telephone’s base. “Hey, the message light is blinking. Think we got a customer already?”
“No way, not yet,” Max said. “We haven’t even unpacked.”
“Maybe all those flyers announcing our grand opening are already paying off.” Stormy hit the Play button and sank into a chair to listen. The voice that came from the answering machine was male, and her eyes widened a little when she heard it.
“Max, Storm, it’s Jason. Jason Beck. I know it’s been a long time, and now I’m only calling because I need your help. I feel like a jerk, but—look, something’s going on—I think my sister’s missing.”
Stormy shot Max a horrified look.
“There’s something wrong,” Jason’s voice went on. “She was on a trip with her best friend. Spring break, her senior year. I got this odd phone call. Really broken up—bad connection. But I know she’s in trouble. There’s just—there’s something off about this whole thing. I need you guys. So call me back. Uh, the cell phone won’t work out here, but I have a motel room. Call me, okay?” He gave the number. There was a distinct clicking sound as Jason hung up, and then another. The machine beeped to signal the end of the message.
“Jason Beck—hell, I remember him,” Lou said. “Third part of the gang of three, wasn’t he?”
Max nodded. “He moved away, went to law school. What time did he leave that message?” she asked Stormy.
Stormy looked at the machine. “At 7:10 p.m. Less than an hour ago.”
“Play it again,” Lou said.
“Lou?” Max must have seen something in his eyes, because she leaned closer to look into them. “What is it? What are you—”
“Just play it once more.”
Stormy hit the Play button, and they listened to their old friend’s worried voice. When the message ended, Lou said, “Did you hear that? That extra clicking sound?”
Max nodded. “What is it, Lou?”
“I can’t be sure, but it sure as hell sounded fishy to me.”
“Fishy how?”
“Fishy like someone was listening in.”
Stormy jumped out of her chair. “You think his phone is bugged?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Lou shrugged. “Or maybe it was just a glitch in the line.”
The vampire sat comfortably in the overstuffed chair in the cheap motel room’s darkest corner. Jason Beck, standing near the bed, hung up the telephone; then Fieldner hung up the extension on the other side of the room.
Jason turned to face him. His lip was split, but it had stopped bleeding. The eye, on the other hand, was already beginning to darken. It would be purple by morning. He was still angry with Fieldner for that. The man had become carried away when young Jason Beck decided to fight rather than comply. A foolish decision. Fieldner might look as if a stiff wind would blow him over, but occasional sips of vampiric blood made him strong. And utterly obedient.
It was a shame the man was also an imbecile.
“I did what you asked. I called them,” Beck said. “I want to see my sister now.”
“You left a message on an answering machine,” the vampire said slowly. “That’s not precisely what I told you to do, now is it?”
“They’ll call back. When they do, I’ll get them down here. I swear.”
“How can you be so certain they will come?”
“They will,” Beck said, lowering his head to stare at the photograph that lay on the bedside stand beside the telephone. “They’re my friends. They’ll come.”
“They’d better. And when they do, you would do well to follow my instructions to the letter. Do you understand, Mr. Beck?”
Jason met his eyes. “No. I don’t understand any of this. Who the hell are you? What do you want with Storm and Maxie? If you’re going to hurt them—”
“I’m not. Not that you could stop me if I were. You have one mission here, Beck, and that is to do as you’re told. So long as you obey, there will be no harm done—to the women or to your sister. Or to you.”
Jason’s eyes lowered beneath the vampire’s steady, penetrating gaze. He had a br
illiant mind, this young man. His intelligence was great, his love for his sister even greater. But he had a deep affection for the two female detectives, as well. It could prove to be a problem if not properly controlled.
“Since you’ve acted in good faith,” the vampire said slowly, “I will take you to see your sister now.”
Stormy dialed the number, was connected to Jason’s room and waited. Then she slowly shook her head. “No answer.”
As she put the phone down, Max frowned at her, recalling their earlier conversation, right after she’d gone off the road. “You were thinking about Jason on the way here,” she said.
Stormy nodded. “Yeah. Odd, isn’t it?” She didn’t meet Max’s eyes.
