

Jaxson's Song

by

Angie West
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Cover by Madelene Martin.

Copyright© 2016 Angie West

Published at Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission.

## Books by Angie West

The Shadows Trilogy

Shadow Cave

Return to the Shadows

Shadow Borne

The Fifth Hour

Incubus

Spirit of the Wolf

Jaxson's Song

The Game

Chapter One

A Dubious Beginning

Kate Delaney took a good look at her future... and decided that she didn't want to live.

The last eight months had been bad enough, but this was the last straw. Kate eyed the ugly, spindly, yellow-and-cream Victorian with disbelief. She couldn't live here, she just absolutely couldn't.

She had to.

This hard knowledge rose above the shock and shoved its way to the forefront of her mind. If she wanted to put Lilly through school, the two of them would have to live in this creepy, sagging, yellow... thing.

"It's got potential."

Lindsey's voice broke through Kate's distress. Potential? Kate glanced at her best friend before casting a skeptical eye over the house. The potential to fall down, maybe...

She turned a half step to the left, toward the taller of the two women who silently flanked her on the cracked, crumbling sidewalk.

"You're sure this place is sound?" she asked. Stability wasn't the first word that came to mind when she looked at the house.

Her cousin Olivia nodded. "Hard to believe, isn't it?"

"The inspection report was good, really?" Kate absently twisted the gold ring around on her thumb and cocked her head to one side. Next she tried squinting, but the house still looked like crap.

"The file's in the car," Olivia confirmed, rummaging in her square-shaped, plum leather bag and coming up with a tissue that, much like the house, looked like it had seen better days. "This place is free of mold, fungus, and asbestos. Dining room and foyer contain lead paint, but it's intact. Half of the roof is fifteen years old, but the furnace and water heater were new in two thousand eight," she recited from memory, in full lawyer mode now.

"Half of the roof? Hey, are you okay?"

"Allergies." Olivia smothered another sneeze. "Apparently, six years ago, Aunt Viola had half of the roof replaced. Not an uncommon practice for an older woman on a budget, I'm told." She tucked the Kleenex back into her purse, then closed the bag with a swift snap. "Well, are you ready to go inside?"

"I..." Kate caught her bottom lip between her teeth and shook her head. "Go on without me, please. I'll catch up in a minute."

Olivia reached out an ivory, manicured hand and squeezed Kate's arm, briefly, before nodding and heading for the house. Lindsey hung back, hitching her brown leather satchel higher onto her shoulder and inching closer to Kate.

"It's free?"

It was posed as a question, in typical Lindsey fashion. Kate knew exactly what her friend was getting at. Lindsey wasn't asking if the house was free; she was aware Kate had inherited the place. This was her attempt to help Kate focus on the brighter side of the situation. And it worked, sort of.

"Well," Kate sighed. "There is that."

"You don't have to go in there, you know." Lindsey wound the thick, pliant leather purse strap around one tan finger. Iridescent pink polish caught the combined light from the bright, late afternoon sun and the street lamps that were just beginning to kick on. "Not yet, anyway. Come back to Georgia tonight. You can sign the papers. Then we'll pick up Lilly and head back home tonight. You've got, what, another three weeks before the fall semester starts, right?"

"Two and a half." Kate's lips curved wistfully. "Thanks, Linds, but I can't. I'm supposed to be at the hospital tonight."

"Already?" Lindsey groaned, visibly dismayed.

Kate nodded. "One of the nurses went on emergency sick leave. They called the hotel last night and asked me to fill in. I couldn't really afford to say no, so..." She shrugged, letting the rest of the sentence hang in the air between them. Neither needed a reminder of Kate and Lilly's current less-than-ideal financial situation.

"Okay. Well, in that case, we'd better get this over with, so you can catch a few hours' sleep before your shift. If you're sure, I mean? Because you and Lilly can stay with me. You're my best friend, and I feel like Lilly is my little sister, too. You know that. I'll make room. We'll get by."

Moisture stung Kate's eyes. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision and pulled Lindsey into a quick embrace, accepting that neither Olivia nor Lindsey intended to let her have those coveted "alone" minutes right now. It was probably just as well. Dwelling on the hours, days, and weeks ahead was probably a pointless task.

"Thanks, Linds, but no, we can't. Besides, everything is already set up here and... it's what Mama would have wanted, for Lilly and me to be more or less financially stable. For Lilly to finish school. It's what Mama would have done if she were here. We will be fine," she said, raising her chin a couple of notches and narrowing her violet eyes.

"If you change your mind..."

"I won't," she said automatically, then gave a quick smile in order to erase the hurt look from her friend's face. "I won't need to change my mind, because everything will be okay. Promise."

"Then let's do this, eh?" She held out one arm, which Kate accepted, laughing a little as they made their way up the broken sidewalk.

"So, how many words do you think there are for 'run down'?" Kate asked, slowly getting into the spirit of her friend's enthusiasm.

"Hmm." Caramel-hued skin glistened in the fading sunlight, and one finger tapped plump, pink lips as she seemed to devote great consideration to Kate's query. "Definitely 'established neighborhood,'" she giggled.

"Too easy," Kate scolded. "Olivia already gave us that one."

"Oh, right, right. Okay... urban."

"Yeah, but not always."

"Most of the time, which is close enough," Lindsey argued good-naturedly, her flip-flops slapping against the used-to-be-white porch. "Fine, then... distressed."

"Ghetto," Kate countered, squinting at the abrupt change from light to dark, hot to cold, as they entered the dusty foyer.

"Neglected, impoverished."

"Slum."

"It's not that bad."

"No, but it's damn creepy," Kate said, rubbing her hands up and down her arms, referring to the house now. "Wow." One hand came up to rest against faded, antique rose-and-stem wallpaper, and the other tucked a wayward section of tawny hair behind her ear. "This is just... eerie." She moved her head left, then right, for a panoramic view.

"A little. Probably because it's got that whole musty, abandoned thing going for it right now. I could stay. We could pick up Lilly, grab an early dinner after this, and you could go sleep while Lil and I fix the place up a little. You know, replace light bulbs, open windows." She shivered again. "Jeez, why's it so cold in here?"

"No, not that," Kate murmured, leaving the foyer behind and taking a few tentative steps into what looked like an old-fashioned sitting room. "Look at this place."

"Yeah." Lindsey walked ahead a few paces and trailed one hand along the wine-and-cream-colored floral print sofa. Delicate dull gold buttons marched up the armrests, its faded splendor matching the rest of the room. "It's not that bad. This stuff is actually kind of pretty." She frowned. "I'd expected the inside to look even worse than the outside."

"So did I. But it looks like time hasn't touched this place in..." Kate blinked and shook her head. "At least fifteen years," she finally said, drinking in the grimy, pink-champagne Tiffany lamps which framed the same settee that had graced the same corner of the room the last time she'd been in this house.

"Looks like all it needs is a good cleaning," Lindsey repeated. "And as it just so happens, I'm free tonight." She smiled, bumping her hip lightly against Kate's side.

"Thanks, but no. You'll miss work tomorrow if you stay tonight."

"So?"

"I'm fine. Really." Kate gave her a small smile as they left the sitting room and ventured down the long, central hall off the entry foyer.

"Okay, okay. I give up. But if you need me, you'd better call or text, or e-mail. Hell, send smoke signals if you have to."

Kate snorted as she led the way up the stairs. "Smoke signals? Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Livi!" she called.

"Up here! In the back bedroom!"

She picked up the pace, glad she'd opted for sneakers instead of heels that morning. The staircase was huge, wide enough for Kate and Lindsey to walk side by side, and it was long, easily twenty steps to the second floor.

A memory flashed through Kate's mind. Her and Lilly as children, legs stretching wide as they took each deep step, childish voices keeping count as they climbed. Twenty-six. The answer came to Kate suddenly as they reached the second-floor landing. Lilly's raspy childhood soprano echoed through the more remote corners of her mind. There were twenty-six steps here.

The second floor was even colder than the first...

"I'm over here, ladies." Olivia's muffled voice carried faintly down the hall.

"Either the AC in this place is top notch, or the house is well insulated," Lindsey remarked, mirroring Kate's thoughts and shivering a little. "Who would have known we'd need sweaters in Florida?" she teased, turning left, toward the sound of Olivia's voice.

They found the blonde on all fours, crawling the perimeter of the bedroom at the end of the hall.

"Olivia, what are you doing?" Kate asked, crouching beside her. She winced when the bruise on her knee came into contact with the floor. Why didn't old houses ever have carpet in the bedrooms?

"I'm seeing where this cord goes. I think this is your Internet cable. It's too thick to be a phone line."

"Couldn't you just scoot the furniture over?" Lindsey asked, moving to stand beside the four-poster, full canopy bed the dignified lawyer was now practically underneath. "Wow, look at this bed. I'm jealous." She ran an admiring hand over one of the glossy, dark chocolate posts that held up a section of lacy lavender canopy. Her purse hit the hardwood floor with a heavy thud and a split second later she hopped onto the king-size mattress, bouncing twice and laughing as she used one hand to shove shiny brown curls away from her face.

"Jesus, Lindsey!" Olivia exploded, scrambling out from under the bed. "What if that thing had fallen on me?"

"Guys," Kate admonished as Lindsey fell back across the bed, arms out, and rolled her eyes toward the purple canopy as Olivia continued to glare. "So why didn't you just move the bed?"

"Do you have any idea how much furniture like this weighs?" she demanded, pointedly refusing now to look at the bed in question or its occupant. "Even without all the extra weight on it."

Kate pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. "Okay, so what did you find? What cord?"

"Oh. This." Olivia reached down and used one arm to fish around the dark, cavernous space beneath the bed.

"Better watch your arm, Liv. My big fat ass might make the bed fall on it," Lindsey huffed, pulling her hundred-and-twenty-pound frame into a sitting position and scooting to the edge of the bed.

"It's your Internet cord," Olivia announced a moment later, holding up a frayed end. "But you'll need to get a service tech out here to fix it."

"Huh." Kate fingered the cord. "It looks like it's been chewed."

"Yeah, you might want to get an exterminator out here, too, while you're at it." Olivia wrinkled her nose at the cobwebs that clung to her. She smoothed a hand over her skirt, leaving dark, dusty streaks across the fabric.

Lindsey rolled her eyes again. "Kate, we'll stop off for some mouse traps before I head back."

Kate nodded absently, leaving her cousin and best friend standing in the middle of the room, squared off like gunslingers in the Old West, while she wandered to the window and looked out over the aging, sun-baked neighborhood. Most of the houses in the immediate vicinity were also two- and three-story monstrosities, so she didn't see much beyond roof tiles in varying shades of gray and the occasional patch of blue sky.

"At least the inside is in better shape than the exterior." Olivia moved to stand next to Kate.

"Yeah," she agreed. "This place looks just like I remember it from when you and Lilly and I were kids."

"Dustier, maybe." A rare smile curved Olivia's mouth. "Are you going to be okay here?"

"Sure. Yeah. I'm good." Kate turned away from the window. "Let's just go sign the papers. Everything looks to be in order here."

"Look," Olivia eyed her cousin and frowned, "I hate to say it, but maybe Lindsey is right. You shouldn't spend your first night here alone. One of us should stay with you."

"You've got to get back to your practice, and Lindsey has to be at work in the morning. I'm fine. Really, guys. This house is fine. It's old and the neighborhood is a little bit dismal, so what?" Kate said, moving toward the door.

"We aren't talking about the neighborhood," Lindsey said quietly.

Kate paused and hung her head. "I know." She sucked in a breath, squared her shoulders. "But I got over that a long time ago. Okay?"

"Being back in this house doesn't bother you?" her cousin asked, blunt now.

Hell yes, it did. "No," Kate lied. "Anyway, Lilly will be here tonight, so I won't be alone."

"Right." Olivia shrugged, not looking thrilled but apparently willing to let it go, for now at least.

"Okay," Lindsey sighed, trailing after Olivia into the hallway and down the stairs.

Kate followed, bringing up the rear and wishing she could find the words that would undo all of this. Wishing she could take Lindsey up on her offer to return home to Georgia. But pride was a powerful thing, and the words stuck in her throat. Sure, she could sell the house, but how long would that take. And how much would she even get for it? No, she shook her head. She was doing the right thing for herself and for Lilly Ann. The sensible thing.

A flash of movement to her left brought Kate's head up. What in the hell? She paused on the stairs, one hand shooting out to grip the chestnut handrail. What was that?

A long, dark shadow raced past the half-open door and disappeared into the bedroom at the other end of the hall, opposite to the one they'd been in a moment ago.

"Olivia! Lindsey!" she called out, heading back up the stairs, her sneakers pounding the faded red-and-cream floral runner that stretched the length of the hall.

When she reached the doorway, she pulled the door shut and wrapped her hand firmly around the knob to keep it closed until the other two women ran up the stairs.

"What are you doing?"

"What's going on?"

"I think there's someone in the bedroom," Kate gasped. "I'm pretty sure I saw someone's shadow as they ran into this room."

"Should we call the police?" Lindsey asked, backing up a few paces.

"You didn't actually see a person?" Olivia frowned, looping her purse strap around her knuckles and kicking off her heels.

"No."

"Okay, then open the door, Kate."

"Are you sure?"

She nodded. "It's probably nothing. This place was locked up tight when we got here. Why would someone hide the entire time we're up here, then suddenly decide to move before we're even out of the house? It doesn't make sense," Olivia reasoned. "You probably saw light from those tall windows by the door. But we'll check it out," she added, wielding her designer bag like a club. "On three, Kate."

"One, two, three!" she shouted, flinging the door open.

The three women burst into the room and froze.

"What the hell..."

"What in God's name is this?" Lindsey breathed.

"Uh, Liv." Kate's eyes were wide as she turned a slow circle in the obviously empty room. "Was Aunt Viola into kinky sex?"

"Oh, gross, Kate. Gross." Olivia grimaced.

"Well? Why else would someone have all these mirrors?"

"Oh, my God." Lindsey gasped, grabbing at Kate's arm. "They're on the floor, too."

"This entire room is made of mirrors. Walls, floor..." Kate glanced up. "Ceiling." She uncurled her fingers from around her cousin's sleeve and tip-toed further across the glass floor, noticing that behind her, the other two women's steps were also halting and cautious.

She had the worst sense of vertigo. The room was one giant, seamless box that reflected their numb shock back at them in stark clarity. Not a dust bunny in sight here. This room looked like it had been Windexed to within an inch of its life, and Kate had the stomach-dropping sensation of walking on thin air, like the entire floor could drop out from beneath them at any second.

"And Viola couldn't afford to fix up the outside of the house and replace the whole roof?" Olivia asked skeptically. "Do you have any idea how much something like this must have cost?"

"Why did she do this?" Lindsey wondered aloud.

"I don't know," Kate murmured.

"Well..." Olivia was the first to recover. "Now you have a kinky sex room."

"Wonderful," Kate said dryly.

"But I guess that explains the shadow you saw," Olivia said, still eyeing the room like the foreign thing that it was. "Reflection."

"Yeah, I guess." Kate swallowed, unease creeping along her spine as she ushered the other two out of the room and down the stairs. Olivia passed her the shiny new house key the locksmith had delivered to the hotel earlier in the day, and Kate locked up.

Outside, a sudden crash and accompanying four-letter word had them all swiveling toward the house next door in time to see a tall figure in a flowered sundress and big hair trip over her mile-high stilettos. Shards of broken pottery, spilled flowers, and dirt littered the walkway. The woman righted herself, stepped over the mess, and tottered into her own house without looking at the open-mouthed trio on the sidewalk.

"Oh, my..." Kate uttered, clapping a hand to her mouth. Beside her, Lindsey giggled.

"You'd better steer clear of that one, Kate." Olivia stared after the platinum blonde and shook her head. "Bad neighbors can make your life a living hell."
Chapter Two

Bad Day

He was wearing a dress.

Jaxson hated his life. It wasn't enough that he worked long hours and hadn't had a day off in six months. It wasn't enough that he worked like a slave—most of the time, anyway. Such mundane, everyday shit, he could handle. Hell, most days he didn't even mind being so underpaid, but this... He grimaced as he caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror.

This was too much. It was official. He'd reached an all-time low. Now they had him wearing a goddamn dress. It was enough to make a man want to quit, but he couldn't, not until they caught the bastard. And of course, like a puppet on a string, his freedom was not his own. The New York City DA was his puppet master, and if Jaxson wanted to avoid hard time, he had to dance to their tune. Literally.

With this final thought he once again eyed the bright pink taffeta with disgust, slammed his feet into the pair of matching size-eleven pumps, grabbed his shell-pink, beaded clutch—God, he was carrying a purse, too—and stalked out the front door. He was brought up short an instant later when the hem of his calf-length gown snagged on an old, rusted nail. He froze, cursing as the fabric caught and pulled on the sharp end of the nail.

Carefully, he freed the delicate fabric and inspected it for tears. He didn't know jack about sewing, and he'd be damned if he'd visit a tailor like this. Ditto for hitting up the local boutiques for a replacement dress. It had been hard enough to find "evening wear" in New York to fit his five-foot-eleven frame. But here in this Florida hick town? Forget it. There wouldn't be much to find. He'd overheard some of the other dancers in the club talking about what a pain in the ass it was having to order costumes off the Internet. Which wouldn't be so bad, except he didn't have a computer here, meaning he'd have to use Crystal Cove's only public library to place the order. Hell. No.

He shuddered at the thought, eyed the gown one last time, and dropped the hem, satisfied it was still more or less in one piece.

He made it as far as the driveway before Jake stopped him. The seasoned detective slid the dark brown 1984 Buick into the space beside Jaxson's own half-silver half-rust, aging Plymouth Voyager. Both vehicles were police issued and hand picked for this particular mission.

The department hadn't chosen them because they were good, serviceable vehicles. They weren't—a fact Jaxson could personally attest to. Hell, most of the time he counted himself lucky to make it to work. Then again, he thought, glancing down at the silk pumps, maybe "lucky" wasn't the right word.

Regardless, neither car qualified as a reliable vehicle. They coughed, sputtered, and guzzled oil like it was going out of style. But they were nondescript and fit in well among the cracked sidewalks and older houses in this established, south Florida neighborhood. And it was a good thing, too, because he sure as hell didn't blend in. He didn't care what Jake said about his elaborate disguise providing the perfect camouflage. No other man in this neighborhood was wearing a goddamn dress.

Jake unfolded his length from the decrepit Buick and stood in the driveway, hands on his hips as he gave Jaxson a slow once-over, lingering on the pink taffeta flounces in the full-skirted dress. Jake's lips twitched and Jaxson glared, a look that clearly said "I dare you to say anything."

Jake hooted with laughter, and Jaxson realized the glower was lost on the salt-and-pepper-haired cop who had seen much worse. Well, that and Jaxson wasn't exactly the picture of intimidation in his pastel finery. Hell. I'm in hell.

"I give up. Who are you supposed to be? Marilyn Monroe?"

"Shut up, Jake."

"Well, whoever you're supposed to be, you look like a real class act." Jake grinned and used one hand to close the driver's side door. With a shrill creak, it snapped shut.

"Uh-uh," Jaxson said. "If you came here to mock me, then forget it. I'm late and I'm not in the mood." He didn't tell Jake that it was vintage night at the club. Which, in Jaxson's opinion, was even worse than the usual pulsing techno music, bump-and-grind atmosphere of the place. It wasn't as bad as the pink frilly hell that was ladies' night, though, and that was something. Not that he'd ever admit as much to Jake, or anyone else, for that matter.

He'd cut out his own damn tongue before he'd supply his already over-curious uncle Jake with any of the gory details of how he spent his nights. It wasn't that he didn't understand the concept of rubber-necking. He'd stare at himself, too, dressed in this ridiculous getup. But it didn't mean he had to share his misery with the people around him, which lately consisted of drag queens and Jake.

Jaxson stepped over the broken flower pot, kicking the thick coral-colored pieces into the overgrown grass beside the porch.

"As a matter of fact, I didn't come here to give you shit, boy." Jake strolled across the lawn, grinning when his nephew scowled even harder. "Melanie sent me. Your aunt's worried about you," he said, sobering a little as he wiped a hand across his forehead. "But I'll be happy to be able to report that other than this heat and that dress, you seem to be doing just fine."

"Yeah. Fine." Jaxson snorted and shoved his way past his uncle, the man who was responsible for his current predicament. No, that wasn't fair. Jake hadn't known about the gambling. His uncle hadn't known a thing about that until after Jaxson had been arrested. But he'd damn sure had a hand in arranging this twisted little setup.

Jake's hand shot out, latching onto Jaxson's satin-covered bicep and blocking him from getting to the Voyager. "You could be in prison right now, boy. That judge was looking to make an example of you. It wouldn't have been a slap on the wrist this time. You'd be sitting hard time. And it could still happen." His voice lowered so only his nephew could hear the deep timbre, not that there was anyone around to eavesdrop. "Your sentence is only suspended, and it all depends on your cooperation. So, if you've got some fool idea of skipping out..."

Jaxson threw off his uncle's grasp and snapped, "I'm not."

"You're welcome, you know, for saving your worthless ass from doing five to ten in Rikers Island," Jake said without malice.

"You actually think this is better than prison?" Jaxson hissed. His eyes darted first to one side, then the other before zeroing in on his uncle again. "Dangling like goddamn bait on a hook for some sick, twisted pervert?"

"You're performing a valuable service for your fellow citizens."

"I'm wearing a fucking dress!" Jaxson exploded.

"Yeah, that you are, boy. That you are." Jake chuckled, shoving his hands into the pockets of his worn jeans and rocking back on his heels.

"I'm going to... work." He growled the last word, slammed the door, and gunned the engine. The Voyager coughed and sputtered down the block. The wig itched like a son-of-a-bitch, and Jake's laughter rang in Jaxson's ears as he headed to the club for another night in pink satin hell.

* * *

It was late when Kate returned home from her first shift at the hospital. Home. She heaved a sigh, rotating her shoulders and a neck that felt stiff and awkward from a night spent hunched over small print font in bad lighting. There hadn't been much else to do but catch up on paperwork, and clean. The latter activity proved to be a poor time filler, though, since the morgue was already in immaculate condition.

The morgue. Hell. She was working in the morgue. Kate cringed as the grim reality sank even further beneath her skin, the reminder of her creepy new job description chilling her in the balmy night air.

If she were more alert, Kate would have been damn angry. She hadn't spent the last two years in nursing school so she could spend her nights babysitting corpses in the basement of a hospital. Her situation was made bearable only by the fact that the arrangement was temporary. She was pretty sure she'd go stir crazy if she had to spend too many more nights in that chill, cavernous space, the chemical odor of astringent filling her nostrils until her stomach churned.

Well, Kate sighed, it was a job, and she was getting paid LPN wages. She gripped the edge of the Toyota's door, fingers pressing into the black rubber seal that rimmed the orange metal as she hauled herself out of the car. For one long moment she stood in the middle of the driveway and stared in silence at her house.

Her house. The words had only a slightly more natural feel than "the morgue," and Kate was hard-pressed to say which place felt more foreign and strange. Probably the house, she finally decided, bumping the car door shut, then flinching at the sound. God, she hated even the thought of walking into that dark, empty space. But who knew Lilly would run into Alexandra this afternoon? Then again, why had she told Lilly she didn't mind staying at the house by herself? She knew her sister would have come home, had she asked her to. But that would have meant explaining why she was loath to stay alone in the house, and Lilly was too young to have clear memories of that time in their lives, to remember...

"Shit." Kate closed her eyes. Why hadn't she left a lamp burning? A porch light, anything. The creepy old house—which, in full light did not look at all charming—was flat-out menacing in the dark.

Sharp-peaked turrets stretched and blurred with the black sky, and shadows danced in the windows with the reflection of a line of cars that passed down her street. A grinning teenage boy leaned halfway out the window of the middle car and shouted a greeting to Kate. Radios blared, then faded as the cars turned the corner. The street was once again quiet, deserted.

A gust of wind kicked up a pile of dead leaves on the sidewalk near the porch. The breeze propelled storm clouds in from the beach far beyond the house, bringing with it a salty air that fairly crackled with static electricity. At the end of her driveway, the street lamp flickered ominously a split second before it went dead. Thick, dark swaths of cloud scudded across the moon. The world went black, and Kate was lost in its shadows.

She gasped, finally spurred to action. The outside no longer felt any safer than the house's interior, and the fine hairs at the back of her neck became cold and shivery, lifted by the breeze that whipped around her as she hurried up the walkway. Sagging wooden steps creaked beneath her weight as she took them two at a time, stumbling onto the porch and skidding to a stop before the ornately carved and beveled front door. She took a deep breath and grasped her key in one hand, clutched the knob firmly in the other. Her heart began to thud painfully in her ears as she attempted to insert the key into the lock. The door swung inward at the slightest pressure. It was already open.

Chapter Three

Boy Meets Girl

There was someone in her house. It took Kate all of ten seconds to figure this out, to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that she wasn't alone. The creak sounded like a shot in the dark, echoing through the foyer and robbing Kate of breath as she trembled in the open doorway.

Earlier, when she'd left for work, the door had been locked. Olivia had mentioned in passing that the door had a tendency to stick unless the handle was wiggled just-so, and Kate distinctly recalled twisting the key in the lock, then jiggling and testing said lock on her way out the door. And since she hadn't yet given Lilly a key of her own, that only left one possible explanation. Someone had broken into her house tonight. Her eyes bore into the gaping darkness of the foyer, unable to discern so much as the outline of the entryway furniture.

The intruder could still be in the house. Ice washed over Kate, and she told herself to move, to run—but she couldn't. Oh, God, she couldn't move. It was just like those dreams she used to have. Nightmares where she was surrounded by the dark, standing on a deserted, fog-shrouded street and she knew that someone was chasing her, that she needed to run like hell, but... couldn't. Her muscles coiled now, ready to spring, and still she remained glued to the porch, a fine cold chill working its way over her skin. This was no dream; this was reality. A twig snapped, somewhere to her left, on the other side of the wraparound porch.

No! Kate sprang into action, turning her back to the open doorway, whirling away from the scuffling sound at the other end of the porch, closer now. She stumbled down the steps, tripped over her own feet on the last one, righted herself, and sprinted across the yard. Her gaze darted to the house next door. The windows were all dark. Oh Lord, what if there was no one home? What if her neighbor was sound asleep and the intruder grabbed Kate before anyone even answered the door? What would Lilly do without her?

Was the man still behind her? She didn't know. She couldn't hear anything over the rush of her own pulse, a steady thrum-thrum-whoosh that filled her ears and blocked out all other sound. She felt like she was running in slow motion—she wasn't going to make it to her neighbor's porch. There was no way.

Scream, she commanded herself, scrambling up the wide set of steps and pounding on the front door until the sides of her hands ached. She only hoped her neighbor could hear the noise; each time her fists connected with the solid wooden door it felt slowed-down, muffled. She didn't dare turn around, expecting at any moment to be snatched roughly from behind.

Suddenly, above the blood rushing through her veins, Kate heard movement on the other side of the door. A loud thump, then a crash and a curse, could be heard from within the house. In the next instant, the door opened a crack and someone peered at her through the narrow opening. The faint glow of a lamp illuminated the man's face, and relief flooded through Kate in a welcome tidal wave. Only then did she risk throwing a glance over her shoulder. She didn't see anyone, thank God.

"Can I help you?" The man opened the door a little wider now, glancing right, then left.

"Yes," she gasped, gulping lungful after lungful of humid, salty air. "Please help me, someone—" Kate's gaze swung away from her own yard and back to the man in front of her. She froze. He was wearing makeup. And not just some black liner, either, but a full-out, Tammy Faye deal. "—broke into my house," she finished, her wide-eyed stare fixed to his face.

"Yeah?" He glowered at her. "Go call a cop."

"But—" She recoiled when he turned on his high-heeled shoes, stalked back into his house, and slammed the door in her face.

* * *

He didn't need this shit. Jaxson leaned over to untie the ankle straps on his shoes, then shoved them off, feeling a small measure of satisfaction when his kick sent the strappy heels flying across the kitchen. They hit the cabinet with a sharp thud, and he scowled. The woman's outline was faintly visible through the sheer peach curtain that covered the heavy block glass window pane in the front door. She hadn't left.

Jaxson was unaccustomed to the surge of guilt that tightened his chest when he replayed the way he'd just spoken to her, but he didn't particularly regret his sharp tongue. He was tired, his goddamn feet hurt from walking around in those goddamn heels all night, and he'd had his ass pinched by an eighty-five-year-old man tonight. A strange woman interrupting him, then gawking at his makeup job, when he'd been this close to putting an end to this wretched day and calling it a night, had been the last straw. It was added bullshit that he didn't need. Like it wasn't bad enough he was here as the DA's bitch. Jax had enough problems of his own. The woman outside could damn well take care of her own.

But she's a woman, his conscience whispered. It was a thready, tenuous sound that he hadn't heard in a very long time. He didn't want to be hearing it now. Jaxson sighed. The woman said she'd had a break-in. Who was she? Where did she live? Was her intruder still out there? Was that someone watching her, maybe even now coming after her? He rested his forehead on the linen-covered glass, cooling down for a second before he grasped the doorknob, twisted, and faced her, grim acceptance lacing his tone.

"Okay, get in the house," he told her, feeling magnanimous all of a sudden.

"Um..." She wrung her hands and shifted her insubstantial weight from one foot to the other, alternating wide, fearful eyes between the house to the left, and him.

"Is that your house?" he asked, forcing some softness into his tone.

She nodded. "There's someone over there." She shivered, and her terrified gaze settled on Jaxson.

"Come on, get in here and we'll call the police." He sighed, leaning forward to clasp his hand lightly over her arm, wincing a little at the sight of his glittering bangle bracelets next to her gold-dust skin. He drew her into the house, then glanced around one final time, but there wasn't much to see. The street was quiet. The rest of the neighborhood was in bed for the night. "The phone's this way."

He let go of her and passed through a set of French doors to the living room without waiting for her to follow. She did, though, and he met her halfway, a white plastic cordless phone held in his outstretched hand. "Are you okay?" he asked, noticing the way her hand shook when she accepted the phone and sank to the sofa.

She squeezed her eyes shut, nodded, and dialed 911, and he felt like an ass for not asking her sooner. Standing there watching her fingers turn white around the handset of the phone, light gold-and-brown hair falling forward to obscure part of her face, he felt most of his anger begin to cool and fade. She looked so small, almost fragile, sitting there on the couch, curling around herself, one arm wrapped tight around her middle as she spoke into the phone.

"I'd like to report, I mean, I need to report," she took a deep breath, "a break-in. My house was broken into tonight." Her voice became stronger as she listened to the dispatcher on the other end of the line, then recited her address.

A second later, she was looking up at Jax again with those wide eyes. Gray, he noticed. Her eyes were gray, maybe blue. The only light in the room came from a single china-blue lamp that sat perched on an antique-looking end table. Briefly he thought about flipping the switch for the overhead lighting but immediately decided against doing so. The woman in front of him looked freaked out enough as it was. Flooding the room in a sudden brightness probably wouldn't do a whole hell of a lot for her nerves, and the last thing Jaxson needed was a hysterical female. Clearly, she was already on the edge.

"They're on their way," she told him. "They said to stay on the line..."

"Okay." He nodded and dropped to the seat on the opposite end of the couch. She glanced at him, and her hands began to shake again. Jaxson carefully unwrapped her cool fingers from around the telephone receiver and easily plucked the object from her grasp.

"We're going to stay on the line, but I'm setting the phone down until the cops get here," he told the dispatcher.

"Thank you," she murmured when he'd place the phone facedown between them on the white-and-purple flowered sofa.

"Ah, I'm... sorry, about earlier." His lips twisted. "It's been a long day, ya know?"

"Yeah." She exhaled, then crammed her hands between her knees and trembled, her gaze a thousand miles away.

"I'm sorry I snapped at you, on the porch, okay?" he blurted, forcing the words out through lips that suddenly felt awkward. "I'm having a shit day and it was wrong to take it out on you."

"Oh." Her eyes darted to his. It was clear he'd managed to surprise her again. Considering the circumstances, he thought with a grimace, staring down at his cocktail dress, he'd have figured the woman would be beyond surprise at this point.

"I'm Jaxson, by the way," he said without holding out his hand. "Jaxson Green."

"Kate," she murmured, giving him another small, tense, not-quite smile. "I'm sorry I'm bothering you tonight." She paused and sucked in a deep breath. "I can't believe this is happening. We just moved in."

"We?" Jaxson shifted uncomfortably on the couch and entertained dark fantasies of ripping off his pantyhose and putting the damn things through a shredder.

"My sister Lilly lives with me," she answered before her spine stiffened. "Oh my God, I need to call her."

There was panic in her voice, and Jaxson reached into the beaded evening bag on the end table at his elbow. "Here." He shoved his cell phone at her. "Use this."

He watched as she punched in a number, her fingers appearing marginally steadier.

"Lilly?" She cleared her throat. "Are you still at Alexandra's? I need you to stay there, okay? I know you're spending the night. Don't come home until I call you again. Yeah, no, everything is... fine, but... someone broke into the house tonight." She held the phone away from her ear, and Jax heard the screech from the other end of the phone, clear on the other side of the couch. "No, I was at work. I came home and the door was open. And then I thought someone was chasing me. I think whoever broke in was on the porch with me, yeah, around the side of the house. I heard a noise. Yeah. The police are on their way. I'm fine, Lilly, I promise. This is the neighbor's phone. I'm next door. Listen, I've got to go, but I'll see you in the morning, okay? I'll just meet you at Alexandra's. Love you, too."

The deep tones of a doorbell reverberated through the house as she handed the cell phone back to Jaxson.

"The police are here."
Chapter Four

Inside Out

"I'll get the door." Jaxson sighed and rose from the couch.

Kate watched him disappear from the room. This time, she valiantly tried not to stare—tried and failed. He was wearing a dress. The thought was enough to wring a smothered giggle from her, and briefly she wondered if she was becoming hysterical. She didn't know what to make of her neighbor. Jaxson.

The name seemed to fit the man. The dress did not. He was tall and looked on the strong side of average, build-wise. She hadn't seen a hint of his real hair beneath the frizzy blond wig, but his brows were dark brown and well shaped without crossing into feminine territory.

The rest of him, though... Kate swallowed and peered at the doorway he'd recently exited. She heard voices in the other room and took a deep breath, wiping damp, clammy hands on her pink hospital scrubs. Jaxson stalked into the room then, glowering at her before his expression softened infinitesimally. Two men followed close behind him. They were garbed in dark blue uniforms, with chunky black radios clipped to their belts. Both wore shoulder holsters.

Kate nodded at the police, feeling a rush of relief at their larger-than-life presence in the sitting room. Everything would be all right now. Tension uncoiled within her, and she rose to her feet to greet the officers. The younger of the two returned her smile and stood just inside the doorway while the older cop took a seat next to Kate on the couch.

"Your neighbor here," the man's gaze flicked to Jaxson, an unreadable expression on his face, "tells us you've had some trouble tonight."

He doesn't know what to make of Jaxson's appearance, either. "A man broke into my house."

"You saw the intruder?" This from the cop at the head of the room.

"Well... no." Kate wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, her eyes seeking out a silent Jaxson for a split second before she returned her attention to the officer's question. "I guess I just assumed it was a man."

"We've got a couple of our guys over at your place right now. If anyone's still in the house, we'll find 'em." He patted the couch cushion between them before flipping out a small, rectangular notepad and pulling a pen from somewhere inside his vest. Brusquely, he clicked the back of the pen and began to ask questions, pen scratching across paper with each response she gave.

Slowly, Kate began to relax even further. She told the men about her new job at the hospital, about her sister's recent graduation from high school, then explained how, a month ago, she and Lilly had inherited the house from an aunt, ending with how they'd moved in only today.

Against her will, Kate's gaze frequently sought out her neighbor. Each time, she found his own gaze already resting on her. But while Kate was becoming increasingly at ease, Jaxson looked anything but. His eyes were glacial pools, and she couldn't help but wonder at his sudden change of mood from the few moments they'd spent sitting together on the sofa while they'd waited for the police to show up.

True, even then he hadn't exactly been Mr. Congeniality, but had at least apologized for his terse, rude statement when he'd first opened the door to find her standing on his porch, gasping and in the full grip of panic.

Kate still didn't know what to make of that, despite his apology. She'd had her own share of bad days, but she couldn't imagine opening her door at eleven o'clock at night, finding a distraught woman begging for help on the porch, then slamming the door on said woman, after telling her to call a cop. Her attention shifted to Jaxson's floral-print dress and dark beige pantyhose. The Florence Henderson look was at direct odds with his gruff demeanor and downright surly expression. Clearly there was a great deal she didn't understand about her neighbor. Well, at least he'd stopped scowling. Intuition prompted her to add "for now" to the assessment.

Once the police had her statement, it was time to walk through her house, accompanied by the officers, of course. The last thing she wanted to do now was go home, but they needed to shadow her from room to room in order to determine if any of her and Lilly's personal property had been taken. The cop who'd sat beside her put a hand to the side of his radio when it chirped loudly in the otherwise silent room.

"Go ahead, Gabe."

"All clear over here, Benson."

"Ten-four. We're bringing the homeowner now."

"They didn't find him?" Kate's lips turned down at the corners.

The officer shook his head. "Are you ready to go?"

"Yes." She wasn't, but she didn't see the point in admitting so to the three men in the room or in delaying the inevitable. That was her house next door, hers and Lilly's, and she'd have to go back sooner or later. Might as well be now, she reasoned, climbing to her feet and following behind the two officers. Jaxson took up the rear but paused at the front door.

"Aren't you—" She broke off abruptly, biting back what she'd been about to ask. Of course he wasn't coming. He was her neighbor, not her friend. Her problems had nothing to do with him, and he'd been the first to make that abundantly clear.

"Do you want me to come with you?" he asked with a sigh.

Kate forced her mouth to close. "Uh, no, that's okay," she finally said, her hands reaching up to twist and re-tuck a lock of hair that had fallen over her right shoulder. "I mean, not unless you want to. If you've got something else to do..." She knew the hopeful expression on her face was clear for him to see. Beyond the front porch, the night was dark, ominous, and suddenly she didn't care if she sounded desperate or not.

Jaxson stared down at her for several long beats before he nodded. "Let's go."

* * *

The house was empty and looked marginally less creepy than it had a half an hour ago when she'd first returned home from work. Absently, she noted the streetlight was back on; it illuminated their block in a hazy neon glow. Storm clouds continued to roll in from the west, and the night still had a slightly unreal, creepy quality.

Kate forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, trudging up the walkway off of the porch. Jaxson walked silently beside her, lending his comforting, if strange, presence to her wavering sense of calm assurance. Everything was okay. Logically, she knew that. Jaxson was beside her, and four cops waited up ahead on the enormous wraparound porch.

They'd already told her nobody lurked within the confines of her house. But maybe that was the problem. They hadn't caught the man—the person—who had invaded her space, and that was seriously unsettling. Kate tamped down visions of knife-wielding strangers returning in the middle of the night to ravage and maim her. Dramatic? Maybe, but she felt that her concern was a valid one. Who was to say the intruder wouldn't come back? The more she thought about it, the more sense her theory made. Whoever had violated her space tonight had essentially just gotten away with it. What was to stop him from coming back?

She shivered and inched closer to Jaxson. If someone had told her that by this evening she would be tromping up her creaky porch steps with a police escort on one side and a transvestite on the other, she would have laughed it off as pure fiction. Her arm bumped against the soft fabric of Jaxson's gown, and she was reminded that sometimes truth was definitely stranger than fiction.

He made her feel safe. Heat infused her skin and she ducked her head, holding out her hand to take her set of keys from the officer who'd picked them out of the grass beside the front porch. She didn't even remember dropping them. Considering the panic she'd been in, and her mad dash to Jaxson's front porch, it wasn't a surprise that her keys had been the last thing on her mind.

Kate had been running for her life—and he'd slammed the door in her face, she reminded herself. Her next door neighbor was a transvestite who apparently suffered from mood swings. He shouldn't make her feel safe. Wanting him here with her right now probably spoke volumes about her mental state...

But she didn't want to be alone. Not tonight. And he had helped her, after all, so he couldn't be all bad. A little odd, maybe. She cringed when he adjusted his wig and stepped over the threshold of her home. Was transvestite the proper term for what he was? She wondered, looping the cold steel key ring over one finger and following him through the door.

"Have you been feeling well, lately, Miss Delaney?" a tall, dark-haired cop asked the moment she walked into the foyer.

"Um." Her tongue snaked out, nervously licking her bottom lip. What did this man care how she'd been feeling? She met his intent stare and nodded briefly. "Yes, I feel fine, except for the fact that someone just broke into my house. Why?" she asked, the word coming out stilted, unsure.

"You haven't been experiencing any unusual stress?"

Stress? What was he getting at?

Jaxson had paused at the entrance to her living room, and Kate watched him turn and frown at the officer. The cop noticed Jaxson staring at him and returned the disapproving look with interest, skimming disdainfully over the ladies clothing and the bleached, teased wig.

"I haven't been under stress," Kate answered, stepping forward and blocking his view of Jaxson. "Why do you ask?"

"Then are you playing some kind of joke tonight? Do you have a history of mental illness, Miss Delaney?"

"Wha—mental illness?" she croaked.

"What's the word, Carl?" one of the officers who had been with her next door asked, coming into the room. It was the young one. The one who'd remained by the arched doorway to the sitting room while Kate was being questioned.

"I've got a few questions for Miss Delaney," Carl told the other man. "We didn't find anyone in the house. There were no signs of forced entry."

"But my front door—" Kate began, shoulders tensing.

"Oh, there was damage to your front door, all right." Carl's lip curled. "The lock had been picked. From the inside."

The tarnished steel key ring bit into the palm of Kate's hand. The lock had been picked from inside the house? How? How was that even possible?

"That can't be. It doesn't make any sense," she argued, taking a defensive stance.

"That's what we're trying to find out." Carl fixed her with another one of those disconcerting, measuring stares. "Filing a false report is a crime."

"I didn't make it up." The words left her lips in a rush. "Someone really did break into my house tonight. He was waiting for me when I came home. I heard his footsteps on the porch and then I ran. The front door was open. He'd definitely been in the house."

"Is anything missing?" Carl countered, though why he'd asked, she couldn't say. He'd seen her walk in just now. He had to know she hadn't yet had time to walk through the house.

"I don't know."

"Let's look now," Jaxson interrupted, crossing the room and taking her hand in his much larger one. His rings pressed into her fingers, the chill of the silver and gold dragging her out of her dazed state.

"Jaxson, I don't get it," she whispered fifteen minutes later.

They'd gone through both floors of the house, painstakingly checking each room, especially the bedrooms and the kitchen. Granted, she and Lilly didn't own anything that could be considered extravagant, but there were a few pieces of jewelry each had brought with them from Atlanta, and Aunt Viola had left them a set of sterling silver cutlery. None of which had been touched.

Beyond that, they owned the typical household items—a couple of televisions, a VCR, a DVD player, iPods, and a handful of movies. Nothing that couldn't be tossed into the back seat of a car.

The art on the walls was antique and the furniture was of good quality, but those were not things that any average, run-of-the-mill petty thief worth his salt would bother making off with. Regardless, everything was in its place, arranged just as Kate had left it when she'd locked the door behind her that afternoon.

* * *

"Well, at least nothing was stolen, right?" Jaxson shrugged, heading down the stairs to join the officers who waited impatiently in the front entryway. "So... what's with the mirrored room?"

"Don't ask. And yeah," Kate spoke slowly and descended after him, "that's great, don't get me wrong. But you heard those men." She lowered her voice and, ahead of her, Jaxson slowed his pace and glanced back over his shoulder. "They think I made the whole thing up. That I... I don't even know, picked my own lock? And made this up, for what I have no clue. Who would do something like that?"

"A crazy person?" He shrugged again and picked up the pace.

"I'm not crazy."

"I never said you were."

"I didn't make this up. Someone was really here."

"I know."

"And—wait—what?"

"I said I know." Jaxson sighed. "I believe you."

And the funny thing was, he did. Sure, he didn't know Kate Delaney, didn't know a single damn thing about her, but he knew people. And she'd been completely terrified earlier. He'd seen it in her wide eyes—violet eyes, he could see now under the brighter lighting, not gray or blue like he'd originally thought.

No way had she made the whole thing up. "It's not me you have to convince." He sent her a meaningful look, then inclined his head toward the officers clustered next to the front door.

"I think they've already made up their minds." Kate's mouth tightened. "Nothing is missing," she called to the officers.

"If you have any more problems, give us a call," the older cop, Benson, advised her, not unkindly.

Kate gave the man a grateful smile, and Jax felt his gut tighten. Hell. The woman was dangerous. She made him feel edgy and at ease all at once. And when she smiled, it made him want to do things for her. He felt ashamed now for snapping at her and slamming the door in her face earlier.

He watched Carl issue thinly veiled threats to Kate, reminding her of the penalty of non-emergency calls to 911, and he felt the unfamiliar urge to put himself between her and the old bastard. He didn't. That would have been very, very stupid, given his current legal troubles. Somewhere in the house, a clock struck twelve, and Jaxson's eyes watered as he smothered a yawn. He needed to go home and get some sleep.

The cops left, shutting the door behind themselves. Then it was just him and Kate, alone in the house. And the ghosts, he amended, exhaling and letting his eyes do a wide, slow sweep of her foyer and, beyond that, her living room. He hadn't seen anything during their inspection of the first and second floors, but he'd felt them—and heard them. The ghosts weren't what put him on edge, though. The space around him felt thick and tense, different somehow, and that was saying something, considering he'd pretty much seen it all. He'd been five years old the first time he'd seen one, and he'd been hearing them long before that. Murmurs and snatches of conversation that were usually hard to make out and faded quickly. Mostly, the dead wanted to be left alone. Some didn't, but Jaxson had become an expert at not letting on to the fact that he could see and hear things that normal people couldn't—a lesson he'd learned the hard way. The dead here clearly weren't eager to be seen, but they were vocal nonetheless. A low, steady hum of sound, whispered words that blended together. Oh yeah, the place was definitely haunted. Not that it was his problem. A glance at the wall clock confirmed it was past time he left, but still he hesitated.