“What was it, some kind of premonition?”
“Please,” Stormy said, loading the word with sarcasm. Then she turned the subject right back to the telephone call. “No answer, and no voice mail. Must be one nice hotel.”
“Motel,” Lou corrected. “He said motel, not hotel. It’s probably nothing fancy.”
“We should go there,” Stormy said, and now she did meet Max’s eyes, her own imploring.
Stormy did have a feeling about all this; Max was convinced of it. “Go where?” she asked. “We don’t even know where Jason is.”
“We could run some kind of trace on the call.” Stormy shot her gaze to Lou’s. “You still have friends on the force. You could do that, couldn’t you?”
Lou nodded. “Yeah, but there are easier ways. You got the phones here turned on, how about the Internet?”
“It’s ready to go,” Max said.
“We can do it online, then.”
Maxie moved behind the computer to make sure the cable was plugged in, while Lou took the chair in front of it.
His cop juices were flowing; Max could tell by the light in his eyes. He had a real passion for his work. And when he immersed himself in it, he forgot to play the worn-out, burned-out role he seemed determined to play for her benefit. The mask fell away, revealing him as he truly was. A man in his prime, with a sharp, determined mind and a keen sense of justice. This was the Lou Malone who turned her on like no one else ever had. She watched his long, powerful fingers move over the keyboard, licked her lips at the way his strong hand cupped the mouse.
Several keystrokes later, he looked up. “The call came from a town called Endover, in New Hampshire.”
Max held his eyes. “You’re gonna have to show me how you did that.”
“What, you weren’t paying attention?”
“Sure I was. Just not to the right things.” She winked at him and saw him squirm. It was his usual reaction to her flirting, and far from the one she wanted.
“We should go,” Stormy said softly.
Lou seemed to have trouble breaking the hold Max’s eyes had on his, but he finally did, and focused instead on Stormy. “Look, he said we should call him back. Let’s wait it out. He can tell us what he wants us to do when we get him on the phone.”
Max hid a secret smile at his use of the words “we” and “us.” He might think he was still planning to high-tail it back to White Plains, but deep down, Max thought, he already knew better.
“Lou’s right,” she said. “Besides, it’ll give us time to unload the van.”
“How old would Delia be now?” Stormy asked. “What was she last time we saw her. Ten? Twelve?”
Max nodded. “She must be all grown up. Sixteen, seventeen by now. He did say she was in her senior year.”
“Hard to imagine,” Stormy said. “God, where did all the time go? He didn’t mention his older brother, did he? Mike?”
“Last I knew, Mike had a wife and kids and was living somewhere in California,” Max said. She put a hand on Stormy’s shoulder. “We’ll keep calling until we get him. Then we’ll take it from there, okay?”
Stormy closed her eyes, sighing deeply. “Okay, we’ll wait.”
5
He hadn’t left, Lou told himself a few hours later. He kept telling himself he was going to, right after the next little job, or the one after that. But he hadn’t left.
Of course he hadn’t left. He’d been fooling himself to think he was going to get out of this place if Maxie wanted to keep him here. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do for her—and no, that had nothing to do with anything other than the fact that he liked her and seemed to have developed a soft spot for her, despite her being his polar opposite in every way.
She was also his biggest pain in the ass, and he personally thought she ought to be voted the girl most likely to get herself dead before her time. Which was a large part of the reason why, when she got into trouble, he tended to want to stick around and help her out of it.
So he’d said he would hang around to help her unload, and he did. And then she declared they needed to eat, so they ordered pizza from a place in town and ate it on the patio outside the office. It was nice. Three friends, munching pizza and ignoring the herd of elephants currently dancing in the parlor.
Stormy’s odd symptoms. Max’s worry for her. Max’s mad theories. Lou’s skepticism about them. Max’s constant flirting. Lou’s phony don’t-care attitude toward it. His lie about wanting to get home. Max’s lie about intending to let him go. And the fear for an old friend that hovered over all of them.
Yep. A herd of elephants.