He didn't want to leave Kate, he realized with a start. As if she would want him to stay... Jaxson shook his head and opened the door. He didn't know her. But he was pretty damn sure she wouldn't want a strange man hanging around her house after midnight. A strange man in a fucking dress. He frowned, prepared to tell her goodbye and make the short walk to his own house. To go to bed and forget all about a violet-eyed girl who had great hair and too many problems.

She grabbed his arm. "Jaxson. Wait."

Shit.

"Do you have to... to go?" she stammered as one of the police cruisers disappeared down the street and around the corner. "I mean, right away?"

"Yeah."

"Oh." She frowned. "I thought, you know, maybe you could stay for a few minutes."

Jaxson watched as she hugged her arms around her waist. "What are you getting at, Kate?"

"Nothing." She clamped her lips together. "I'm sorry. It's late and you've done enough. Thank you for coming with me, for calling the police. And thanks for letting me in earlier. It was nice meeting you. Goodnight."

He closed the door and faced her fully, wincing at the faint hint of sarcasm in her voice, at the reminder of his earlier rude behavior. He stared down into Kate Delaney's wide, gray-purple eyes and felt like swearing. He didn't need this. He didn't need her. He'd be lucky to make it out of this town with both his life and his freedom intact. The last thing he needed was to throw another complication into the mix.

"You can stay at my place tonight, if you want," he heard himself say.

* * *

Gabe Bailey adjusted his shoulder holster and clicked his seat belt into place, then stared at his partner in silence for several long, drawn out moments. The veteran officer scribbled notes onto a pocket-sized notepad before tucking both pen and paper into the shirt pocket of his dark blue uniform. The pointed ends of the gold star on his chest reflected the light from the other cruiser as it backed out of the shared drive between the houses at 502 and 504.

"Carl?" Gabe questioned after several more seconds had ticked by. It wasn't his place to question Carl Jensen's mood, or his judgment calls. Not to mention it probably wouldn't bode well for Gabe's career if he made a habit of calling his commanding officer's final word into question. Still, even though he was a rookie officer, he'd never known Carl to be unfair in his dealings with the people of Crystal Cove. Abrupt, yes, when the situation called for it, but not unfair or short-sighted. And as far as Gabe could tell, Kate Delaney hadn't warranted that kind of treatment.

"Sir?" he asked cautiously.

Carl glanced at his rookie partner for a split second, then followed the direction of the younger man's stare to the aging Victorian that flickered a harsh yellow under the faulty streetlight. Carl shifted in his seat and turned the key in the ignition, bringing the cruiser to life. He switched the wipers on as the first drops of what promised to quickly become a full-on downpour splashed against the windshield. "I thought we were done with these damn calls about this house when the old lady kicked the bucket," he muttered.

"I'm afraid I don't follow, sir," Gabe said, staring up at the old house. A flash of movement from above caught his attention, and he raised his gaze to one of the two second-story windows that faced the street. A light came on in the room, and Miss Delaney stood silhouetted in the middle of the room. As he watched, she crossed to the window and stood there, staring out. It was too dark to make out her features, but he recognized her long, blonde hair. Lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating the heavy cloud cover and, for an instant, the woman at the window. Gabe started, certain that Miss Delaney had been wearing a pink shirt, not a white one. He blinked as her palm went flat against the glass. Then she waved. A moment later, she moved away from the window and the room went dark.

"Oh, yeah, you're new around here," Carl was saying. "The old lady that lived at that house was always reporting break-ins and strange noises." He grunted, shifting into drive and pulling away from the curb. "Toward the end, she swore the place was haunted."

"Haunted?" Gabe echoed, twisting around in his seat for one last glimpse of the house before they rounded the corner. "That's crazy."

"Yeah, tell me about it."

Chapter Five

Forget About It

Stay at his place? Kate shifted her head to the side, studying the man who stood, almost reluctantly, in her foyer. He didn't want her to stay. Not really. Kate knew full well he wanted to be left alone. Whether that was the result of a bad day at work or if he was one of those people with a natural inclination to be standoffish, she couldn't say. And speaking of rough days at work—what on earth did Jaxson do for a living? Kate took in the enormous pink fuzzy slippers he'd put on before they'd left his house, and she suppressed the urge to pry.

She was almost afraid to ask about his day job. Did he dress... like that? She couldn't imagine what kind of employer would allow a man to come to work dressed in women's clothing. Then again, maybe she did know of a place or two that would allow, even encourage, her strange neighbor to show up for work in such an outrageously flamboyant costume. Kate didn't dare ask him such a personal question, though, even if she found herself increasingly, morbidly, curious about the oddity that her neighbor presented.

Did she want to stay with him tonight? Better yet, did she trust him? The answer to the first was, unequivocally, yes. The last thing she wanted to do was ramble around, alone, in this empty house, especially right after a break-in. And there had been a break-in tonight, no matter what nonsense the police had been spouting about the lock being damaged from the inside out.

She'd worry about the specifics of all that later. Right now it was late and she was exhausted. The past forty-eight sleep deprived hours had finally caught up with her and, coupled with the adrenaline rush and subsequent crash, she was ready to drop. But the question remained—did she trust Jaxson? She supposed that depended on what was at stake.

"Are you coming or not?"

Did she believe he was some sort of crazed person who would harm her? Not really, no. For now, she figured, that had to be good enough. "I'm coming. Thank you."

"Yeah, sure."

The wind was howling when they walked out the door. Kate took the time to lock up, pulling tight on the knob to make sure the door had properly latched.

Wind-whipped leaves swirled around Jaxson and Kate's feet, and fat, stinging raindrops pelted them on their mad dash across the driveway.

"Wait!" Kate held her hands over her head and raised her voice to be heard over the roaring of the full-out storm. "I forgot to lock my car!" A bolt of lightning split the night sky close by, behind Kate's house. The boom that followed drowned out Jaxson's response.

"Tough shit!" he shouted, slamming the key into the lock and shoving both himself and Kate into his kitchen. He steadied her when she slid wetly across the slick white tile, almost taking a header into the table in his effort to keep Kate upright.

"But—"

"Forget about it. Nobody's crazy enough to be out in this," he said, frowning at the growing puddle of water accumulating beneath himself and Kate.

"New York," she blurted, embarrassed the second the words left her mouth.

"What?" he asked, reaching to snag a pair of hand towels from the counter top.

"I-I'm sorry, that was probably rude," she stammered, accepting one of the towels and forcibly composing herself. "But it just hit me, your accent," she explained, taking another deep breath and cursing herself for letting her neighbor knock her so far off kilter.

But that wasn't fair. It wasn't him, exactly. Other than his initial reaction when he'd found her on his doorstep—which she'd decided to let go since he'd apologized, helped her, and seemed genuinely sorry for his less-than-cordial behavior—and his, er, unconventional dress, her neighbor seemed normal enough.

He was so bold, though, and direct, his personality at odds with the image he projected to the world. Silk and pearls colliding in a confusing mix of rough, granite features and eyes that saw too much. It was... unsettling.

Jaxson coughed and narrowed his eyes, and Kate was mortified to be caught staring at him—again. "Sorry. Um, earlier, when we were waiting for the police, I knew you sounded different. You're from New York, right?"

"My family lives in Manhattan," he said after several moments had passed.

"That's where you lived before you came here?" Kate asked, struggling to keep up their conversation while she rubbed at her arms with the daisy-print towel.

"No." He tossed his own towel onto the counter and took a can of soda from the fridge. "I came here from Brooklyn."

"Oh." She wrapped the slightly damp but still fluffy kitchen towel around her right hand, tilted her head to one side, and began squeezing long sections of hair through the fabric in an attempt to wring some of the moisture from the strands. "That must have been an exciting place to grow up," she finally said, nodding when Jaxson held out a red-and-blue can. "Thank you."

"It was okay," he mumbled, avoiding Kate's eyes. "Look, if you're hungry, I've got sandwiches."

"No, thank you." She popped the tab on her cola. She usually reached for coffee—light cream, no sugar—instead of soft drinks, but the icy, sugary rush was fortifying after the night she'd just had.

Jaxson shrugged and turned back to the kitchen part of the room, while Kate took a seat on one of the two bleached-wood bar stools that were partially tucked beneath the overhanging counter on the dining room's side.

Deciding she'd done the best she could currently manage with her hair and clothing, she set the towel on the Formica, close to her elbow, and focused her attention on Jaxson as he began to assemble bread and cold cuts from a foil package. She sipped her drink as she eyed the sandwich taking shape on the other side of the kitchen. It did look good, and the last meal she'd eaten was a pack of vending machine taco-flavored tortilla chips, crushed and sprinkled over Olivia's idea of dinner—iceberg lettuce, one cherry tomato, and a shredded baby carrot. Jaxson added several thin slices of white cheese onto his creation before topping it off with a thick slice of deli-style bread. Kate's stomach growled.

"Is that provolone and Italian bread?" she asked, catching her bottom lip between her teeth.

"It is." One corner of his mouth twitched up.

"Um, actually, I am a little hungry. Would you mind if I made myself a sandwich?"

Jaxson glanced up briefly. "Here, take this one."

"Thanks." She flashed him a grateful smile, digging in without further encouragement when he wrapped the sandwich loosely in a paper towel and set it in front of her. "So, tell me about Manhattan, or I guess, Brooklyn," she said when he'd made himself another sandwich and moved the second bar stool to the other side of the counter so that he was sitting across from her. Outside, thunder boomed and a gust of wind struck the front of the house with enough force to rattle the front door in its frame.

"Jesus," Jaxson muttered, shaking his head.

"It's okay, you'll get used to it," Kate said, unconcerned with the storm that raged outside their door. Georgia weather wasn't all that different from Florida. Slightly less rain, maybe. But she was no stranger to storms. Jaxson, though... "This is a lot different from New York, I guess."

"Yeah," he snorted. "A little. The heat, the humidity, the storms. They didn't tell me it would rain every other day." He shook his head.

"They?"

He looked momentarily taken aback. "My aunt and uncle," he finally replied. "Sorry. You were asking about New York, weren't you? That's kind of distracting." He smiled wryly as another boom of thunder seemed to vibrate the very foundation of the house.

"It's okay. I understand." Kate shrugged. "After my dad died, Mom took me and Lilly to her cousin's farm up in Wisconsin and it was rough."

"Yeah?"

"Hmm." She sipped her cola and nodded. "We didn't stay long, and all I really remember is being frozen all the time. The North Woods may be a beautiful place, but I don't think we would have ever gotten used to the cold."

"So you ended up back in Florida."

"Georgia," Kate corrected absently, watching the muscles in Jaxson's jaw work while he chewed. "I'm from Georgia. The house next door—my house—actually belonged to my aunt, Viola Leclere, my father's sister. She passed away last month. For some reason, she left the house to me and Lilly Ann."

"For some reason?" Jaxson popped a lone corner of bread into his mouth before wadding up the paper towel and pitching it across the kitchen and into the trash can. "What makes you say that?"

"I don't know." She shook her head and shoved the remainder of her own meal away, pushing back from the counter top and resting her hands on the tops of her thighs. "I guess it's not so out of the ordinary. Aunt Viola never had any children. But we weren't close. Lilly and I hadn't been out here in years." Kate shrugged. "And we didn't keep in touch. No letters or phone calls, nothing like that."

"She didn't tell you about her plans, you know, before she died?"

"No." She frowned. "My cousin Olivia was the attorney who handled Viola's will and estate and even she was surprised. Viola was sick. She'd been diagnosed with breast cancer and was in the hospital when she decided to have her last will drawn up. Out of the blue, she calls Olivia and flies her down here from Chicago to handle the paperwork. Four or five weeks later, Olivia was calling to tell me Viola was dead." Kate sighed, noticing for the first time how Jaxson was leaning forward and to the side, elbows resting on counter top as he regarded her thoughtfully. Not speaking, not looking away, but calmly, patiently waiting for her to finish spilling her thoughts into the space between them.

Suddenly, she didn't want to. Her mouth felt dry and she fumbled with her drink, telling herself it was the condensation on the can that made her feel like she was all thumbs. Kate drained the can in two long swallows and tried not to be appalled at how much she had just shared with someone who was more or less a complete stranger.

No, that wasn't right, she thought as she pursed her lips and slid off the stool to dispose of the can and what was left of her sandwich. Jaxson didn't quite fit into the "total stranger" category. But in no way did she know him well, and he was moody and wore women's clothing, and...

And she'd just had to remind herself of those facts. A cold chill mist settled over her skin like a film, and she told herself to stop acting like a fool. Sure, she was alone and a little scared and loaded down with responsibility—not to mention the sharp end of lingering grief for her mother—right now, but her mercurial neighbor was not the answer to her problems. At all.

By the time she'd turned around and made the short trek from one end of the kitchen to the other, Jaxson was standing up.

"So, um, this is a great house," Kate said, crossing her arms over her chest and curling her fingers closer to her palms. It was true. The house had a classic charm that she envied. The air here felt pleasantly cool instead of flat-out cold, calm instead of turbulent. The light was dim and gentle, and appliances hummed in the background. Somewhere in the house, the steady ticking of a clock could be heard, and Kate dreaded the moment when she would have to go back to the dusty, oppressive silence of her own house.

"Yeah," Jaxson agreed easily, as if he hadn't really noticed before she'd brought it up.

"Is this a family home?" she asked, following as he led the way through the sitting room and up a dark staircase that she hadn't noticed when they'd been in this room earlier.

"No. It's just a rental. Watch out, somewhere here in the middle there's a place in the carpet that sticks up."

"Oh, I think I just found it." Kate gasped, wincing when she fell forward on the stairs and banged her shin hard. Above her, Jaxson stopped and swore under his breath before he backtracked to help her to her feet. He kept one hand wrapped around Kate's arm, just above her elbow, until they made it to the second-floor landing.

"Sorry. I keep forgetting to replace the bulb up here. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just clumsy," she said, stepping away from him to face the long, dark hallway.

Jaxson walked a few feet past Kate, and suddenly the hall was illuminated in a soft, golden light. "Come on, I'll give you the grand tour. Then you can pick which room you want for the night."

"How many bedrooms are up here?"

"Six."

"Wow."

"Yeah. So, you've got five to choose from."

Outside, the storm peaked. They strode toward the first of the six bedrooms as rain pinged loudly against the roof and windows. A flash of blue arced across the sky, casting the large bedroom in an eerie light the minute Kate and Jaxson entered the room.

"This room will be fine," Kate told him, turning a slow circle as Jaxson closed the door behind them. She wandered closer to the window, peering at the rain-soaked, wind-whipped world beyond the pale lace curtains. "There's a bathroom through that door?" she asked, turning to the left.

"Yeah. I think there are towels beside the sink. And there ought to be blankets in here somewhere." Jaxson's voice was muffled for a second. Then he emerged from the walk-in closet, a thick chocolate-brown fleece blanket clutched in one arm, a set of navy blue sheets in the other. "Found 'em."

"Thanks." Kate held out her arms for the bedding, but Jaxson didn't move.

"I'll help you make the bed," he offered after standing awkwardly in the middle of the room for a moment.

"Oh, okay." She nodded, moving to the other side of the bed and catching the end of the sheet he draped across the full-sized mattress. "So," Kate said casually as she tucked her end around the corner of the mattress, then straightened. "You never said why you came to Florida. How come you left New York?"

Deep rumbling outside seemed to match the sudden shift in Jaxson's mood. For some reason, Kate realized as she stood facing him now beside the bedroom door, her question had struck a nerve.

His face was a tense, irritated mask before even that much expression was shuttered. "It was time for a new start. I'll see you in the morning."

"Jaxson, wait—"

Another sharp crack and resounding boom echoed around them, and the lights flickered one final time before the room went black.
Chapter Six

In The Dark

Jaxson turned and, for a second, his face was illuminated in the flash of blue-white light that shone through the partially open curtains.

"There should be a flashlight in the top drawer of the nightstand."

Then he was gone. The soft click of the latch signaled his exit from the pitch-dark bedroom. Well! She huffed out a breath and climbed onto the bed, then leaned over to fish around in the bedside table to find a flashlight. There wasn't one, but she found a small stockpile of thick pillar candles and several packets of matches in the drawer on the other side of the bed. Several long minutes' worth of fumbling in drawers produced a small silver tray that she assumed was meant to hold the candles as they burned.

She struck the match along the side of the rough strip on the edge of the matchbook, pupils dilating as sparks raced along the line and the match flared to life. She lit two candles and settled herself against the pillows, reclining back, kicking her rubber-soled clogs off her feet and onto the carpet, and lying back down to cross her legs at the ankles. Absently, Kate turned her head and twisted the gold ring on her thumb around in slow circles as the flickering flames threw shadows on the delicate, tea rose-patterned wallpaper beside the bed.

She yawned, and her mind began to drift over her very eventful first night back in her aunt's home—her home now, she reminded herself for the umpteenth time since she'd found out she'd inherited the place. Remnants of the storm echoed in the now-soft spatter of raindrops against the roof and the distant rumble of thunder. The midnight soaker seemed to have moved on for the night, further inland, leaving a calm, easy silence in the candle-lit bedroom.

Kate breathed in the peaceful, comfortable stillness, let it soak into her skin, because in the morning reality would once again come crashing down around her. She would have to go back to her own house, and the day after that she was due back at the hospital for a full shift. According to the nursing shift coordinator, Kate was banished to the basement for corpse-sitting duties for another six weeks. Well, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. At least she wouldn't be alone during her next shift. She'd already been informed that a guard typically completed each night shift alongside the shift nurse.

Apparently, the hospital in Crystal Cove had its share of midnight vandals—kids breaking into the morgue for kicks. She shuddered and turned onto her side, propping her head on her hand and watching the candle's cheery flame dance in the shadows. What kind of kid broke into a morgue for fun? She could see a kid sneaking into a school, sure, or onto a football field to spray paint something, maybe even a movie theater, but the local morgue? No, she just didn't see the appeal. But she could understand why the hospital's board of directors had voted to beef up security and place a nighttime guard in the basement.

What she didn't understand was what she herself was doing down there. Granted, she was fresh out of nursing school, but Kate didn't think she'd ever heard of a hospital employing a third-shift "morgue nurse." Really, what was she supposed to do? Make sure anybody the staff brought down in the middle of the night was really dead? Wouldn't the attending doctors and nurses have already determined that?

Well, at the end of the day it didn't matter, she decided. She had a steady job with decent wages at a small-town but reputable facility. There would be money in the bank every week to pay the few bills that she and Lilly incurred. She could keep the fridge and pantry stocked with food. Cooking dinner for only Lilly at the end of the month, then lying to her sister and saying she'd already eaten, would be a thing of the past. Now that their mother's final medical bills were paid off, maybe she and Lilly could even afford a luxury or two—some news clothes, a girls' night out. So, who cared if her current job description was a shade on the morbid side?

The house was another thing altogether. That did matter. For one brief, wild second, Kate entertained fantasies of trying to sell the old place. Immediately, she put the brakes on that train of thought. Selling the house before Lilly was finished with college and comfortably out on her own would be irresponsible. What if they had some emergency or an illness, or... well, Kate couldn't think of anything specific right off hand, but the reality was, any number of situations could pop up over the next four or five years and severely tax their limited resources. And aside from some distant aunts, uncles, cousins, one grandmother, and a very well-meaning Lindsey, she and Lil were on their own.

Kate felt a twinge of conscience at discounting her family. Okay, maybe she and her sister weren't "on their own."

But it wasn't anyone else's job to take care of the two of them. They all had lives and bills and problems of their own. And to Kate's way of thinking, she'd done a good enough job taking care of her sister these last few years. Even Aunt Charlotte, when she'd made the trek from Louisiana for Lilly's high school graduation, had remarked on what a good job Kate had done. The same family members who had initially balked at the idea of an eighteen-year-old guardian for a fifteen-year-old girl had eventually come around to admit that Kate had stepped up to the plate.

They didn't know about the things Kate had gone without in order to take care of her sister and put herself through nursing school. And it didn't matter now. Her hard work had finally paid off and they'd made it through one of the darkest parts of their lives. Now, there was real hope for a better future and she wasn't going to screw it up by throwing them into debt. She sighed and sat up to blow out the candle.

So, someone had broken into her house tonight, or tried to? She wasn't sure, but thought she may have come home before the intruder had a chance to actually enter the house. She didn't care what those cops said—someone had forced her door open, and not from inside the house, either. Kate had never heard a more ridiculous scenario. Were the police experts on door latch damage? Really, how hard would it be to actually determine such a thing?

A chill crept along her nerve endings as another thought came to mind. Assuming the lock had been damaged from the inside, what if whoever had been on that porch tonight had tried to make it look that way to throw off suspicion for the breaking and entering they'd done? So, this... thief... picks locks on people's front doors, then somehow scratches the latch to make it look like the damage was done from inside the house? Kate frowned but figured it made as much sense as anything else and moved forward to extinguish the last candle. There was only one problem with her scenario: Nothing had been stolen.

Maybe she'd interrupted him before he could go into her house. But if that were the case, why had he already covered his tracks with the whole funky lock damage thing? Kate paused over the candle, lips pursed, but then shook off her anxiety and put out the flame. She could spend the rest of the night attempting to pick apart the actions of a crazy person, or she could get some sleep and in the morning go shopping and splurge for a better lock on her front door.

"Fuck!"

Her head snapped up at the muffled curse that carried through the wall. Sitting in the dark, she bit her lip and giggled at the torrent of curses that echoed from Jaxson's bedroom to hers. Clearly, he had the room next to hers. What was he doing over there? Did she want to know? A crash and a bang effectively finished shattering the peaceful solitude of the house. She clapped a hand over her mouth as her mind whirred through the possible scenarios of what was going on in the next room. Her new neighbor wasn't boring, she'd give him that.

Kate vaulted easily off the bed. Walking carefully in the dark, she followed the sound of Jaxson's grousing and the intermittent thumps to the adjoining bathroom. She and Jaxson had connecting rooms? One hand groped along the grainy, textured wallpaper of the bathroom, and a second later she located the switch and flipped it on. Three large, pale globes buzzed to life over the single wood-and-porcelain vanity, and Kate spied the door at the other end of the cozy bathroom. Apparently so.

She knocked gently and, when a thick silence was the only response, she twisted the knob and slowly pushed the door open. Cautiously, she poked her head around the now-partially open door—and bit her lip at the sight that greeted her.

"Jaxson, what are you doing?" She brought both hands to her mouth and hurried over to the tangle of man and pantyhose on the floor beside the bed.

"What's it look like?" he grumbled, sitting up and reaching for his twisted stockings. This time, he jerked them the rest of the way off and, smooth, muscled legs freed, stood up to face his neighbor.
Chapter Seven

A Declaration of War

"What are you doing in here?" Jaxson demanded, shoving a hand through his hair and struggling to hold on to what little patience he had left. That fact was driven home when his fingers encountered the rough edge of the platinum wig that now rested haphazardly on his head. He had no pride left.

Reminding himself that none of this was Kate's fault helped somewhat. His problems had nothing to do with her. His neighbor was an innocent bystander, and a passing one at that, he was quick to remind himself.

"What are you doing in here?" she countered, pressing her hand tighter over her mouth. "I heard all the, um, noise..."

"If you're going to laugh at me, then get out." His eyes narrowed before he looked beyond Kate, to the pale light that spilled onto the carpet and rimmed her hair in a dusky halo. He'd been stumbling around in the damn dark and the power was back on? He closed his eyes and silently counted to ten.

"Uh... Jaxson?"

"When did the power come back on?" He voiced the question without bothering to open his eyes.

"Oh. Just now, I guess. I hadn't even noticed until you pointed it out."

He opened his eyes then and stared at the woman who'd taken several steps into the room. Hands at her sides, her steps were tentative now, but she was steadily coming toward him. His mouth twisted into a frown, but she didn't falter. Within seconds, she was standing in front of him. "You didn't notice?"

Kate shrugged and stared up at him. "In the South, the power is always going out. You get used to it."

Jaxson didn't want to get used to it. Any of it. Not the heat or the shit weather, damn sure not these godforsaken wigs. He watched Kate's chest rise and fall as she inhaled. Then she took the final step that brought her toe-to-toe with him, and he couldn't think at all.

"So..." Small, white teeth briefly clamped down on her full bottom lip, but then her head came up and she regarded him in the cool stillness of the bedroom. "Do you need help?"

He shook his head and tried to block out the warmth emanating from her body. Jaxson quickly found out that by taking small, shallow breaths, he could—mostly—block out the cross between cotton candy and caramel that was Kate's scent. "No." His mouth snapped shut and he took a step back. "Just hit the light on your way out, will you?"

"Oh, okay, yeah," she stammered, blinking rapidly.

He turned his back to her and faced the nightstand, fingers only a little unsteady as he once again began to work the long pins out from around the edge of the wig, just like his aunt had shown him.

They weren't coming out. He bit back another string of curses as he tried to get a grip on one of the long pins only to find it was hopelessly entangled in both the thickly woven backing of the hairpiece and the wig cap. He gave it up for the moment as a lost cause, moving on to the pin next to it. He managed to yank that one out and flung it onto the dresser as he heard the telltale click-click-click of the light switch across the room. Kate's voice rang out a second later.

"It's not coming on."

Jaxson grunted. "Bulb must have blown." He tugged at another pin. "Just leave the bathroom door open, then."

When silence was the only response, he figured Kate had left to go back to her own room. He jumped a foot in the air when smooth, cool fingers pressed against his shoulder.

"Here. Let me help."

He spun around to face her, and long moments passed while he stared down at her pixie face. She seemed hesitant again, unsure of herself, maybe unsure of him. He inhaled, then cursed himself an instant later when her scent filled his senses. "Most of the pins are stuck," he heard himself say.

Her fingers moved skillfully over the same pin he'd had no luck with, and in less than sixty seconds she had extracted it from the wig cap.

"Okay. I'm impressed," he grudgingly admitted, a ghost of a smile curving his lips. Kate deposited the pin in the hand that Jaxson held, palm up, between their bodies and went to work on the next one.

"I used to do Lilly's hair," she murmured, dropping another pin into his waiting hand.

"Your sister?" he asked, distracted and struggling to form a coherent response as Kate leaned up on tip-toe in order to reach the pins and fastenings behind his left ear.

"Hmmm." She nodded. "Besides, I'm a nurse."

He wasn't sure what that had to do with anything, but he held his breath when she leaned forward.

"Oh, wow, this is really stuck."

Soft strands of her hair brushed against Jaxson's chin. His gut clenched and he closed his eyes, fought hard for control. Oh yeah, he was definitely getting hot for his neighbor. And that was just flat-out stupid. Idiotic. His life was a tangled fucking mess. He didn't even know her.

"Got it." She pulled back, triumphant, the final pin in hand. Her eyes became wide, serious, violet orbs. The teasing laughter in her tone faded, and her hand skimmed the side of his face as she reached up and pulled the wig from his head. "You have dark hair," she murmured.

The hair pins fell soundlessly to the plush, navy blue carpet. Jaxson brought both hands up and as if it had a mind of its own, one hand slid up to cup the side of Kate's face, mirroring her own position. The other hand closed over her fingers. His breath hitched at the close contact. Kate's fingers were cool and, like the rest of her body, felt delicate in comparison to his own. The rest of her slim form radiated a warmth that went straight to his head and he closed his eyes, pressing his forehead against hers. He had to tell her no. She had to leave. Now. He couldn't afford to get involved. And even if it were possible, he didn't do involved.

"Why are you doing this?" He whispered the words into her skin and tried not to wonder how she would feel, how she would taste.

"I don't know," she breathed.

He felt her shiver beneath his hands and tilted her head up. "I... don't know," she repeated, with only a little more force this time. Her fingers curled around his and she pressed her smooth cheek to his own.

Her heat leeched into him and he was all at once surrounded, swamped in the dizzying mix of emotion that he was already beginning to somehow associate with Kate.

"You have to go."

"Yeah," she agreed.

Jaxson's blood boiled at the small catch in Kate's voice, and he dipped his head down a fraction of an inch. The slight move put him into even closer contact with her. His lips hovered only millimeters from her mouth. Close enough to drink in her soundless, gasping breaths. Close enough to touch...

Never in his life had he struggled so much. You can't do this. Send her away. But a louder, more insistent voice was making itself heard now over the thready, barely-there hum of his conscience. Now, now, now. The litany kept time with his heartbeat. Then the roaring in his ears drowned out even that, and he lost the battle altogether.

Jaxson's lips opened against her skin, and he pressed a hot kiss against the corner of her mouth. Kate went rigid against him, and he tightened his hold on her, moved to cup the back of her neck. He trailed quick, furtive kisses along the line of her jaw, pausing only to trace a slow path with his tongue. Her sharp intake of breath went through him like a spear as she pressed even closer to him. He groaned and caught her earlobe between his teeth, tugging, then swirling his tongue against her skin before moving to claim her mouth in earnest.

Oh God, she felt so damn good against him. His lips settled over hers, his tongue darting out in between teasing, nipping kisses, and he was rewarded ten times over when she rocked her hips against him. Jaxson felt like he was on fire. His arms were coiled and tense as they closed all the way around Kate. The juncture of her thighs rocked into his lap again and he bit down on her lip, one arm automatically coming down to circle her hips. The soft material of her pink pants bunched in his fist. He inadvertently pulled the cloth tighter against her rear, groaning when her legs parted and allowed him even greater access to her body.

He had been wrong. Kate wasn't delicate at all, but strong and lithe and hot. He groaned, the sound coming out as more of a growl, and he wrapped his other hand around her hair, pulling her head back and kissing his way down her throat. She made a small sound, deep in her throat, and he felt an answering twinge in his body. Two steps back and he had her pressed against the nightstand.

"Jaxson..."

"Oh, fuck yeah," he growled as her legs parted even wider than before. His hands shot out to grip her hips, and he was yanking her forward even as he stepped between her legs. She gasped, and one hand struggled with the pink-tasseled drawstring of her pants.

He pushed her hand away but was quick to replace it with his own. Kate reached out to grasp his shirt and she tugged at it, yanking the fabric up, trying to pull it over his head. The material caught on his earring, and Jaxson winced, the fog in his head abruptly clearing. He let go of Kate and braced both hands on the bedside table, his arms framing her as glanced down at himself, chest heaving. He wasn't wearing a shirt. Kate had been trying to pull his godforsaken dress over his head. Sometimes, there are no words.

He shoved away from the nightstand—from the bed—without looking at the blonde, violet-eyed creature whose breathing was still every bit as erratic as his own. What the hell had he been about to do? He chastised himself as he walked around the bed and, when that wasn't far enough, to the dressing table at the opposite end of the room. His hands shook as he removed the gaudy, gold hoop earrings and tossed them onto the surface of the rented vanity. Kate was an innocent stranger, and besides that, the woman was a nurse. He bit back a groan and forced his eyes away from her in the mirror. He watched her slide off the nightstand and eyed his own less-than-composed face, his guilt and frustration reflected back at him in stark clarity.

Kate was a nurse, and he was... a screw-up. A bookie from east Brooklyn who'd thrown away more chances in five years than most people got in a lifetime. Jaxson's lips thinned into a harsh line and his hands tightened on the lacquered surface of the dressing table. He was still in full war paint, and angrily he removed the false eyelashes, pretending not to notice Kate hovering near the door.

He wished she would just go already. Even before he'd turned state's evidence, he'd had nothing to offer a woman like her. And now that he was bait for a killer, for a man whose very existence he woke up cursing each morning? Well, now he had even less to offer. The possibility that Jaxson would end up winning his freedom but paying for his association with Roger Klein with his life was very real.

He glanced once more at the woman behind him. A man like Klein wouldn't care that Kate was standing next to Jaxson. He'd snuff out her life just the same. Hell, Kate was young and blonde. Although her hair was a shade too dark, she was eerily similar to the type of victim that fucking pervert seemed to prefer. Jaxson cursed the day he'd ever been stupid enough to do business with him. He'd known there was something not quite right about the man, but one dollar was as good as the next, right? Wrong.

He raised his eyes to his neighbor's, in the mirror. Kate had to go. Hanging around with him could prove hazardous to her health. But she wasn't leaving. It looked like he'd have to turn around and speak to her. He thumped a fist against the top of the vanity and turned around to face her.

"Go back to your room, okay?"

"Hey, I wasn't—"

"Look, let's not do this, eh? I'm just not interested."

"So, are you..."

Jaxson frowned when she paused and turned to leave, apparently unwilling to say anything further. "Am I what?" he asked, halting her progress from the room, against his better judgment.

She bit her lip, one hand on the door. "Are you a lesbian? I mean, it's okay if you are, I just..."

Jaxson froze. "Are you serious?"

"Oh, forget it. Just forget it. It doesn't matter."

"No, I'm not a fucking lesbian. I like women," he growled.

Kate stared pointedly at him but remained silent.

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "I work at a club," he ground out. "I'm a... dancer. This," he swept a hand down the front of his body, "has nothing to do with my sexuality, okay?" He glared at her.

"Fine." Her own lips thinned.

"I'm just not—I can't—you have to go."

"Yeah, I get it. I'm going."

"Next time, keep your so-called help to yourself," he called out, staring hard at her retreating form, pissed off that even now he wanted to haul her back into the bedroom.

* * *

"That isn't why I came in here!" she protested, stalking back into the room.

"Yeah, well, you can go now." He shrugged and angled away from her.

"Okay, what's with you?"

"Nothing. Just go, Kate," he snapped, gripping the hem of his dress and yanking it over his head. He sent it sailing across the room before he turned to face her.

"Why are you acting like this?" Kate asked, making a valiant effort to keep her gaze on his face, only now beginning to calm from the turmoil Jaxson had thrown her into.

Hands on his hips, he regarded her with an unreadable expression. "What would you know about how I normally act?"

The question stung, much as Kate figured he'd intended it to. What was she supposed to say? That she'd lost control? Clearly, he knew that. The moment when she'd sat in his parlor and said "I'm Kate" felt like it had passed weeks ago, not mere hours. But the reality was, she didn't know how he normally acted. She knew virtually nothing about him. Shame flooded her again. She'd been about to take her clothes off on her transvestite neighbor's bedside table.

"Goodnight, Kate." Jaxson's tone was pointed, final.

She had been dismissed. Slowly, her initial embarrassment turned to anger. "Hey, I didn't force myself on you," she argued. "You wanted me, too."

"Well, I don't want you here now."

"Fine." She hugged her arms around her middle, heat flooding her face at his icy, controlled words. "The next time you fall over your own pantyhose, don't come crying to me."

His face clouded, and he swung away from her to stare out the window.

Kate watched a muscle in his jaw tick as light from the street illuminated him in profile. "Lock up when you let yourself out in the morning."

Her chest rose and fell with each rapid breath. When he didn't turn around, she spun on her heel and stalked from the room, slamming the connecting bathroom door behind her. She leaned against the solid surface for long, agonizing moments while she struggled to find her bearings in the shifting, churning sea of night.

Chapter Eight

Not Alone

Kate was up with the sun, an easy enough feat considering she'd spent the night tossing and turning after leaving Jaxson's bedroom. On any other morning she would have been dead to the world until at least six thirty, maybe even eight. Now that she was pulling a later shift and didn't have to wake Lilly up at seven, she'd planned to start sleeping in until ten or eleven. And here it was at... she yawned and glanced around in a half-hearted attempt to find a clock. There wasn't one, but if the pearl-gray light that was just beginning to seep through the room was anything to go by, it was before six.

Scenes from last night assailed her almost the instant she sat up and put her feet on the floor. What in God's name had she been thinking last night? If her mother had still been alive, Aria Delaney would have been horrified to know her daughter had thrown herself at a stranger. A transvestite stranger. Kate groaned, head in her hands as visions of the previous night tormented her.

She saw herself reaching up to remove the last pin from Jaxson's wig—his wig!—the tips of her breasts grazing his arm. His lips on hers. Her butt on his nightstand. His erection pressed stiffly between her legs, creating delicious friction every time she'd bucked against him. She cringed and squeezed her eyes shut as the full memory of her wantonness rolled over her.

There was no excuse for her behavior. That was all there was to it. Kate let her hands fall to the rumpled bed and forced herself to stand up and face the day. She did the normal, mundane things that would have been done on any other morning. First, she hit the bathroom and made an attempt to look semi put together. After a couple of minutes, she gave up. Her hair was hopeless, and the long, sleepless night had left her looking pale. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, and her purse had spent the night in the car.

Hell, what did it matter? Kate sighed, slipped into the same rubber-soled shoes she had worn to work the night before, and did a quick but thorough job of tidying up the bedroom. A glance out the window told her that maybe ten minutes had passed.

She stood in front of the door and took three deep breaths. Would Jaxson be up and about? Would he even still be in the house? She recalled his instructions about locking up after herself, and her mouth settled into a grim line. It didn't matter if he was in the house. He'd made it clear last night that he didn't want to run into her this morning. Well, that was fine because she didn't relish the idea of running into him, either.

She thrust her shoulders back, twisted the doorknob, and strode into the hallway. Despite her intention of breezing past Jaxson's bedroom without so much as a glance to the right, her gaze strayed to the closed door and her stomach clenched. Nerves, and it was no wonder. She jogged down the stairs and made her way through the lower level of the house. In the soft light of day, Kate was able to confirm her first impression from the previous night.

The pale pinks, champagnes, and golds provided the perfect backdrop for the Victorian charm the house seemed to exude. The home was warm and charming—completely unlike the man who lived there! The thick, beige carpet muffled her footfall and a minute later her shoes squeaked against the linoleum in the kitchen and dining room. She was at the front door when a faint scuffling noise sounded behind her.

"Kate."

She turned around. Jaxson was standing in the kitchen doorway, clad in a nondescript, navy blue bathrobe over a blue skirt and white blouse. His close-cropped, dark brown hair was wet from the shower. Kate lifted one hand to tug self-consciously on her own wild hair but quickly forced it back down to her side and steadily regarded her neighbor. "I was just leaving."

"Yeah..." His green eyes traveled the length of her body. "Look, I just came down here to..."

"To what?" she prompted when he fell silent. Keeping her gaze locked on him required a Herculean effort. It was impossible to see him this morning and not picture his hands on her body. Her heart rate kicked up a notch as she waited for him to respond, to make this morning less awkward, to say something, anything.

Jaxson opened his mouth, closed it, and finally dug into the side pocket of his robe. He pulled out a black elastic band and tossed it across the dining room.

Kate scrambled to catch the hair tie.

"You left that on the floor last night."

Now it was her turn to gape. "Thanks," she finally snapped. Without a backward glance, she walked out the door, slamming it in her wake and stomping across the damp grass that separated her house from Jaxson's. She was still moving full steam ahead as she took the steps up the porch two at a time, paused, remembered her purse, backtracked, and retrieved it from the Toyota. Back up the steps she went, slamming her front door behind her, so irritated that for a full minute she forgot to pause, forgot to be afraid.

Kate's bravado deserted her a second later. She stood in the entryway, back pressed to the front door as dust motes swirled around her. Some long-dormant self-preservation instinct made her slow her breathing and close her eyes, listen for any sound in the empty house. Hopefully it was empty. Her pulse sped up, and for a second she reached behind her back and went for the doorknob.

"No," she whispered. Repeated the word with more force. The door had been locked a moment ago. Hadn't it? The house was silent.

"There's no one here." She exhaled, hating that her voice sounded so shaky in the rambling space.

Kate squealed when the crash came. A thud, then the sound of glass shattering. The sitting room—it had come from the front sitting room, just off the entryway. She took two steps forward, a chill racing down her back as she moved away from the safety of the front door. Get out!

Ignoring her internal voice of reason, for the moment, anyway, she scooted closer to the wall and crept to the edge of the entryway, skirting around the dark cherry wood secretary and a bare coat rack in order to get an unobstructed view of the next room.

There was nothing to see. Her gaze briefly swept the space before she turned her attention to the wide, open hallway beside the entryway.

The sudden jangle of bells put Kate's heart back in her throat. She turned tail and fled, her bravado having taken her as far as it was going to. Her feet pounded the floor, and she grappled with the doorknob for far longer than should have been necessary. Panic made her movements jerky, uncoordinated. Once she wrenched the door open, she stumbled out of the house and onto the porch.

Something moved in her peripheral vision. Kate whirled—and locked eyes with Jaxson.

The pale blue skirt swished around his thighs, and his low-cut blouse gaped open to reveal a smooth, muscled chest as he bent to retrieve the morning paper.

"Problems?" he called out to her, immediately straightening.

Before she could answer, the bells jangled again and with a cry, Kate spun around to confront—nothing. She paused, then looked down.

The scrawny gray cat stared up at her with baleful eyes and let out one of the most pitiful mewling cries Kate had ever heard. Hand still on her chest, she exhaled and slumped forward to grip the faded, splintered porch rail. "Just a cat," she murmured, rolling her eyes skyward when the cat shook itself like a dog and set the bells around its neck to jingling again.

"Kate." She craned her neck to find Jaxson leaning over his own porch, corded muscle looking tense as he braced his arms on the glossy white railing and glanced from Kate to her open front door. His gaze dropped lower. "Is that a cat?"

"Yes, it's... my cat," she finished lamely, her face heating at the way she'd just run screaming from her own house.

"Ah." Jaxson leaned back and folded his arms across his chest, making the satiny-looking material of his blouse pull down just a little.

Belatedly, Kate noticed that he'd put on a wig before stepping outside. An ash blond bob today, instead of yesterday's platinum vixen.

Her mouth tightened, and she fought a strong urge to cringe. Seeing him like this made her question her judgment—to say nothing of her sanity—all over again. What was with her? Whenever she pictured Jaxson, her mind brought forth images of pale green eyes and short, dark brown hair. But that wasn't him at all. She turned around and threw an assessing glance in her neighbor's direction. No, Jaxson wasn't some green-eyed Justin Chambers. He was Florence Nightingale and Ru-Paul rolled into one.

"Is everything okay over there?" he asked, staring hard at the second-story of her house.

Kate frowned and automatically glanced up, but of course she couldn't see anything except the worn timbers of her front porch ceiling, that and miles of chipped paint that may or may not have been blue at some point.

"Fine?" she said, the word coming out like a question as she raised a brow at Jaxson.

"You're sure?" His attention switched from the second floor of her house to her face, which he seemed to study intently.

"Yes," she replied, stubbornly refusing to explain her earlier actions. Nothing had happened, other than a stray cat sneaking into her house and knocking stuff over. Besides, she'd already made a fool of herself in front of her new neighbor, and once was more than enough. "My, uh," she glanced down at the animal that was now winding itself around her ankles, "cat and I were just about to go to the hardware store."

Once again, Jaxson's gaze flicked up before it settled on Kate's face. He opened his mouth only to close it a second later without having said anything further.

This time, Kate leaned over the railing and craned her neck to peer up toward the roof. Not seeing anything amiss, she shrugged, bent down, and cautiously scooped up the cat, then headed back toward the house.

"If you have any problems..."

She paused long enough to toss a look at him over one shoulder. "Yeah, I remember. Don't worry, I have no intention of inconveniencing you again with my problems." Still cradling the cat, she marched back into her own house. She used her foot to shut the door, not bothering to latch it since they'd be leaving again in a minute.

"Yes, you're going to have to go, too, cat," she said, absently stroking its short, rough fur as she entered the front sitting room. "Sorry, but you can't stay."

The cat meowed and its tail swished against Kate's arm. She refused to look into its eyes.

"Forget it, buddy. Right now, the last thing I need is someone else depending on me. As you can see, I'm not doing so hot at the moment." Kate exhaled. "Besides, I work all day, and Lilly will be at school." She paused. "Although, I don't suppose you require a whole lot of upkeep."

She did look at the cat, then, wincing over the pale scar that cut a path through the animal's fur, only a few inches from its left eye. The old wound dipped down the side of its face, ending somewhere beneath its chin. "I can't keep you," she repeated. The cat settled itself securely in her arms and rested its head on Kate's forearm.

She sighed. "I just became a cat owner, didn't I?"

Glass crunched beneath her shoes, and she stared down at the mess on the floor of the sitting room. Muted light filtered in through the sheers that hung on the wide, dingy windows and reflected little prisms of light from the shards of glass that littered the floor. Glass, glitter, and fake snow was strewn over most of the intricate but threadbare Fleur-de-lis-patterned gold-and-burgundy rug. A glance at the black marble fireplace mantel showed two empty spaces.

"You're here for less than a day and you've already broken two snow globes." She tsked and bent for a closer look. "And you've nicked the floor." She frowned at the fresh, chipped groove in the wood floor. Tightening one arm around the cat, she reached with the other and gingerly picked up the base that had belonged to the larger of the two globes, testing its weight.

"How did you manage to gouge the floor like this?" she mused.

A clock chimed six times, the gong reverberating throughout the house. The cat stiffened in her arms, and Kate made little shushing noises in an absent attempt to comfort the creature.

"Come on, we'll hit the hardware store for some cleaning supplies... and a new lock," she said, snagging her purse from the floor of the entryway where she'd dropped it earlier. She got as far as the driveway before she stopped and groaned. Would anything in Crystal Cove except the hospital and maybe a diner or two be open this early? Probably not. But there was a Walmart about twenty minutes down the highway. She remembered seeing it on the drive in yesterday. Weren't those usually twenty-four hour?

Depositing the cat into the passenger seat of the car, she plopped down into the driver's seat, tapped a quick text message to Lilly, then cranked the ignition. She rolled her window down to dispel some of the humidity, then shifted gears and backed out onto the street. The whisper of the wind as it moved gently through the large, towering old trees and merged with the swish of tires on damp pavement was the only sound to be heard as Kate made her way onto the main road and left the silent neighborhood behind.
Chapter Nine

Shadow Boxing

"And when you needed me, I came through...!"