But the patio was nice, white fieldstones smooth as glass, wicker furniture, glass-topped table, an umbrella for shade, white with a pattern of green ivy, like the cushions on the chairs. It was a warm evening. Sitting out there in the starlight, smelling the sea breeze, citronella torches ablaze, it felt just fine.
When it got too cool to remain, Lou decided to make coffee, which meant unpacking cups and things. And that task turned into unpacking nearly every box marked Kitchen. The three worked in synch and had the job done in under an hour. Max’s blender and toaster and coffeepot were on the counter—the pot half-full. All the dishes were put away except the cups they’d been drinking from. Those he stacked in the dishwasher.
He liked the kitchen here. Of the entire place, he thought he liked it best. It was clean, efficient, not overly fancy. And the pink-and-gray marble was perfect. Tiny squares of it covered the walls, and a huge chunk formed the surface of the island in the middle of the room. Now, that, he thought, was Max. Pink swirls. Soft on the surface, but tough as rock underneath.
Fortified with caffeine, kitchen unpacking all done, Lou next carried some boxes up the stairs to the bedrooms the girls would be using.
Maxie’s room—formerly Morgan’s—was huge, with an attached bathroom that included a sunken tub and a shower with multiple heads. It had a balcony with French doors, and filmy white curtains, and it was fully furnished.
He set Max’s boxes of clothes and toiletries in the bedroom and took a look around. The room was dark and dramatic. It wasn’t Maxie. But when he tossed her ladybug-patterned beanbag chair into a corner, he thought that she might transform it, given time.
“There are a half dozen other bedrooms, besides mine and Stormy’s,” Max said.
He turned to see her standing in the doorway. She moved into the room past him, scooped a box off the floor and set it on the huge bed. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I’ve been here before, too, you know.”
She nodded. She was pulling items out of the box now. Nightgowns. Underthings. She held each one up as if to inspect it before folding it and dropping it into the top drawer of the bureau beside the bed. “So which room do you want to use?”
“Max, hon, I told you, I’m not staying over.”
“Oh, come on, you don’t still mean to leave. If you did, you’d be gone by now. At this point, you’d have to drive all night.” The item she was holding up now was a sheer black teddy. He looked at it, then at her, and then he was imagining her wearing it, which was a stupid thing to think about. And yet he couldn’t shake the image from sneaking through his mind. The nightie was short, and her legs were long. He’d seen her in shorts in the summer, so
he knew about her legs. Hell, she’d made sure he knew. Maxie seemed to live for teasing him, though most of the time he managed to believe she didn’t mean anything by it. She was young, probably thought it was safe to flirt with him. He was too much older than her to take her seriously, and too good a friend to be dangerous. She thought he was safe. Comfortable.
She ought to be right. He felt like a pig for the images of her prancing around in that skimpy teddy that were currently filling every corner of his mind.
“Lou?”
He shook himself, snapped out of it, looked at her again.
She smiled at him. “You like this one, huh?”
“What?”
“The teddy. You were kind of staring at it.”
He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t.”
“Sure you were.”
“I was lost in thought, that’s all.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind.”
“You damn well should,” he muttered, turning away to leave the room.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing. Back on topic, kid. I can’t stay the night. Plain and simple. I’ll stay until you get hold of your friend Jason, just so I know what you’re up to, but then—”
“Will you be reasonable, already?”
He knew she was right. He was being utterly unreasonable. Why drive all night when there were vacant bedrooms for the taking and an open invitation?
Because he didn’t trust himself to spend the night under the same roof with Maxie, that was why. He searched his mind for a reasonable argument and latched on to the first one he found. “I didn’t bring anything with me,” he said.
There. She couldn’t very well argue with that. He kept walking along the hall toward the stairs.
She popped into the hallway behind him. “Yes, you did.”
Lou stopped and turned slowly to face her.
She was standing with one hand braced on the door frame of her bedroom, and she turned her green eyes up to their most innocent setting. “You were being stubborn. I was afraid you’d end up stranded here with none of your stuff, so…I tossed your overnight bag into Stormy’s car before we left White Plains.”
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