Kate belted out the familiar tune as the last of the broken glass was propelled up the hose of her brand new vacuum sweeper. The light began to flicker, and she glanced at the chandelier overhead. One of the fixture's five bulbs dimmed again and she frowned. Light bulbs. That's what she'd forgotten. Oh well, she had the rest of the night off. Picking up a box of bulbs later at the grocery store wouldn't be a big deal.

She gave the floor a final lingering appraisal before switching off the vacuum.

"Through the sleepless nights," she sang along, her voice trailing off when static crackled over the air. After a few moments, she gave up and switched the radio off.

The hose and attachments detached easily and made a satisfying, job-well-done sort of snap as she replaced the parts in their individual compartments. She unplugged the cord from the wall and wound it, wrist over elbow, until she'd created a long, loose loop to hang haphazardly over the vacuum's handle. Years of Olivia's nagging made her bend down and grudgingly wrap the cord around its designated clips.

Kate nodded to her new cat, who was perched on the back of the sofa, grabbed the yellow plastic sack containing the new lock kit and a screwdriver set, and headed toward the entrance hall, stopping only long enough to stow the sweeper in the small utility closet off the kitchen.

She passed the thermostat on her way out and paused to punch the buttons that would kick the AC down a couple of notches.

Her flip-flops slapped the floor, and the bag swung against her bare thigh as she shoved at the screen door, set the catch at the top of the door to hold it open, and stepped into the warm, brilliant mid-morning sunshine.

Kate swiftly set the bag onto the wide, flat top rail, dug into it, and began to lay her purchases out in a neat row. A series of beeps sounded and she fished her phone from the pocket of her shorts, then tapped the icon on the main screen. Three text messages. Two were from Lindsey, the first inquiring about her first night on the job—the second was a picture of a grinning skeleton.

Kate snorted. "Funny, Lindsey." The most recent message was from Lilly and said simply, Call me.

15 min ☺, she typed back, then slid the phone back into the shallow denim pocket of her cutoffs. From her other pocket she took a pocket knife and carefully cut across the top of the thick plastic that encased the screwdriver set.

She selected the neon-green-handled Phillips and made quick work of swapping out the old brass single-key lock knob for a new pewter-finish deadbolt. As she worked, her attention kept straying to the house next door. Jaxson's car was in the driveway, along with a late-model Buick that looked as if it had seen better days.

Once, Kate thought she saw a curtain twitch to the side but didn't see anyone looking out at her, and the fabric quickly fell back into place, so she figured somebody must have brushed up against the window. What reason would Jaxson have to be concerned with what she was doing? Frowning, she crouched and raised the tool to secure the final screw.

What was wrong with her that she was drawn to what he was doing? No, that wasn't fair, she decided, lining up the screw with the pre-drilled hole in the knob plate.

She wasn't drawn to him. Hadn't he already proven himself to be a foul-tempered jerk? That and strange. She forced her gaze away from the now-undisturbed window and refocused her attention on the task at hand. No doubt about it, Jaxson Green was an odd duck. Kissing him had been a mistake, she insisted, giving the screw one final twist before rising to her feet.

Her mind drifted back to last night and what amounted to the wildest—okay, the only wild thing—she'd ever done in her life. While Lindsey and many of the other girls in her sophomore class were at dances and parties, Kate was working after school to supplement the disability checks that barely paid the rent, let alone put food on the table. After graduation, when most of the people she knew were cutting loose, making plans and traveling, rooming in dormitories, she was raising a grieving fifteen-year-old who was angry at the world.

If it hadn't been for Lindsey opting to do the first two years of her business degree at a local university, Kate wasn't sure she and Lilly would have made it through that first year. Lindsey's constant presence in their household had been a godsend.

Her friend's daily habit of dropping in to "hang out" with Lilly every day from three to five in the afternoon until Kate got home from classes and work, rain or shine, had helped give a young girl a home base and had gone a long way toward rebuilding a foundation that had been badly shaken. Lindsey's watchful eye had also probably kept Lilly out of heaven only knew what trouble.

Kate turned, bags in hand, and stumbled over her new pet. The bag with the screwdrivers landed on the top of her foot. She managed to keep hold of the much lighter bag that contained the trash—of course—and, with a muffled curse, bent down to rub at her toes. Blood welled from a small cut at the base of her big toe. She lifted the bag and noticed a good-sized tear at the bottom, sharp plastic packaging from the screwdriver set sticking out like a mini fin.

"Son of a..." she muttered. A sudden rustling sound brought her head up. She reached out to grip the edge of the door and haul herself to her feet. What was that?

The noise sounded again, louder this time, and closer. Mice, maybe? The cat hissed but didn't relinquish his position of relative safely behind Kate's legs.

She laughed nervously. "Hey, if that's a mouse, aren't you supposed to go check it out?" She smiled down at the cat, then glanced back to the open doorway in time to catch a ripple of movement at the bottom of the white linen cloth draped over the wooden secretary in the entryway. Remembering the chewed cable cord Olivia had found the other day, Kate let out the breath she'd been holding, gathered her bags, straightened, and walked into the house.

Dropping to one knee, she reached with her free hand and swept the cloth aside to reveal... nothing.

She swiftly scanned the area around the heavy piece of furniture, frowning when nothing stirred in the entryway. In fact, the whole house seemed motionless, eerie. The silence was an oppressive, vivid thing. Beside her, the cat bristled.

Kate climbed to her feet, an uneasy feeling pooling in her stomach. "It's okay, those things are fast. We—we'll get a service out, first thing," she chattered, flipping the catch at the top of the front door and pulling it shut behind her.

A drafty chill swept across her bare arms and she shivered, switched the air completely off, and meandered into the kitchen. Hunching her shoulders and folding her arms across her chest, she contemplated the open, airy space in silence.

This room, too, was much the same as she remembered it. Rows and rows of maple-brown cabinets with bronze hardware. She advanced further into the room and opened the cabinet closest to the extra-wide single white porcelain sink. Her fingers lingered over the cool metallic handle worn smooth by years of use. Aunt Viola had loved this kitchen. She herself had loved this kitchen—once.

Kate went through the motions of brewing coffee with the only small appliance she and Lilly had brought down from Georgia, save for a three-speed blow dryer. Memories long past shadowed Kate's motions as she took cream and sugar dishes from the fridge and set them on the long, wide counter alongside a clean blue ceramic mug.

Viola combining flour and sugar in an enormous chrome bowl. The scent of roast turkey filling the air while she perched precariously on a chair and accepted fat brown eggs from Lilly, who sat on the counter top and stirred a bowl of butter while Kate cracked eggs and Aunt Viola looked on approvingly...

Kate tore off a paper towel from the holder that someone—probably Olivia—had stocked the day before. She ran it under the faucet, squeezed out the excess water, and dabbed at the blood on her foot while she waited for the coffee to brew.

A shadow fell across the counter and she glanced up, startled out of her reverie of days long gone by the thick dark clouds beginning to fill the sky. The kitchen took on a somber gray-green hue, and she pulled the shutters and latched them before carrying her coffee to the sitting room.

The first drops of rain began to ping the windows as she pulled the curtains against the gloom and switched on the pair of Tiffany lamps that framed the couch. She took a sip of coffee, pulled out her cell, and punched in Lilly's number.

Chapter Ten

For You

"Kate."

"Hey, Lil, what's up? I just changed the lock on the front door, and I even spiffed the place up a bit. It's still pretty dreary and dusty around here, though."

Lilly heard her sister's voice, clear and bright—and mildly apologetic—through the line. She pulled the phone from her ear and stared at the screen; the full five bars were illuminated. Damn it. Just this once, why couldn't the cell service in Florida be spotty? You'd think with the almost-daily rain showers and weekly storms, the cell towers would have a hard time maintaining the status quo, but no such luck. So far, call quality had been crystal clear during both of the awkward phone calls she'd had to make. Well, at least her own sister probably wouldn't yell at her. Much.

"Lilly?"

She started at the muffled voice on the other end of the line and clapped the phone back to her ear in time to hear her Kate ask, "So, when you coming home?"

"Uh..." This was it, the moment of truth. She tucked her legs beneath her on the overstuffed floral-print sofa, turned her face away from the concern in her cousin Alexandra's eyes, gripped the phone tight and, for a moment, clung to Kate's voice like she would have in the old days.

"Lilly? Are you okay?"

No. And right now, she didn't feel like she'd ever be okay again. She took a deep breath, abruptly untucking her legs and scooting to the edge of the sofa. "I'm fine." She gulped another mouthful of humid, peaches-and-brown sugar-scented air and closed her eyes. "But I'm not coming back."

Silence. Then, "What do you mean, you aren't coming back? This is your home, too. I know I haven't exactly been positive about the place, but it's not that bad and—"

"Stop it, Kate!" She was pacing now. "Just—stop it, okay? Quit apologizing for everything." Lilly's eyes began to sting, and she blinked hard against the moisture she knew lurked not far behind. She heard her sister take a deep breath and she fought the urge to lash out and tell her to quit calling Aunt Viola's house "home." Home was back in Georgia. A rental house that, as of last week, had become "home" to another family on a budget.

The first teardrop slid from the corner of her eye, and she brushed it away with shaking fingers.

"Okay... so, what's going on? You know what? Don't worry about it. Are you still with Alexandra? I'm coming to get you, and we can sort everything out in a few minutes. You're just having cold feet. I'll be there in twenty, okay?" Kate prattled, a clear sign she was nervous.

"I—" Lilly broke off, swallowed and inhaled again, buoyed somewhat by the sugary warmth of her cousin's house. She had to pull it together. Kate would never believe her like this. "No. Don't drive to Alexandra's," she said, relieved that she didn't sound nearly as shaky as she felt. "I'm not there anymore and I'm not coming... home, Kate." Her voice was under control now and she only stumbled a little bit over the word. "This morning, I..."

"You what...? What happened this morning?" Kate asked, the first stirring of dread beginning to thread through her voice.

Just do it. Say it. Blurt it out and be done with it. "I got married this morning."

Lilly's gaze strayed to the suspiciously bare finger on her left hand. Inside, she cringed as her sister's ragged breathing filled her ear. God, she didn't want to hurt her. Kate was the absolute last person who deserved to be hurt, but Lilly had been right; her fake marriage was the only way her sister would willingly let go without a fight.

"What—what did you just say?" Kate gasped, picking up steam and finding her voice along the way. "Are you telling me you got MARRIED? This morning? Are you serious? Is that what you're telling me right now?" she demanded.

Lilly opened her mouth, but Kate rushed on without giving her a chance to respond.

"You haven't even been dating anyone. How? How could you do this?" Kate sputtered. "Without even telling me?"

She stopped pacing and stared helplessly at a wide-eyed Alexandra, who was quick to pick up a large black-and-silver remote and switch off the television. A shadow filled the doorway, paused, and backtracked to stare into the living room. Lilly met her aunt Carrie's curious gaze and swallowed, gripped the phone a little tighter.

"Didn't you think I would want to be there?" Kate was saying now. "How could you do this, Lilly?"

"I'm sorry," she choked, a tear falling freely and splashing onto her bare leg. She swiped shaking fingers over her thigh, and the weight of her guilt threatened to crush her. "It just happened."

Kate was silent on the other end of the line, then, "Oh, my God—you're pregnant, aren't you? Who did this to you? Who is he?" she demanded, zeroing in on Lilly's imaginary groom, not unlike a dog with a bone.

"No! I'm not pregnant. His name is Chad. We met in Georgia and we've been seeing each other. I'm sorry I never told you. I didn't... I just... didn't think you'd approve. That you would say I'm too young." She recited the explanation she'd been practicing ever since crossing the Florida state line two days ago.

"You are too damn young! What were you thinking?"

"I—"

"Where is he? Put this Chad on the phone," she said, twisting the name with the same inflection one might use for "bird flu" or "genital warts." There was real fire in Kate's voice, and Lilly could picture her sister crossing her arms over her chest, could practically see her eyes narrowing.

"He's in the car, Kate. We only stopped so that I could call you and tell you I'm okay. Everything's okay."

"Okay? Okay??"

Right. Maybe that wasn't the best word for their current situation.

"What do you mean you only stopped long enough to call me. Where are you?" Kate asked, her voice faltering as the full implications of Lilly's statement hit her.

"We're headed north."

"Where?" Kate pressed.

"Um, probably somewhere near Reno."

"Nevada!" Kate exploded. "What are you thinking?" she repeated, sounding like she was on the verge of hyperventilating. "You're supposed to start classes in less than two weeks."

"Well, yeah, but—"

"So, okay, you're m-married now. Okay, now what? What about your plans? You wanted to go to school. Since your sixteenth birthday, you've been talking about becoming a nurse. What happened to those plans?"

Lilly swallowed, and the fingers of her free hand curled into a tight fist. Her sister had just managed to hit a major nerve. "I'm still going to go to school—next semester."

"But—"

"Kate, look..." She inhaled the sweet, fruit-laden air and felt her stomach lurch in response now. "It's done. Chad and I are in love, and I wish you would support me in this."

"I will always back you up. Always. But you are making a mistake," Kate warned.

"But it's my mistake to make. Mine and... Chad's." She lowered her gaze to her toes, unpainted and slightly dirty from kicking around the trails behind Alexandra's house. Worn sandals that had started out as bright orange slapped the floor as she rose from the couch and pushed against the front door. The screen banged shut behind her.

"What was that?"

"What?" Her eyes went wide.

"That noise."

"I didn't hear anything," she said, raising her voice a little to be heard over the rain and the wind that was steadily picking up.

"Lilly, I wish..."

"I've got to go, okay? Chad's waiting. But, um, I thought that maybe you could come with me." Here was the important part of her plan, the true prize she kept her eye on. She forced herself to speak slowly, willing the words to not simply rush out in a desperate torrent. "I mean, if you want to. I thought you could sell the house and come to Reno with us. You could stay with me—with us. If you want to."

"You want me to live with you and Chad?" Kate's voice was filled with disbelief.

"We can rent a duplex or something. We'll figure it out, but yeah. Yeah, I do." Lilly swiped at her cheek.

"Oh," Kate breathed. "Well." She paused for several long, tense moments. "Okay."

"You'll sell the house? We'll start over, then?"

"It looks like you've already started over," she retorted, then sighed. "Yes, I'll put the house on the market. Are you sure about... all of this?"

"I'm sure." Lilly's words held a conviction that was at once bone deep and strangely terrifying. She'd never been more sure of anything in her life, and yet nothing was certain. She felt like she was kneeling on a raft and using a jagged blade to saw through the rope that anchored her to the dock. Behind her, the ocean waited, big and vast and eerily silent. In the next instant, she'd ripped through the final threads. "This is what I want, Kate."

"I'll call the realtor first thing in the morning. I'll need to give notice at the hospital, probably two weeks. At least," she muttered. "Will you be all right until then?"

"Yes. I'll call you when we get to Reno, and I'll have an address then. Probably just a hotel, but..."

"Don't worry, I'll be out there by the end of the month, and we'll get a more permanent place. It's going to be okay. We can fix this."

"There's nothing to fix," she lied, her tone softer now.

"Uh-huh. Do you need anything right now? I mean... anything?" Kate asked, her voice cracking a little at the end.

"No. I have to go. I'll text you tonight."

"Lilly—"

"I love you," she blurted, snapping the phone shut a moment later.

The world continued to spin. The rain still fell in ugly gray sheets. Her life was still a hot mess. She blinked back the fresh wave of tears that threatened, reminded herself this was only temporary. But would Kate ever forgive her for this deception? For manipulating her like this? She sighed. The time for reflection was about fifteen minutes past.

"Lilly?" Alexandra poked her head out from inside the house.

She turned and glanced at her cousin.

"It's raining." The normally perky blonde was uncharacteristically cautious as she eyed Lilly.

"Yeah." She tried for a smile. "I just got off the phone with Kate," she said for lack of anything more profound to point out at the moment.

"Yeah... how did it go?"

She shrugged. "It went. She's selling the house and meeting me at the end of the month."

Alex's riotous golden curls bobbed. "Good, so the plan worked."

Lilly nodded, heading back into the house when her cousin held the screen door open and moved aside to let her pass.

Aunt Carrie was waiting for them in the kitchen. "Does someone want to fill me in on what just happened?" Her china-blue eyes filled with concern as she pulled out a pair of glazed pine bar stools and motioned for both girls to sit. She tucked a chunk of light brown hair behind Lilly's ear, her fingers grazing one of the beaded silver hoops in her niece's ear. "I can't believe how you've changed. You and Alex are all grown up now." She slid mugs of cocoa and plates of warm peach pie in front of the girls. "What's wrong, Lilly Ann?" she finally murmured, taking a seat at the opposite end of the white marble kitchen island.

She met her cousin's wide blue gaze, then focused her own gray-green eyes on Aunt Carrie. "You've talked to Kate since Aunt Viola passed away?"

"Only for a few minutes at the funeral, and once, about a week before the two of you left Georgia. I know Viola left the house to you girls."

Lilly's expression must have betrayed something of her feelings, because her aunt peered closely at her.

"That was good news, right? From what Kate said, some of the pressure was off. She was hoping to finally get on her feet and save some money for the two of you. Is... that not the case?" Aunt Carrie's brow furrowed when Lilly looked away.

She jerked her head in some semblance of a nod. "But I couldn't let her do it. I can't let her—" She inhaled and placed her palms flat on the smooth, cool marble in front of her, on either side of her mug and plate. "It's too much. Kate can't stay in that house."

When her aunt only stared at her, she took a fortifying sip of cocoa and sighed. "That house does not hold good memories for Kate," she began, glancing at both of the kitchen's other occupants, even though she'd already confessed all of this to Alexandra. And, just like last night, she was careful of how much she revealed. But Aunt Carrie immediately drew her own conclusions.

"It has to do with your uncle Stan, doesn't it?" Carrie tutted, full of sympathy. "You girls used to visit every summer, until..." She shook her head.

"You think this is about Viola's husband committing suicide?" Lilly asked, refusing to refer to Stan as an uncle, even now. Her memories of him were dim, faded with time, just snatches of conversation and a sandy blond mustache that twitched up in one corner when he smiled. She couldn't even clearly recall his face, but she remembered that smile. She hated it. She hated him, even ten years later, for the harm he'd inflicted upon her sister.

"I heard that Kate found him hanging, but I never—it must have been awful."

Lilly frowned. "Kate didn't find his body. Viola did." She took a deep breath. "They'd come home one evening, and Viola was the first one in the house. He was swinging from a plant hook in the front parlor, er, from a rope, you know what I mean," she said awkwardly and took another sip. "Viola covered Kate's eyes and got her back outside in a hurry. Or so I'm told. That was the summer I got the measles, and I'd stayed home with Mama while Kate was sent here for the usual visit with Aunt Viola and Stan. She was eight that year, I think. Aunt Carrie, please promise me this doesn't go any further than right here, right now."

"Lilly...?" Her aunt leaned forward. "What are you trying to say?"

"Stan wasn't what anyone thought. After he died, Mama came here and stayed to help Aunt Viola clean out his things. They were boxing his clothes and books, stuff they planned to donate to Goodwill, and they found pictures of Kate."

"What do you mean pictures of Kate?" Carrie raised a hand to her chest. Beside Lilly, Alexandra shifted uncomfortably on a stool.

"Pictures of her at school, at the park, pictures of the two of us walking home from school. He had cut me out of all the photographs. There were even shots of Kate's bedroom, of her in bed sleeping, taken through the gap in the curtains."

"Oh dear Lord," Carrie gasped. "How did he—"

"He'd been lying to Aunt Viola. There were never any business trips. Stan became obsessed with my sister. Apparently, he'd been stalking her for years."

"Dear Lord," Carrie repeated and buried her face in her hands. Her head snapped up a moment later. "Was he abusing her? Oh God, he did, didn't he? What did he do to her? Oh, honey, did he hurt you, too?" She turned stricken eyes to her own daughter. "Alex?"

"No, Mom. He never hurt me."

"He never did anything to me, either." Lilly pushed her plate aside. "He didn't exactly hurt Kate, either, not really."

"What do you mean?"

"He didn't do—what you're thinking. Don't get me wrong, there's no doubt in my mind he would have, eventually. But Mama said Kate denied that he'd touched her."

"But he could have." Carrie sighed.

"Maybe," Lilly acknowledged. "Mama seemed to take Kate at her word. But... he scared Kate."

"How so?"

"I'm not sure. If Mama knew, she didn't tell me that part of it, but Kate didn't speak at all for weeks after that visit. Not one word. Something had her spooked, bad. My sister spent months looking over her shoulder and jumping at shadows." Her mouth tightened into a grim line. "So, now you know why I can't let her live in that house. She doesn't think I know what happened all those years ago. But Mama told me everything the summer I turned fourteen. I'd always asked why we never went back to Florida, why you and Alexandra and Uncle Mark came to see us every couple of years instead. Why Aunt Viola hadn't been up to see us in years."

"After Stan killed himself, Viola rarely left the house," Carrie murmured.

Lilly nodded. "That's what Mama said, too. She'd always made excuses, but that year, she finally told me what had happened when Kate and I were kids. I don't know why she chose to open up then. She was sick by that time, so maybe she figured it was her last chance to tell me." She chipped at her nail polish before meeting her aunt's gaze again. "I told my sister I eloped today. And that I'm on my way to Nevada. So, now she's selling the house and getting a place with me at the end of the month."

"Oh, Lilly, tell me you didn't—"

"No, of course not. And I'm not really going to Nevada."

"You bet you're not. You will stay right here with us." Carrie sniffed and came around the counter to envelop her niece in a fierce hug.

"Thanks." Lilly returned the embrace and began to feel a little calmer, a shade stronger. "But I can't stay here. I can't take the chance of running into Kate in town. And what if she ends up stopping here for a visit?"

"Then what are you going to do?"

"Alexandra's driving me to Alabama. I'm staying with Aunt Sylvia for a few weeks, until Kate is free."

"And then you'll have to come clean with her," Carrie mused. "Are you sure it wouldn't have been simpler to be straightforward with her?"

Lilly shook her head. "My sister has spent her entire life taking care of everyone else. And she can't help it, but she's stubborn. She's sacrificed so much for me already. Now it's time for someone to look out for Kate, for a change."
Chapter Eleven

Bait

"I love you, too," Kate murmured to the dead air that was left behind when her sister hung up. She stared down at the cell phone she was barely aware of holding before clicking it off and placing it carefully on the coffee table. Long moments passed while she sat perched on the edge of the gold-and-floral print couch, statue-still, while image after image of her sister assailed her reeling senses.

Lilly on her first day of kindergarten, standing proud in brand new white socks and a purple daisy-patterned dress, holding tight to Kate's hand while Mama and Daddy instructed them to smile for the camera. Then Lilly had turned around and insisted they hurry and get a picture of her My Little Pony backpack before the school bell rang... Lilly's purple sneakers squeaking as they walked down the crowded hallway a year later. She'd wanted Kate, not their parents, to walk her to the classroom, because she was a big girl.

Lilly curled up, fast asleep in Kate's bed—the space closest to the wall—after a storm had awoken her in the middle of the night.

Lilly, head bowed, pressed to Kate's side as the rain poured around them and they stood over the casket and said their last goodbyes to Daddy.

Crayons, dress-up, lightning bugs in a jar, whispered secrets, pretend games, and summers at the local pool... Doctors, tests, hospitals. Lilly perched on a striped green chair pushed close to a small round table, working on her spelling words while Kate spooned ice chips into Mama's mouth.

Boyfriends, hopes and dreams and broken hearts. Lilly breaking curfew.

Kate couldn't remember ever having a curfew. Not that it had mattered. She'd only been out a few times. Memories continued to flood her senses. Late nights long gone, her candle burning at both ends until it was nothing but a ragged, frayed wick and a puddle of melted wax.

The final images crested on the wave of Kate's emotions before crashing and evaporating into nothingness, into the past. Where it belonged. Lilly. Stiff-shouldered, arms crossed at Mama's funeral, broken-hearted and convinced she was forever done with everyone and everything. Lilly screaming, slamming the door. Unreachable.

A stray tear tracked its way along her cheekbone, and she automatically reached for the phone. She keyed in the first four digits of her sister's number before she changed her mind and dialed Lindsey's instead.

"Hey-hey, Kate. Whatcha up to on this fine day?"

Kate smiled in spite of the fact that her life was in the process of crumbling into tiny, dysfunctional pieces. "Hey," she said, clamping her lips together when she heard the shakiness of her own voice.

"Uh-oh," Lindsey intoned, falling silent for a few seconds before curiosity got the best of her. "What happened?"

"Am I that easy to read?"

"Yes," Lindsey said automatically. "What's wrong?"

Kate sighed, and the urge to hang up the phone—and toss it into a drawer—was suddenly overwhelming. The words that a moment ago had been begging to come out, to be forced into some sort of order that made sense, now stuck in her throat. Talking it out with Lindsey, or anyone, wasn't going to help, she realized. For a problem of this magnitude, she needed alcohol.

"Kate?" Lindsey prompted.

"Lilly called this morning."

"O-kay..."

"She's married and on her way to Reno."

On the other end of the line, the sound of glass shattering accompanied a whole lot of clattering and a muffled curse before Lindsey's voice boomed in Kate's ear. "Did you just say—"

"Yes," Kate interrupted, her own voice grim.

"Oh. My. Gawd."

"Pretty much. Does the name 'Chad' sound familiar to you?"

"Chad? No. Why? Is that who she ran off with?"

"She says they dated in Georgia. I've never met him." Kate cradled the cell phone between her ear and shoulder, slipped into her shoes, and began to hunt for her purse. "I thought maybe you might remember seeing him around, or have heard of him." Damn it, where had she put it?

"No. The only guy Lilly ever brought home was Troy. Junior year, wasn't it?"

"She had a couple of dates with someone named Brandon. Beginning of her senior year, but nothing came of it."

"Oh, right. Brandon."

"As far as I know, she hasn't dated anyone in months."

"Apparently, we were wrong on that score."

"Looks like." She tapped a fingernail on the smooth surface of the kitchen counter and finally spied her purse draped over the back of a chair. "Between you and me, I'm already having fantasies of taking this Chad guy apart."

"I'll help you," Lindsey said darkly. "So, we know exactly nothing about him?"

"Zip. Nada." She sighed, looping her purse strap around her fist and wishing like hell that Lilly's "husband" was standing in front of her, preferably with his hands tied behind his back.

"What kind of man elopes like that, with an eighteen-year-old girl? Oh Lord... she's pregnant. Oh Kate, tell me she's not pregnant."

"She says she's not."

"Well... what are we going to do?"

"She wants me to go to Reno with them."

"She does?" Apprehension was clear in Lindsey's voice. "Well, that's good. But what about the house? And your job? I take it Lilly has dropped out of school."

Kate's head began to pulse, the pain settling into a dull, throbbing ache. "I'm calling the realtor tomorrow, right after I give my two-week notice at the hospital," she said, and for the sake of her own sanity, she steadfastly refused to think about words like "sister" and "college" in the same sentence.

"Okay," Lindsey said after a moment. "I'll put in my two-weeks, too. How many boxes will we need to pack the house, you think? Ten medium and five or six small?"

"I can't let you do that," Kate said gently, not surprised in the least at her best friend's declaration of loyalty. "I'll be fine. I just—"

"Well, Kate, I don't remember asking your permission. You'll need a roomie, won't you? Unless you're planning to bunk with Lilly and Chad." Like Kate, Lindsey put an ugly inflection into her tone when she said his name.

"Yeah, right," Kate snorted. "But that doesn't mean you're uprooting your entire life for me."

"For you and Lilly. And if you'll remember, I didn't want to stay in Georgia without you guys to begin with."

"Your whole life is in Georgia."

"So, more than six small boxes?"

"No, six is fine." She shook her head. "But you're only allowed to help pack. That's it, Linds."

"Sure, whatever you say, Kate. So, tomorrow you're calling a realtor. What are you going to do tonight?"

"Tonight?" She pulled the front door shut behind her and headed toward her car, sparing only a cursory glance at the next wave of storm clouds gathering over the rooftops in the distance. "Tonight, I'm getting wasted."

"I don't blame you. Text me later, then?"

"Will do," Kate said, clicking off, then tossing the phone into the passenger seat as she pulled her seat belt over her lap and snapped it into place. The dash clock read 2:45.

Kate shrugged. "It's five o'clock somewhere."

* * *

Jaxson stood on the porch in shorts, a sequined teal tank top, and a pair of the most ridiculous flip-flops he had ever seen. He'd scowled when Jake had shown up earlier in the day, bearing a plastic Walmart sack full of taupe hosiery and the gaudy footwear. The large plastic sunflower on the top of each sandal practically obscured his entire foot, and the flip-flops themselves were made of some kind of hard, clear, glittery green gel-looking stuff. Then again, after a weekend of G-strings and heels, overblown hair and wig caps that itched like hell, what were a couple of plastic sunflowers?

His gaze strayed, again, to the house next door. Kate's car sat in the driveway and hadn't moved since three thirty that afternoon. Not that he'd been paying attention. Not that he cared about her comings and goings. The way she slammed her car door made it impossible not to notice her arrival. That was all. Earlier, around five, when he and Jake had been in the dining room, sharing a pizza and splitting a six-pack, he'd heard music coming from her house. Something loud and pulsing that wasn't unlike the crap they played at the club. Kate's house had been quiet for several hours now...

He squinted through the gloom and the lingering clouds that all afternoon had threatened rain but hadn't delivered. A faint amber glow shone through the curtains at damn near every first-floor window, but he couldn't make out anything of the rooms inside.

Jake's boot heels thudded across the porch, and Jaxson turned in time to see his uncle sling an overnight bag across one shoulder and take the porch steps two at a time. Jake was pushing sixty, but the man's easy gait still belied his age.

"When are you coming back?" he asked, forcing himself to turn away from his neighbor's house.

"Gonna miss me, are ya, boy?"

Jaxson snorted.

His uncle sobered. "I'm only spending a couple of days with your aunt. Three at the most. If you have any problems..."

"I won't."

Jake was visibly skeptical. Again, Jaxson's attention strayed to Kate's porch, where a shape shifted and moved in the darkness. His fists clenched and he started forward only to be brought up short an instant later when it was Kate's cat that materialized from the shadowy far corner of the porch and not some intruder.

Jake raised a brow and glanced from his nephew to the cat.

"My neighbor had a break-in last night. I thought I saw something over there. It was just the cat."

Jake tossed his duffel into the back seat of the Buick before walking back to Jaxson and leaning in close. "I mean it, Jax. Watch your ass." He lowered his voice. "Word is, our guy's finally taken an interest in you."

"Yeah?" Jaxson grunted, trying to appear nonchalant, but inside, his senses were piqued and instantly at full-alert.

"Undercovers tailed him here last night. He followed you home, circled the block twice after you'd gone in. Keep your eyes and ears open. He could make a move at any time."

Jaxson's pulse rate kicked up as adrenaline surged through his body. "What makes you so sure he'll make a move?"

"Oh, he'll come after you all right. It's only a matter of time."

Jaxson shrugged. "Have a good trip."

"Damn it, boy—"

"I'll be careful. Happy?"

"Hell, no." Jake shook his head. "But it'll have to do. I'll see you on Friday. Don't forget what I said. You've got security, but they can only move in so close right now without blowing cover. I won't bullshit you, Jax. You aren't well protected. That's why the GPS is so important—"

"I've got it on me at all times." He patted the pocket of his shorts. "If the bastard comes for me, I'll be ready."

Jake nodded reluctantly and moved away from his nephew to climb into the car. The door creaked shut with a groan of protest, and Jaxson watched his uncle fire up the engine and back to the end of the drive. Jake idled and rolled down the driver's side window to lean out and deliver a final warning.

"It's not 'if,' but 'when.'"

His steely cop-eyes studied his nephew one last time. Then he was gone, leaving behind a cloud of exhaust that rapidly dissipated into the muggy Florida night.

A mosquito landed on Jaxson's left shoulder and he felt the slight sting even as he slapped the insect away. Jesus, but he was getting sick and damn tired of the bugs in this godforsaken hell pit.

He walked back to his covered porch and the dubious protection of the Citronella candle that burned on the white lacquer-and-glass table. He could have taken a seat at one of the two wide, white wicker chairs that framed the round table, but instead he opted to stand. His gaze roamed over Kate's house as he considered his uncle's words. Klein would come after him. A part of Jaxson, the cynical part, wasn't so sure it would be that easy. The bad guy comes after the bait and falls for the carefully laid trap. The cops swoop in to save the day. Another pervert off the streets. Everybody goes home happy.

His eyes narrowed as he thought of Roger Klein. The logical side of Jaxson's brain told him Jake was probably right. Jaxson hadn't just been dangled under Klein's nose. He'd been painstakingly molded to play the part. In fact, the level of preparation had been nothing short of eerie. Jake and some FBI agent whose name he couldn't remember now had grilled and quizzed him on every aspect of the three known victims in the case, until Jaxson felt like he'd personally known the dead women.

He knew that Shannon Blythe had been a nurse, that Allie Kolhom's mouth had curved up at one corner when she smiled. He knew that Tanner Reid had been in the habit of throwing her head back whenever she laughed. Jaxson had spent so many hours studying the women's photographs and files—files filled with detailed notes generated from countless interviews with the victims' friends and families—that he was left feeling a little surprised that none of the dead women had tried to make their presence known to him. Then again, why would they? He frowned and turned his back on Kate's house. They really weren't his concern. Shannon, Allie, and Tanner, they had nothing to do with him, or he to them. There wasn't a damn thing he could do for them, anyway, even if he had been so inclined.

At the end of the day, they were still dead... and he was still an ex-con. His lips curled into a self-deprecating expression of mockery. Oh, he would be ready if—when—Roger Klein came calling, but only because it was in his best interest to help take the bastard out of commission. Not because he was some good guy out to avenge the women, but because he had made a piss-poor decision in doing business with the man, and now it was time to pay for his error in judgment. One in a series of many. Then, if he lived through this, and if he managed to avoid prison, maybe he would turn over a new leaf. Make an honest living, do the "right" thing, for a change. Whatever the fuck that even was. But he guessed that abandoning his illegal gambling ring and giving up the money laundering business would be a good place to start. Hell, Jaxson snorted, done and done. He'd started his career as a bookie. No, that wasn't quite right. Technically, he'd started out as an accountant. He'd done some work for different firms, and he'd made a half-decent living, nothing extravagant, but it had been adequate. Then he'd taken up with a firm in Brooklyn, worked long hours, busted his ass, and soon after, he'd been handed what he thought at the time was the account of a lifetime.

Tony was a long-term client who ran several successful businesses—and always kept an extra set of books. He had connections. Soon, Jaxson had connections, too. He handled some business for Tony for five years, eventually branching out on his own and dipping his hand into a couple of lucrative side ventures. Then he'd met Roger Klein and agreed to help the man funnel some money from a club Roger owned in Florida. But the club was just a front for the man's real money maker: women. Blonde women. Sometimes he sold them, but the FBI believed that, more often than not, he killed them. The authorities were continually collecting evidence and building their case against the Florida club owner, but the widely held belief was that Shannon Blythe, Allie Kolhom, and Tanner Reid were just the tip of the iceberg.

One woman, Jaxson was never told her name, had been sold rather than killed and had managed to escape from the east Georgia house where she had been held. She was even able to point the finger at Roger Klein as the man who'd kidnapped her, abused her, then sold her. Weeks later, Jaxson had been arrested—again—and brought up on charges of racketeering. Again. Only this time the FBI was brought in, and they wanted to know about Roger Klein and shit like kidnapping, and the murder of three blonde women. Shit he didn't go in for, knew nothing about. And now here he was. Bait for some fucking pervert serial killer. Jaxson scowled. Just let Roger Klein come after him. The prick.

He extinguished the Citronella candle and started to go inside.

The voices stopped him in his tracks. Whispers at first, soft but insistent, they grew in volume as Jaxson's tension worked its way through his shoulders. Snatches of words were carried through the balmy night air, bits and pieces and impressions. Most of the words overlapped one another and made no sense. But a few, he was able to pick out. Mirrors. Hate. Rage.

Stop me... Stop me... Stop me.

A chill raced across his skin, a cool breeze in an otherwise hot, sticky night. Like a beacon calling him through the darkness, he turned toward the house next door, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the place. Kate's place.

A light shone from one of the second-floor windows that faced his own house. Jaxson walked to the end of his porch and watched in grim silence as the curtains parted, watched as a blonde woman was suddenly there staring down impassively at him. She wore a white sundress, and her hair was smoothed carefully over one shoulder. The other shoulder revealed the thin strap of her dress on an otherwise bare, tan shoulder. She was young. She looked like Kate.

She was see-through.

He'd suspected as much when he'd seen her at the window earlier but hadn't been sure. Then, he'd assumed it was Kate's sister. Now, he could clearly see a dark, mahogany dresser through her entire midsection.

Jaxson gripped the porch rail as he locked eyes with the woman. She looked angry. Then her head turned, as if she were staring at some point behind her insubstantial body. When she turned back to the window, the smile she gave Jaxson was tight... cruel.

A second later, she was gone. A few moments after that, the light winked out. The whispers had subsided. Crickets and the occasional swish of tires over pavement from the main road once again filled the night around him.

"Fuck." Jaxson hung his head. He had to go see if—no. No, he didn't. He had to turn around and march his ass back into his own house. Kate wasn't his problem. So her house was haunted. So what? He'd already known that yesterday. Lots of places were haunted.

What had just happened, though, was... different. Unease pooled in his gut and he swore again, hands on his hips as he studied Kate's house. The next thing he knew, he was clomping down the stairs, green-gel sandals awkwardly crossing the patch of lawn that separated the two properties.

"Might as well get it over with and check on her now. If I don't, she'll just be banging on my door again in the middle of the night," he muttered as he jogged up her porch steps. The worn boards creaked a protest under his weight as he strode across them to her front door.
Chapter Twelve

Glass House

The bottle of wine tipped precariously close to the rug as Kate went for another swig, decided propping herself to a sitting position was way too much effort, and set it down with a thunk. It connected with the coffee table, wobbling for half a second before righting itself. Kate flopped back against the floor and stared up at the crystal chandelier. Somebody ought to dust that thing...

She ought to dust that thing. Yeah, that's it. She would dust. Where had Aunt Viola kept the furniture polish? Kate began to giggle. What was she thinking? Aunt Viola didn't have furniture polish. She squinted through her lashes at the thick layer of gray fuzz that clung to the chandelier. Clearly this was a polish-free house.

"Oh well." She gestured with one half-limp arm. "Who's gonna see it all the way up there, anyway?" Then she frowned as another thought occurred to her. "Hey, wait—I'm selling the house." She laughed. "It's not my problem anymore. Let the next person deal with it. Bon voyage!" she sang out loftily.

A chill caressed the side of her face, raced along the bare arm closest to the table, invisible fingers that were gentle but left ice in their wake. Kate shivered, and even in her inebriated state she registered the sudden drop in temperature.

She froze, gripped by the sense that the air surrounding her was suddenly too thick, too quiet. Her breath misted in front of her face and she blinked, but in the next instant the temperature rose. The room was back to normal, so quickly that Kate was sure she must have imagined the entire thing. Her eyes swung first left, then right.

From her vantage point on the floor, all she could see of the immediate vicinity was the living room sofa, that and the two matching chairs. The legs of the three round, knick-knack-covered tables were ornately carved. She reached out one finger and traced it along the scarred wood of the coffee table. This close, it was easy to spot the small pits and grooves in the dark mahogany. The braided rug beneath her back was threadbare and scratchy where it brushed against the skin left bare by her tank top.

The clock chimed nine times and Kate jumped, startled out of her slow perusal of the furniture and the dust motes that drifted down to swirl around her face. What? Her eyes flashed to the ceiling above her head. The fragile-looking glass teardrops were swaying gently back and forth, just enough to dislodge some of the dust on the surface and send it fluttering down in small tufts.

Kate rubbed at her face as a thin rope of dust landed beneath her nose. When her gaze returned to the light fixture high above her head, she blinked. It wasn't moving now.

"Wow... yeah, time to call it a night," she said under her breath.

The room tilted and spun as she rose, using various parts of the coffee table to anchor her body and assist her on the way up. First she gripped the solid pine legs, then slid one cautious hand to the upper rungs of the table. Finally, on her knees now, she gripped the top and sides of the—thankfully heavy—piece of furniture, and climbed unsteadily to her feet.

"Gotta get my sea legs," she muttered, arms akimbo as the room dipped and swayed around her. The blood rushed to her head, and with it, a terrible pounding. But she continued on, reaching out to snag the bottle of wine.

The pounding in her head subsided, and Kate concentrated on putting one bare foot in front of the other, determined to make it to the stairs. Past the entryway and down the hall she wobbled, a woman on a mission to stay upright. Gollum—as she'd chosen to call him—wove in and out around her ankles, his ploy for attention nearly tripping her as she poured all her concentration into making it up the stairs. The bottle tipped forward as she stumbled, its contents sloshing over the narrow rim and raining down onto the cat.

"Oh sorry, kitty..." Kate crooned as the cat danced away from her, shaking its head with all the vigor of a German Sheppard fresh from a bath. The vague amusement Kate was riding high on died a slow death, though, when her new pet went absolutely still.

"Gollum?" she murmured, leaning heavily on the smooth, dark wooden railing, her eyes switching back and forth between the suddenly defensive cat and the ordinary-looking second-floor hallway. Something had made the cat go on high alert, but Kate didn't have the first clue of what that "something" could possibly be.

The light was on, and from her sort-of-halfway-up-the-stairs vantage point, she could see the empty, silent hallway. All of the doors were closed, just as they had been earlier. Or had they been? She frowned, goosebumps raising on her bare arms as the cat hunched its shoulders forward and gave a feral-sounding hiss at... nothing.

The bottle began to grow heavy in her grasp, and Kate decided she'd hung out on the stairwell long enough. With one final, teeth-baring hiss, Gollum turned tail and fled back down the stairs, leaving a trail of wine-colored paw prints in his wake. The pounding had resumed and Kate touched a hand to her head, wanting nothing more than to get somewhere—preferably a bed—and lie down. Tightening her grip on both banister and bottle, she half walked, half dragged herself the rest of the way up the stairs.

She took two steps away from the staircase, until her toes grazed the edge of the ancient runner that lined the entire hallway, its tea rose-and-stem pattern badly aged. She'd thought a good vacuum would put some life back into the rug, but it hadn't made much of a difference at all. The light fixture above her head flickered but went unnoticed. Instead, she followed the faded rose pattern to the end of the hall, to the very last door. This one was open a crack. The glass room.

The narrow strip revealed nothing but a thick, heavy darkness.

She didn't want to go in there. Olivia and Lindsey had cracked jokes about the room and its many possible uses. And in the safe, secure light of day, Kate had smiled and laughed along with them, but now she shivered, peering through the partially open doorway. There was something darkly foreboding about that room... and without realizing it, she found herself standing close enough to reach out and touch the scarred wooden door.

Viola had spent a small fortune on the glass room—why hadn't she replaced the door? Another mystery, and one Kate knew she was unlikely to ever solve. Chill fingers brushed across the back of her neck, setting off another round of shivering through her shoulders, and the next thing she knew, her outstretched hand pressed a little harder on the door. It swung slowly open, the creak echoing through the hallway like a shot. The glass walls reflected the light from the hallway, making the room brighter than it would have otherwise been.

The bottle thunked loudly against the glass as she set it on the mirrored floor. Stop. Turn around. Leave, something—probably the more coherent part of her alcohol-fogged brain—cautioned. But almost against her will, she began to slowly move forward.

She advanced further into the room at a halting pace, loath to leave the relative safety of the doorway. Like the first time she had entered the room, the floor took some getting used to. The seamless glass of the walls and ceiling was strange enough, but there was something especially disturbing about a glass floor.

The mirrored surface reflected the bottoms of her feet back at her and somehow felt insubstantial, like she was stepping forward into a void, like she would fall through at any moment.

But the floor held, and Kate continued to move deeper into the room. Even in her hindered state it was impossible not to wonder at the origins of the glass room. What had it been before? Her brow furrowed. She couldn't recall what this room had looked like before. Probably like the other bedrooms on this floor, she guessed, the memory a hazy, gauzy film in the darkest corners of her mind.

She spun in a slow, vertigo-inducing circle, stumbling once and reaching out to grasp... herself. At least, that's what it seemed like.

Her hand shot out and connected with the mirrored wall at the back of the room, and she pressed with her fingers until her palm was in full contact with the glass, until it was flush with the reflection of her own hand. The cool, smooth glass grew cold—icy—beneath her palm, and the pounding in her head intensified. But, no... Kate listened intently. Her fingers flexed against the glass. The pounding wasn't in her head. It was coming from downstairs. Someone was banging on the door.

Her head swiveled toward the sound—and she froze. Beyond the door, a shadow moved, spilling over the carpet until the darkness slid across the threshold of the room. Downstairs, the noise stopped, and her heart leapt as the long shadow darkened the mirrored floor at the entrance of the glass room. The woman glided into the room a second later.

Kate gasped, certain she was having a hallucination. She turned back to her own reflection, putting her back to the room, squeezing her eyes shut and vowing to never, ever, drink wine again.

Count to three... She opened her eyes, pupils dilating when the hallucination kept coming toward her. Kate's breathing hitched painfully, audibly, as the translucent woman advanced steadily across the room. She wore a filmy white sundress. Her blonde hair was the same shade as Kate's own tawny mane and was smoothed over one shoulder. The two women were nearly identical. Smooth, strong, toned frames, side swept bangs, lightly tanned skin. Kate's hand came up and unconsciously fingered her own loosely waving hair. In contrast, the ghostly woman's hair was stick straight and looked smooth as satin.

Kate's breath rasped out to create a small circle of fog in the mirror, and the blonde woman's berry-colored lips curved into a tight, self-satisfied sort of smile. The expression was clearly bitter, resentful. She's not real. She's not real...

Her feet slid over the floor until she stood directly behind Kate, their eyes remaining locked in the mirror. Please... Kate silently implored, not certain what she was even praying for. Through the mirror, she saw the light flickering crazily in the hallway, growing dim, then too bright, power surging through the old house one second and teetering on the edge of a total blackout the next. Her eyes became wide, terrified orbs, and fear made her vision gray around the edges. She was going to pass out. The woman's dark violet eyes—moving faster than should have been possible—cut to the side, then back again.

Kate shivered, afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. The power winked out a moment later, leaving the room dimly lit with an eerie silver light that defied all logic and explanation.

The blade the blonde woman produced, seemingly from the thin, frigid air, glinted lethal and sharp. Kate's mouth formed a round, horrified O a split second before the woman slammed the blade into her side. The ghost-woman may have looked wispy, but there was nothing insubstantial about the cold steel blade as it pierced Kate's skin. Pain lanced through her, and she gasped as the woman pulled the now-dripping weapon away. Spiderweb cracks shot through the glass a foot in every direction as the knife clattered to the floor. Drops of deep crimson splattered the glass, and Kate pitched forward, staring in the mirror in fixed horror at the blood stain spreading across her midsection, soaking the soft fabric of her tank top in angry, vivid red.

She collapsed, the wound in her side pulsing painfully, pumping her blood—her life—onto the floor around her. She tried to scream but couldn't draw in a deep breath. She tried to move but managed only to turn over as the light began to fade. The last thing she saw was the woman's feet, dirty and bare as the apparition moved toward the door, black dirt streaking the glass in her wake.
Chapter Thirteen

Reflection

Light filtered in from the hallway, the sixty-watt glow reflecting off the mirrors of the glass room and shining straight into Kate's face the minute she cracked one eye open.

She gasped and came fully awake, instantly on the verge of hysteria as she sprang into a position that was an awkward cross between sitting and reclining. Stomach acid and the remnants of last night's red wine churned in her gut as her hands moved over her stomach and sides, probing—frantic.

She was unhurt. Sitting up all the way, she grasped the hem of her white tank top and yanked the cloth clear up to her neck. The glass was hard and cold beneath her knees as she rose up and twisted this way and that, running her hands over her body and sagging in relief when her fingers met only smooth, unblemished skin.

Just a dream... Kate eyed the doorway, her gaze dropping lower as she noticed the wine bottle on its side a couple of feet away from the door. The contents of the bottle lay spilled across the glass in a rich, dark stain. Red wine—not blood. She gulped as a wave of dizzy sickness washed over her skin, leaving her hot, then cold.

She climbed unsteadily to her feet, wincing at how icy the floor was as she padded across the room to retrieve the now-empty bottle. She started to bend over but quickly found out that was an extremely bad idea. Her stomach leapt to her throat, and bile rose to gag her.

Abruptly, she straightened, blinking back the sudden moisture from her eyes before making another go for the bottle. This time, though, she was careful to bend at the knee in a cautious, slow crouch. Lord, how much had she drank last night? The relatively scant amount of wine on the floor, and the throbbing at her temples, answered that question for her.

Memories of last night flitted through her mind, and she cast a nervous glance behind her. Bottle in hand, she turned and walked back to the far wall, knelt down...

Her heart began to pound at her rib cage as she traced the fingers of her free hand over the network of thin, spidery cracks in the glass.

"What in the hell," she breathed, eyes wide.

Kate glanced from the wine bottle she clutched, to her own splintered reflection in the damaged glass of the floor. How? She frowned. There were only a few likely possibilities. The wine bottle... but there was no wine spilled or even drops splattered near the glass... or anywhere on this side of the room, for that matter. Had she maybe—for some unknown reason—punched the glass last night? But her hands didn't hurt, and she had no visible injuries. Could she have flown into some sort of alcohol-fueled rage and hit the floor hard enough to crack it—and not be bruised, or at least sore? Was that even possible? The glass covering the floor looked thick and strong; it would have to be, wouldn't it?

The only other explanation was that the floor had already been broken when she'd moved in. As explanations went, it was on the flimsy side of plausible, but it was the only thing that made sense.

Rising to her feet, she staggered out into the hallway and shut the door to the glass room. She leaned against it, as if the scarred wood at her back was the most substantial, solid thing in her world. It didn't last. An instant later, the door flew open and Kate was propelled backward, her rear end—then her back—making hard contact with the floor. The empty bottle rolled away from her, and she stared up at the mirrored ceiling—straight into a reflection with cold eyes a shade or two darker than her own, and long, straight hair.

Kate screamed, and the vision was gone. She looked like herself again. Scrambling to her hands and knees, she practically crawled over the threshold and reached up to grasp the doorknob. She pulled herself up, shivering, and yanked hard at the door, this time making sure the latch clicked into place.

Her stomach lurched, and she spun around and ran down the hallway, barely making it to the bathroom before she threw up. What the hell had she just seen? She shoved unsteady hands through her sweat-dampened hair and flushed the toilet.

During broad daylight, now? Her breath shuddered out before she rose to sit on the toilet seat. Fingers shaking, she reached out to twist the knobs on the bathtub. A shower. Things would look better after a hot shower. Once she washed away the stench of alcohol, maybe the rest of the night would fade, too.

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, she stood and crossed to the sink, intending to quickly rinse her mouth while the water ran in the tub. But she lingered over her reflection in the age-spotted vanity mirror, slicked her hands over hair that was just long enough to reach the tips of her breasts. She pulled the strands down until they were taut against either side of her head. If she were lying down, her hair could be mistaken for being straighter than it actually was.

Yes, that was what she had seen. Nothing more. Ghosts—real ghosts—didn't exist. They were stories, midnight tales whispered by candlelight in order to spook the living. That or make life more interesting, depending on how you chose to look at it. Feeling somewhat steadier, she stripped out of her shorts and tank top, pulled up the faded chrome knob to divert the rush of hot water to the showerhead, and stepped carefully under the spray. Squirting a good-size dollop of mango-scented shampoo into her palm, she proceeded to give her hair a vigorous scrubbing.

At least the old place had plenty of hot water and decent water pressure. Not that it mattered, because she wasn't staying any longer than was absolutely necessary. In fact, she would call a realtor as soon as she was done with her shower. Kate ducked her head under the powerful spray and squeezed a torrent of soap suds from her hair. The excess water hit the tub with a satisfying splash, and she watched as it swirled around the drain.

Her recently empty stomach lurched anew at the thought of what the future held. She would sell the house, go out West, then what? Before, her days—her entire life, really—had been laid out in a clear, concise path. All other problems and fears and insecurities aside, she had at least known, more or less, how things were "supposed" to go. But now... She swallowed and gave her hair a final rinse. Now, the future stretched in front of her in an endless, murky sea. She didn't know what these new, dark waters held. She didn't even know which direction she was supposed to go from here, and that terrified her.

The last time she had felt so adrift was right after her mother had passed away. At least back then she'd had Lilly and—Kate froze, eyes widening as the full implications of her thoughts hit her. She shut off the water and reached absently for a towel. Back then, she'd had Lilly... and now, she was alone. No, she reflected, thinking of Lindsey and Olivia, of Lilly and the rest of the family. She wasn't alone. Not really. Not exactly. Lilly was out doing her own thing now.

But... that was what was supposed to happen, right? Children grew up. They moved away from home. They spread their wings. Lilly was supposed to go out and live her own life. That had been part of the plan, hadn't it?

Kate sucked in a deep breath, inhaling a lungful of thick, steamy air as she wrapped the towel tightly around her body, tucking one corner in at her bust, near the crook of her arm. There was no denying that all of this—Lilly's flying the nest—was a bit sudden. Hell, Kate thought, pressing a freshly scrubbed hand to her temple, "a bit sudden" was an understatement if there ever was one. Lilly hadn't just flown the nest—she'd leapt out of it, headfirst, and dove for the concrete. Really, all that was left to do now was damage control. So she'd sell the house. She'd follow her little sister—and Chad—to Reno. Kate's teeth snapped together at the thought of what her first meeting with Lilly's husband was sure to be like. Maybe, just maybe, she would be able to avoid kneeing him in the groin. But probably not.

On that thought, she threw open the door, and a rush of cold air washed over her skin. She stalked down the hall to her bedroom, very much afraid that she was going to throw up again before this morning was over. So what, she reasoned on a shallow breath as she began to dress. If she needed to throw up, then she'd throw up. It wasn't like she'd never been sick before. She'd go downstairs, pop an aspirin or two or three and fix a pot of coffee. Then she'd search "real estate offices near Crystal Cove, Florida" on the Yellow Pages website, and after that she'd type a letter of resignation to turn in to the hospital tonight. Kate groaned as she pulled a purple cotton t-shirt, worn soft from hundreds of washings, over her head. She was so not up to going to work tonight. For the first time since she'd arrived in Crystal Cove, she was grateful for her morgue babysitting detail. She could at least spend the night hunched over a desk, in silence. And tomorrow...

She paused as she slid her feet into a pair of white Crocs. Tomorrow... what? She would feed the cat, catch a few hours of sleep, and get up for work the next night, and the next, and the next after that? Kill time for the next few weeks until it was time to leave for Nevada? Then what? That was the real problem, she realized, hugging her arms around her waist and lingering a moment by the bedroom door. She'd done what she'd set out to do. Kate hung her head. Lilly was eighteen years old. Kate's visions of drop-kicking Chad and helping her sister obtain a quick divorce evaporated like smoke in the wind.

So things went back to the way they were before. What then? In a few years, Lilly would have been graduating—would still be graduating—and she'd be venturing out on her own. Because, truth be told, her sister might still need some occasional help and guidance now and then, but she'd done her job and finished raising Lilly. That part of her life was over. Trouble was, she'd never given any thought to what she was going to do after.
Chapter Fourteen

One Step Closer

The coffee machine hissed and sputtered, signaling that hope was at hand. Kate inhaled the scent of the strong, fragrant hazelnut brew she'd picked up at Publix the day before, when she'd bought the wine, and she smiled. She poured a cup and carried it over to the kitchen table, where the legal pad and the ballpoint pen were set up and ready to go.

Her first sip of the coffee—light cream, no sugar—was tentative, but after a few more cautious sips, her nausea remained at a steady low ebb, no better, but no worse. It wouldn't have mattered much even if she hadn't been able to drink the coffee. It smelled so good that the aroma was almost enough. The familiar scent filled the kitchen and wrapped around her, soothing nerves that had been laid bare and raw for far too long. If she didn't think too much about her last memories of this house, she was almost comfortable, she realized with a start. "Comfortable" was the last thing she'd ever expected to feel in this house... in Florida, even.

"Stranger things," she muttered, swallowing another mouthful of coffee before scooting the cup away in favor of the notepad. She picked up the pen and bit down lightly on the clear blue pen cap tucked onto the end of the Bic, then thoughtfully regarded the notes she'd already made. She had two appointments with local realtors tomorrow morning. The first, she'd scheduled for an office visit around eleven. The second meeting was with a listing agent named Rita Cash. She sounded like a younger woman, probably under thirty, Kate guessed, and she would be driving out to the house to have a look around.

It probably wouldn't hurt to have a few extra companies listed and lined up in case neither Realty Pro nor Cove Realty ended up working out, but her head still felt like someone had tried to do a two-step on it. So far, the aspirin hadn't kicked in. Being one of those eternally optimistic, "glass half full" people, Kate held out hope that at some point today she would stop being tempted to ask random strangers to knock her out. Until then, she planned to take it easy. Going the extra mile and carefully researching and recording a long list of real estate offices within fifty miles of Crystal Cove was not happening today. So she tore off the top sheet, folded it, and stuck it in her studded white wallet that sat opposite the coffee mug.

Task accomplished—for the moment, anyhow—she idly tapped her pen on the yellow-lined paper and began to mentally compose her resignation letter. Ten minutes later, the blue porcelain mug was empty and there was a nice row of tiny, colored-in hearts gracing the margin of her page, but she was no closer to writing the dreaded two-week kiss-off. Kate grimaced. She had to write that letter, and it might as well be turned in tonight. The sooner the hospital had her notice on file, the faster she could get the hell out of dodge, or Crystal Cove, as it were.

Plus, she needed the reference from the hospital—scanty as it would probably be, because how much was her supervisor here in Crystal Cove supposed to say about an employee who'd watched over the morgue for a grand total of three weeks? But at least they would say that she'd shown up to work on time and had given notice when she had to leave... one week later. Without it, getting a job in Nevada would be harder, and a phone call to the Nevada State Board of Health had gleaned information that she'd already figured. She would have to retake her licensing exam if she wanted to work in the state. Kate winced, but squared her shoulders, determined to face reality head-on and deal with it since her carefully laid plans were officially up in smoke.

The pen rolled onto the paper, and she pulled out her cell phone as an idea struck. She opened up a new webpage in the browser, typed in "resignation letters, family emergency," and within minutes she'd saved a PDF file to her phone and e-mailed it to herself. She could print it out and sign it later, when she reported to work for her shift.

That task accomplished, she refilled her mug with fresh coffee, bravely adding a teaspoonful of sugar this time, and sat down in front of her heart-riddled paper. After a moment's hesitation, she scrawled Lindsey's name across the top and wrote the date in the corner.

Lindsey,

Last night, I dreamed of her again. But this wasn't like the other times at all. Last night, she looked—felt—so real. It wasn't just some nightmare. I mean, it was, but it wasn't like all of the other dreams, reliving that day and what ended up being her last moments. This was different, Linds. In this dream, one minute I was in the glass room, alone, and the next thing I knew the lights began to flicker in the hallway, and she walked into the room and stood behind me. It felt like she was really there, and she was so angry...

A cold chill tracked across the back of her neck, and in the next instant, her cell phone started to ring. Kate set down the pen and shook her head when she saw who the caller was.

"Hey, Lindsey." She cradled the phone between her neck and shoulder and recapped the pen.

"Well, it's about time! I've been trying to call you since last night." Lindsey huffed and puffed. "You almost had me worried."

"Are you running?"

"Treadmill," she exhaled, and Kate heard a series of beeps on the other end of the line. "Two miles. I'm done now. So, are you better today?"

"You mean besides the hangover?"

"Oh, well, yeah, I guess so. You really got wasted last night, huh?"

"Hmm." Kate scooted her chair back and stretched, shivering again. It was hard to tell whether it was her hangover playing havoc with her body or just the house's natural "cold-blooded temperature," as she was beginning to refer to it. Aunt Viola must have shelled out a small fortune on insulation. "It was just me, Gollum, and a cheap bottle of wine."

"Gollum?"

"Oh yeah—I almost forgot, we have a cat now." Her lips curved against the phone and she blew steam off of her mug before she took a sip.

"Great. I always wanted a pet, I think," Lindsey retorted dryly. "So... seriously? You're okay? Besides the hangover?"

Kate stared for long moments at the letter she'd been composing before she sighed, crumpled the sheet of paper in her hands, and got up to throw it in the trash can at the other end of the kitchen. "Yeah. I'm fine, really. I think I'm one step closer to accepting this thing with Lilly."

"And Chad," Lindsey reminded her, a scowl in her voice.

"Yes... Chad." Kate's own eyes narrowed dangerously and for several beats, both women were silent.

"Are you sure you're holding your own?" Concern edged out the anger in Lindsey's voice.

"Really and truly. Don't worry. This is all going to work out. I can feel it." What she felt was a surge of nausea as she passed by the kitchen window. Through the glass, a radio began to blare a heavy rock tune. Lindsey started to speak, but static filled Kate's ear, obscuring most of her friend's reply.

She stood on tip-toe, leaned over the sink, and craned her neck in order to get a better view of the driveway next door. Her mouth hung open as she watched Jaxson crank up a portable radio even louder, then prance down his porch steps toward his ancient car. A button-down crop top was open across his chest and tied in a knot several inches north of his navel. The fabric clung, wet and sheer, to his shoulders and arms. A pair of low-heeled silver pumps caught the sunlight and glistened as he turned to the side and bent down toward a red plastic bucket.

He was wearing a thong.

Somewhere down the street a car honked, a dog barked, and a man yelled what sounded suspiciously like "put some clothes on."

"Kate?" The line crackled again.

"I'm fine, Lindsey, but I'm not getting any reception in here right now, for some reason. I'll text you later." She hung up and shoved the phone into the pocket of her jeans, all without taking her eyes off of the spectacle taking place in the driveway next door.

"What in God's name..." She raised a hand to her temple as her head began to pound in time to the beat of the music. Outside, in the vibrant—blinding—sunlight, Jaxson straightened away from the bucket, a large blue rectangular sponge clasped in his hands. Kate watched in fascinated horror as he raised the sponge over his chest and squeezed the soapy water over his already soaked torso. The ends of his long blond wig also received a good soaking.

She opened the window and attempted to shout over the music. The rock tune ended, and a pulsing techno beat was carried through the window on a gust of warm, humid air. Two cups of coffee threatened to come back up, and Kate gripped the edge of the kitchen sink. A second later, she slammed the window shut, having given up on making herself heard over all the noise.

Shoving her wallet back into the purse that was draped over the back of a kitchen chair, she wandered into the front parlor and attempted to lie down on the couch. The room reeked of the red wine she had spilled on the carpet last night and neglected to clean up—and she could still hear her neighbor's music. She could also feel it vibrating through her sofa. She clutched her head between her hands and groaned. Another car horn sounded outside, and she was on her feet and heading for the front door. Enough was enough already.

Stopping only long enough to snag a pair of sunglasses from the side pocket of her purse, she stalked onto the front porch, wincing as the screen door banged shut behind her. A dark blue sedan cruised slowly to the end of the block, the vehicle's darkly tinted windows making it impossible to discern anything about the driver.

Her mouth settled into a grim line as she clomped down her own sagging porch steps and advanced on her neighbor. Was it any wonder that people were inching down the street? They were probably rubber-necking at the sight of a grown man in... whatever you called what Jaxson was wearing.

Jaxson went momentarily still when he finally glanced up and saw Kate striding across the lawn. The look in his eyes became shuttered, unreadable, as she halted a few feet away from him. Looking him in the eyes—and only in the eyes—was difficult, but somehow she managed it. The fact that moving her head made her want to vomit helped, she was sure.

"Can you please turn the music down?" She raised her voice to be heard over the noise.

Jaxson lowered the sponge and frowned. "What?" he shouted.

"Can you please turn the—"

"I can't hear you!" He shook his head and leaned in closer until droplets of cold, soapy water plopped onto Kate's feet, dripping through the narrow slits in her Crocs and sliding between her toes to form small, wet pools in her shoes.

"Turn the music down!"

"Oh." Comprehension dawned in Jaxson's cool, green eyes. "No." He turned back toward the car and raised the sponge.

"No? No...?" Kate sputtered, glaring at her neighbor's back. Of all the rude, un-neighborly crap!

She spun on her heel, prepared to stomp back to her own house and hole up in a back bedroom with a pillow over her head. The techno song ended, and a radio announcer's voice screeched through the speakers. The shrill sound speared through her head, and slowly she turned around. Jaxson was leaning over, drenching the hood of his car in sudsy water as the DJ rattled on at ear-splitting volume about free tickets and caller number five. She could go back home. Do her best to ignore Jaxson. It was the sensible thing to do, the reasonable thing to do—the Kate thing to do. Her gaze moved over her mercurial neighbor, then past him, to the porch, and she glared at the offending radio as she kicked off her wet, slippery shoes.

Screw reasonable. She was tired of being nice.

Chapter Fifteen

Punish Thy Neighbor

Jaxson bent over and retrieved the sponge from the brightly colored plastic bucket at his feet as a dark blue sedan turned the corner at the end of their street. Kate rolled her eyes heavenward—was that the same car she had seen a moment ago, when she'd stepped outside?

Granted, Jaxson stuck out on their quiet, ordinary middle-class street like a sore thumb, but didn't people have anything better to do? The car slowed to a crawl as the driver passed by them. Jaxson thrust his wet torso out even further, and Kate folded her arms over her chest and snorted as she watched him bend over to dunk the sponge in the bucket again. Unbelievable.

The silver-toned handle of the bucket warred with the sparkles on his heels. Both were blinding in the vivid morning sunlight that beat down upon their heads, and Kate was suddenly grateful that she'd thought to put on the dark glasses before storming out her front door. She was pretty sure the shine on her neighbor's shoes would have speared straight through her skull, like a vampire whose Kryptonite just happened to be cheap, tacky rhinestones.

Jaxson shot her a look over his shoulder as the blue car disappeared around the corner at the opposite end of the block. The sponge cleared the lid of the bucket and slapped wetly at the hood of the car, water and bubbles flying in all directions. She sucked in an outraged breath as the cold, soapy water splashed a trail across the front of her t-shirt. Her eyes zeroed in on him, narrowed. Oh yeah, she was done with being nice.

One minute, she was glaring at Jaxson's profile, and the next she was marching behind him, past him, across the yard. The grass slid wet and slick between her toes, and the heat soaked into her skin. The vibrant mix of sensation all but obliterated the headache, was stronger—for the moment, at least—than the sick churning in her stomach. She forgot about her hangover and her sister. She wasn't thinking about old houses and realtors, sacrifices, jobs, Reno, or Chad. She scowled. Right then, all she saw was the radio.

The DJ rattled off the next fifteen-minute set of music, and Kate glared at the small black boombox, pretending the annoying, grating voice pouring from the speakers belonged to Chad. Her bare feet thumped the lacquered paint of Jaxson's front porch steps, leaving faint damp patches on the smooth white surface, burning a trail across the porch to the table. She skirted the matching wicker furniture, so unlike the faded, peeling wood and rusted chains of her own single porch swing. Everything here was so perfect, so shiny—she threw a quick, backward glance over her shoulder at Jaxson, who stood unmoving in the yard, his sponge dripping in mid-air as he watched her warily—so strange.

She spun around and located the radio's cord, then followed it to the end of the porch—and into Jaxson's house. The screen door banged shut behind her as she stomped across his dining room and yanked the cord free of its outlet. Kate jumped as the door hit her in the rear end on her way out, adding fuel to her already smoldering temper.

Jaxson met her at the base of the porch steps. As far as irate expressions went, she'd seen thunderclouds that were less ominous than the clear, dark anger burning in Jaxson's eyes. Her scowl rivaled his as she made to pass him. Behind her, the radio crashed to the floor. Kate glanced back, then down. She still had a hold of the cord. In front of her, Jaxson cleared his throat. The cord clattered to the porch at his feet when she released it and stared defiantly up at him.

"Thanks for turning the radio off," she snapped, moving forward to go around him. His arms, the muscles contracting, shot out to grip the slanted handrails at either side of Kate, trapping them where they were—him planted firmly at the bottom step, glowering down at her, while she lingered a step above him, staring up into his equally tense face.

"Not so fast."

"Move it," she bit out, raising both hands to the wet fabric at his chest. Her fingers flexed against the sheer cloth, and she shoved at him. He didn't move. One dark brow raised, and his lips curved at one corner.

"Or what?" he challenged.

"Or..." Kate paused, her anger momentarily frozen. Or what? A frown marred her face as she opened her mouth only to promptly snap it shut again. She was a pitiful novice at insults—and threats—and was horrified when she drew a total blank at Jaxson's taunting. But then he gave her another one of those blood-pressure raising, sardonic smirks, and a thousand retorts flooded her mind and jockeyed for top position. "Or... shut up," she stammered, suddenly overwhelmed. She went to duck beneath his arms, and he swiftly shifted his stance to block her.

One of his hands came up to stop her from moving, and she sucked in her breath as his fingers, solid and hot, circled most of her upper arm.

"Where were you last night?" he demanded, green eyes flashing.

She'd never been more tempted in her life to tell somebody "none of your business," and she would have, except... it wasn't cocky arrogance snapping like lightning in Jaxon's gaze. It was fear, a cross between pissed off and desperate. She knew that look. It was the same one she'd seen in the mirror the one and only time Lilly had come home four hours late without a phone call. Seeing it reflected in Jaxson's eyes was like a cold, wet shock to her senses.

The muscles in her biceps and forearms relaxed. His remained rigid. "I stayed home. Why?" she asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

"Were you alone?"

Her eyes widened, and she inhaled his clean, soapy pine scent. A drop of water slid down one side of Jaxson's face, and she tracked its path down the strong, tan column of his throat. "Was I alone? You have got to be kidding me. That is none of your business. Do you disagree?" she challenged.

"Yeah, I do." He frowned, leaning forward even further, the heat from his body in direct contrast to the clammy fabric that brushed Kate's arms and torso.

Move. Back up. Breathe. "Well, you're wrong." She swallowed, her headache a dull, all-but-forgotten ache at the base of her skull.

"Kate." She stiffened the instant his forehead touched hers. "I knocked on your door last night. Hell, I pounded on the damn thing. Where were you?"

"Why?" she breathed. "What happened?" This time she did lean back, suddenly desperate to put some space between their bodies. He was too close, and she was still mad at him, about... something.

"You tell me," he insisted.

His fingers skimmed her temple, and she held her breath, then let it out in a silent whoosh as he pulled her sunglasses off and carelessly tossed them onto the grass beside the porch. One finger beneath her chin brought her gaze swinging up to meet his intense stare. The world rushed at her, all too-bright, vivid color splashing onto her corneas and kick-starting the pain in her head into a roar. "Damn it, don't!" she cried, abruptly releasing her hold on the porch rail in order to shield her eyes.

"Well, that's one mystery solved." His lips thinned into a grim line.

"What?" Kate demanded, jerking her chin away from the coarse pad of his finger and squinting up at him.

"You were three sheets to the wind last night. That's why you didn't hear me banging on the door."

"Excuse me, but I don't get drunk," she retorted, doing her best to sound haughty. She tossed her hair behind one shoulder and pitched forward when the movement threw her off balance. Her humiliation knew no bounds when Jaxson's arms shot up to steady her. "I think I'm going to throw up," she moaned into the wet fabric at his chest.

Jaxson's chest lifted and fell, his breath feathering the hair at her temple as he exhaled. She squeezed her eyes shut tight, shivers skimming along her nerve endings at his strong fingers flexing around her shoulders.

"Yeah. Give it up, Kate, you're hungover."

"Fine," she hissed through gritted teeth, "I'm hungover. Now would you please—" she gulped "—give me back my sunglasses." She bit back another groan and fisted her hands in his shirt. "Jaxson, I'm seriously going to be sick." It galled her beyond measure to ask, but right then just thinking about things like walking and bending over made her stomach heave in protest.

"Uh, Kate..."

"Yeah?"

"You have to let go."

Her eyes fluttered open and she grimaced, staring up at him, confused.

"My shirt. You're still holding on to it," he pointed out, a half-smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

"Oh... right." She released him, turning to cling to the stair rail as he backed up a few paces and twisted around to pluck the darkly tinted glasses off of the lawn. "Thank you," she mumbled a moment later, taking the shades from his outstretched hand and hastily shoving them into place over her stinging eyes. Taking shallow sips of the humid air that swirled around them helped, and she clutched harder at the smooth white rail, willing herself to resist temptation and not embarrass herself further by plunking her rear end onto the porch step where she stood. Instead, she focused on her neighbor, bits and pieces of their conversation filtering through her receding nausea.

"So why were you banging on my door last night? And when—what time?" She blinked rapidly behind the protective dark tint of her lenses to bring Jaxson into focus, and slowly her grip on the rail eased until only one hand rested there.

"Late." He shrugged. "After nine, at least. I..." he trailed off, his gaze bouncing everywhere but at her. "I wanted to borrow some sugar," he finally said.

"You can't be serious," Kate argued.

"What happened last night?" he demanded, coming back full circle to his original line of questioning, before he'd snatched her sunglasses and she'd almost thrown up all over his half-dead petunias.

Kate's senses went on full-alert. "What makes you think anything happened last night?"

Before Jaxson could answer, a dark blue sedan turned the corner and slowed to a stop in front of the house.

Chapter Sixteen

Too Late

"Son of a bitch!"

She watched Jaxson's face contort with anger, noted the way the muscles in his arms bunched until the rigid cords were practically straining the fabric of his shirt. In an instant he was on her. His hands traded the porch rails on either side of her for her upper arms, and Kate winced as his fingers dug into her flesh. He shoved her backward, and she nearly lost her footing as the back of her calves hit the steps. She clutched at his biceps in an effort to steady herself.

"Move. Now." He practically growled the words.

"What the—" she began to protest, then abruptly closed her mouth.

Beneath the Doris Day makeup and the Brooklyn swagger, his eyes were wild and savage—almost desperate, Kate realized. She glanced over his shoulder in time to see the darkly tinted window of the blue sedan glide up in its casing, but not before she caught a glimpse of light skin and dark brown hair. Jaxson swore, and shifted to his right, blocking her as the car pulled smoothly away from the curb and disappeared around the corner. Across the lawn, there was a series of sharp cracking sounds.

Kate paused and Jaxson froze, their gazes suddenly riveted first on each other, then on the second story of Kate's house—the window. The glass tinkered audibly as thick, vein-like cracks began to spiderweb the entire window, from the center to the outer edges. She gasped and instinctively ducked when the window suddenly shattered, fine shards of glass plummeting to the lawn below. A few of the larger pieces caught the intense light from the sun and seemed to sparkle in blatant mockery to the severity of the situation. Kate's attention snapped back up to the dark hole where the window pane had been only moments ago. Behind the curtains that fluttered openly in the breeze now, a shadow moved.

"Jaxson..." Kate breathed.

"Go." He nudged her, all urgency gone now, up the porch steps again and toward his own front door. "Get in the house," he ordered grimly, and this time she followed without question.

He held the door open with one hand and ushered her in with the other. Not that she needed prompting, she thought, almost numb with shock now. She strode over the threshold and slid onto a bar stool when she reached the counter top that separated the kitchen and small dining room. Palms flat on the Formica, she raised her eyes to Jaxson, who was still standing next to the partially open door. He reached out as if to close it, but then let his hand drop to his side. He cursed viciously and kicked the door shut, rattling the wood in the frame, then leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the sheer curtains that covered the glass.

"Did you see that?" Kate finally demanded when she could no longer stand the silence.

"Yeah," Jaxson muttered, head bowed now, both arms coming to rest on the doorframe. "I saw her."

Kate drew in a lungful of air that was suddenly much too thin. Ten seconds later, she exhaled, the sound unnaturally loud in the tense, artificial silence that stretched between them. The ticking of the clock kept time with her heartbeat for nearly a full minute before she relaxed her grip on the counter's edge and eyed her neighbor. "Did you just say you saw her?" she stammered, willing him to turn around and face her, because he was wrong. He had to be wrong. He had to—

"Yeah."

"B-but, the person in the navy blue car looked like a man," she protested, sliding her hands closer to her chest.

Jaxson's shoulders hunched, becoming even more wound up and rigid, if that were even possible. "It was. But I wasn't talking about the man in the car. I saw her, Kate. The ghost that just shattered your bedroom window."

* * *

Kate paled visibly, and Jaxson hung his head and cursed. That was probably screwed up—that he'd just blurted it out like that. If the look on her face was anything to go by, he probably should have taken his time, broken the news to her... gently. He frowned, flexing his biceps again and feeling the muscles strain against the fabric of his shirt. Fuck. Was there a "gentle" way to tell a woman that her house was haunted? He eyed his shell-shocked, hungover neighbor. Her wide-eyed gaze remained fixed on him, and he forced himself to let his arms drop to his sides, dimly hoping the expression on his face wasn't as fierce as he felt. The last thing he needed to do was scare Kate any more than she clearly already was. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was scare her.

He dropped onto the stool beside hers and felt his jaw tighten when she wouldn't even look at him. Her half-vacant, half-horrified stare remained glued to the spot near the door, where he had just been standing.

"Katie..." Slowly, he turned her stool around in a semi-circle until she was facing him. He scooted forward on his own stool, leaning up a bit in order to hike up his skirt so he could move freely. Bare ass perched on the end of the stool, Jaxson framed Kate's legs with his own, effectively hemming her in. His balls escaped the barely-there, jeweled thong he'd had the misfortune to put on that morning, and he cringed but otherwise ignored the discomfort, focusing instead on Kate.

He moved his fingers up over her smooth, tanned throat, sliding his thumbs upward until her face was framed between his hands. "Hey," he said, stroking the pads of his thumbs over her soft skin and doing his best to ignore the way her breath faltered at his touch. She blinked, her hands coming up to rest on his forearms as she focused on him.

"Hey," he repeated softly, rubbing one thumb across her bottom lip, battling back the sudden urge to lean forward and touch his mouth to her slightly parted lips. Her breath stuttered over his calloused thumb, and the hand that he'd raised to smooth her hair stilled. Reluctantly, he backed off, forcing his hands to the counter top beside them and willing his self-control to hold firm. Touching her was a bad idea... for now. They had a world of shit to deal with, and it wouldn't wait. His mind was suddenly filled to capacity with Klein, and sting operations, and pissed off dead girls. Kate's violet-eyed stare reflected the grimness of their present situation.

"Are you with me?" He watched her throat work as she swallowed, nodded once.

"I think so," she said, scraping her stool back across the floor, away from him. She stood and paced the floor in front of him for about thirty seconds before she finally stopped and regarded him steadily. "You're telling me that my house is haunted. That a ghost just did that to the window."

He nodded without taking his gaze off of her. "Yes."

"You can see her?"

Again, he nodded. "Can you?" he asked, tilting his head to the side.

"Y-yes. But... you can really," she pressed one hand to her midsection, "see her? For real?"

Her voice hitched up a little at the end, sounding more like a plea—one Jaxson instantly recognized. "You're not crazy."

Kate squeezed her eyes shut. "What does she look like?" she demanded.

"Blonde hair, a little longer than yours and without the darker streaks. White dress." He shrugged. "She looks like—"

"Me," Kate finished. Her eyes snapped open. Weary acceptance laced her tone. "She looks like me."
Chapter Seventeen

Too Far

"She does, doesn't she?" Kate voiced what she could plainly see in Jaxson's expression. His face was a mask of surprise and pity. A dash of apprehension tightened his features. Kate shivered in the air-conditioned house. She balled her hands into fists, squeezing until her fingernails bit into her palms. Jaxson was at her side in an instant.

She swayed a little as slowly, carefully, he unclenched her fingers. She thought he'd step away from her then, but he didn't. Instead he surprised her by slipping his palm against her own until their fingers were locked tightly together.

A million questions lurked in the shadowy corners of her mind. Right now, only one mattered. "How?" she demanded. "How can you see her?"

"How can she be seen, you mean?"

Kate gulped. "Yes. She's... I thought she was—" She broke off as a wave of dizziness slammed into her.

"Whoa," Jaxson murmured, catching her upper arm in a firm grip and easing her back onto a stool. "Are you good?" he asked. He took a few steps away from her, toward the fridge, but cautiously kept one arm extended in her direction. As if he would catch her if she suddenly fell off the stool. As if he expected her to swoon and take a header into the kitchen floor any second now. Did she look that bad? A glance in the frosted glass, mirrored snowflake picture that hung on the wall straight ahead, opposite the dining room table, showed a pale-faced woman with wild hair and huge eyes. She looked like a woman on the edge. Worse, she felt like one. Bullshit, her inner voice gritted, cutting through the hazy layers of shock and fear and uncertainty that threatened to rip her apart.

"I'm fine," she insisted, cradling her head in her hands and struggling to find a focal point in the middle of the crazy-storm.

A few seconds later, Jaxson pried one of her hands away from her head, pressed an ice-cold can of cola at her, and instructed her to drink.

A bath, she thought numbly, popping the tab on the soda. When this was all over, she was going to take a bath. With bubbles. And maybe a nice glass of wine—no, not wine—but definitely a candle or two, and Chinese takeout. Her stomach rumbled and she was reminded that the only things she'd consumed in recent memory were cheap wine and black coffee. Oh yeah, by the time this day was over, she was definitely going to be sitting in a bathtub, balancing a carton of sweet and sour chicken and a white plastic fork. Tonight, she'd look back on this day and laugh. Maybe. Kate choked back a sob, and Jaxson shoved the can of soda at her again. Obediently, she tipped it to her lips and drank.

"Keep drinking. You're in shock."

"Well, wouldn't you be?" she shot back, then immediately felt guilty. Snapping at him wasn't fair, and she knew it. She caught her lip between her teeth, then abruptly released it. She set the can down on the counter with a tinny thump and twisted to face Jaxson. "Were you?" she wanted to know. "The first time you, you know, saw... one?" I can say it. It's just a word. "A ghost," she finished.

"Who is she, Kate?" he asked instead.

* * *

She was off the stool like a shot, and the next thing he knew, she was pacing the width of the dining room, back and forth. But at least she was up and moving now. Her color was returning, too, since he'd practically forced half a can of Coke down her throat.

He caught the faint hint of peach as she passed within inches of him on her fifth pass across the room. He'd pretty much already figured the dead girl had been a relative of Kate's, and clearly she had her own reasons for not wanting to talk about it. Well, tough. They had bigger problems at the moment. A glance into the kitchen behind him, at the numbers that flashed green on the digital clock above the stove, told him the day was moving on without them. Ten o'clock.

"Kate, honey..."

Abruptly she halted, mid-pace, and her eyes flashed to his before she shook her head. Jaxson wasn't prepared for what she said next.

"Her name was Mira Rathe. And I'm pretty sure my uncle killed her before he hung himself."

"Your uncle?" he said, picking up on one of the more subtle details of her speech. "She wasn't related to you, then?"

"No." Kate sighed. "But it's my fault she's dead." She hung her head for a moment before raising her gaze back to his, as if she was waiting for his reaction—or his judgment. He schooled his face into an impassive mask, careful to give her neither.

"What happened?"

"My uncle was... he was... sick. He was..." She paused, pressing her fingers to her eyelids. "I'm sorry. I've only ever talked about this to my cousin Olivia and my best friend, Lindsey, and the times we've talked about it was..." She shook her head. "It's been years."

Something shifted inside, something... almost warm, at the thought of her trusting him enough to share a piece of herself. He was a little shocked at just how badly he wanted it, wanted her to look at him like she had a moment ago, like she had a secret to tell, like she was scared, like he was some sort of haven from the worst kind of storm. Fuck, he wanted to be. He wanted to—

"My uncle was obsessed with me," she blurted. "I don't know when it started. I mean, I wasn't even aware of it at the time. But my sister and I would visit." Her speech was halting. "He always wanted to spend quality time with me. I was older—the oldest. I was his princess," she said sarcastically.

Jaxson ground his teeth together, but his voice was steady when he asked, "Did he touch you?"

"No. Not the way you mean, anyway. But I think he would have, given enough time. He used to ask me to sit on his lap all the time, and he would play with my hair, and the way he would look at me..." she trailed off with a shudder. "God, he creeped me the hell out. I was a little girl, for God's sake."

"Son of a bitch," Jaxson swore.

"He touched Olivia. Before he started paying attention to me, he hurt my cousin Olivia. She refused to come back to Florida after that, but it was years until she told me, or anyone, what he'd done to her, before we talked about, well, everything."

"Does she look like you?" Jaxson asked, feeling a sick numbness in the pit of his stomach as he waited for her answer.

Kate nodded. "She's blonde. Her eyes are brown, though. And she's taller and has freckles. They're lighter now that she's older, but... Sorry, I guess that doesn't matter. My head is so messed up right now."

"Yeah, I get that, babe."

"Livi and I don't look like twins, but a casual onlooker would probably be able to guess that we're related."

"Kate, what happened to Mira? Why do you think it was your fault?"

She huffed out a breath and wandered over to the dining room window, putting her back to him. "Because I'm sure he went after her because of me," she finally said. "Because she looked like me. She was seventeen. A senior at Crystal Cove high school when she died. When he killed her. The police and the media, they were never able to prove that he did it. But they would have, I think. That's why he killed himself. Because he didn't want to go to jail. Deep down, he was a coward."

"What if he didn't kill her?" Jaxson suggested, wiping a hand across the back of his neck. "What if..."

"What?" Kate glanced at him over her shoulder.

"Nothing. Just thinking out loud."

"He killed her," she said, shoulders hunching up close to her neck. "I was there. Besides my uncle, I was the last person to see Mira Rathe alive. And as if it wasn't bad enough that he went after that girl because she was a dead ringer for me, I could have saved her, and I didn't."

"Kate."

"It's true." She spun away from the window and took a few hesitant steps toward him. "The last summer I ever spent at my aunt's house was when I was eight years old. The same year that Mira went missing. My aunt had left to spend a few days with some relative in Tallahassee. I don't even remember who she went to see, or why, but I remember my uncle graciously offering to watch me." She snorted. "Early one morning, a day or two after my aunt had left, I heard noises coming from the basement. I heard her—Mira—crying."

"Hell."

"I didn't know she wasn't alone. It never occurred to me that my uncle..." She shook her head and wrapped her arms around her midsection. "She was tied up, a-and bleeding. I can still see the blood all over what was left of her shirt. And her face, he'd hit her. She was partially submerged in an old tub. I... I'm pretty sure that's how he killed her, by drowning her in that old tub. He was standing next to her, and his hand was on her shoulder."

"Did they see you?"

Kate nodded. "He told me to go upstairs. And I did. I went upstairs and hid in my bedroom closet for hours, hugging an absurdly large stuffed dog that my aunt had bought me one year for Valentine's Day. And I didn't say a word. Not when he told me, later that night, that bad girls ended up in his special room downstairs. Not when the police started coming around, and not when my uncle did the world a big damn favor and hung himself in the front parlor at the end of the summer. I just... I couldn't speak. It was like my voice was this well that had dried up, and there was just nothing left for months and months."

"Shhh," he soothed, closing the remaining foot or so of distance between them and tucking her close to him. He stroked a hand over her hair and palmed the back of her head, pressing her even closer as he murmured into her hair. "You don't have to say any more. It's okay, it's okay. You're okay..." he whispered over and over again, leaning down until his lips brushed her ear every time he spoke. He felt the shiver that ran through her body and into his, rocked gently back and forth with her and, after several long moments, felt some of the tension in her finally begin to ease.

She pulled away far enough to look up into his face, and the sadness in her eyes twisted his gut.

"But it's not okay, Jaxson. Not really. For years, I've dreamed of Mira. I've thought of her and dreamed of her, and... and she's been there, in the back of my mind. But she's not some buried memory anymore. She's real and she's here—somehow." She cast a nervous look toward the door. "The broken window... She's not just a dream anymore, Jaxson, is she?" Slowly, he shook his head and brushed a wayward lock of hair off her forehead.

"Yeah. I guess I'd already suspected as much." Kate sighed. "Ever since I came back to Florida and moved into that house, I've felt like Gollum and I aren't alone." She worried her lip again. "She's not going to stop, is she?"

Jaxson hesitated, not sure how to answer her question. He hadn't spent much time in Florida—thank God—or in the house next door. But so far the impressions he got from the late Mira Rathe were off-the-charts angry. He didn't think she was interested in going into the light.

"She's a pretty angry spirit," he conceded. "But I don't think she's mad at you."

"Why wouldn't she be?"

"Why would she be?" he countered.

"I let her die, Jaxson. I had the chance to save her, and I ran away and hid. I knew better. I knew how to dial nine-one-one. I don't know why I didn't. I screwed up," she said helplessly. "There's no other way to put it."

"You screwed up?" he demanded incredulously. "What kind of fuck would blame an eight-year-old girl for something like that?"

"Well, apparently Mira."

Jaxson shook his head. "No, she's angry, but not at you."

"How do you—"

He held up a hand. "Don't ask."

"Like hell. You can... hear... her?"

He nodded, half expecting to see the apprehension—fear of him—cloud her eyes, for her to call him a freak. Or worse, to keep silent, but pull away and make up some bullshit excuse because, deep down, she thought he was a freak. But the wary rejection never came. Kate simply continued to stare at him expectantly.

"I can hear her."

"Are there others? Like her?"

"Like her? Dead?" He frowned. "Or in your house?"

Kate broke away and turned a slow circle, glancing warily at the air around them. "Are there a bunch of them, you know, all around us?"

"No."

"Oh God, is there more than one in my house?"

Again, he hesitated, but decided to tell her the truth. "Yes."

"Oh Lord."

"They aren't as vocal as she is. I haven't seen them, not like I've seen her."

Kate took a deep breath. "You know what? I'm not even going to ask," she said, then, "Yes, I am. How on earth is any of this possible? Have you always been able to do this?"

He seriously considered not answering her. "Yes, but I don't know how it's possible," he finally said.

"Does anyone else know what you can do?"

"Just my mother. She sees them, too. She calls it the gift." He snorted.

"Okay, so, so... if Mira's not out to get me, then why now?" she asked when it became clear that he'd said all he was going to, for the moment, anyway, about his gift. "Why is she all of a sudden, here?"

"Who says she hasn't been here all along?"

"I guess. But why is she going all"—Kate waved her arms around—"exorcist, now?"

The sick, niggling feeling was back, and Jaxson cupped a hand around the back of his neck before he straightened to face Kate's inquisitive stare. "Well, I think I might have a theory about that..."

Before he could speak, a loud crash sounded from outside, and the screech of shattering glass carried through the partially open window beside the door.

"What the hell?"
Chapter Eighteen

The Long Goodnight

Their shoulders bumped as they darted toward the dining room window that looked out onto the porch and afforded a clear view of the side of Kate's house.

"W-what," Kate stammered, pressing her arm fully against Jaxson's side, "is she doing?" Even after days and hours and years of dreaming about Mira Rathe, and the brief history they shared, the one and only time their paths had crossed, it felt... wrong, somehow, to be speaking out loud about her. Who was she kidding? It wasn't only that. It was referring to Mira as if she were a live person that made the hair on the back of Kate's neck practically stand on end. Mira was dead. Light shone from a downstairs window, then winked off, only to appear in another window. The kitchen, the porch, the second-story room that was missing a window. Kate shivered. Mira Rathe was dead. Another crash sounded, and the light flashed rapidly now.

But she was far from gone.

"She wants us to come back to the house," Jaxson answered, glancing sideways at Kate.

"Why?"

He shook his head and returned his attention to the spectacle next door. "I don't know."

"Oh. She isn't... talking?"

"No. Only..."

"Only what?" she prompted when he fell silent. "Jaxson, what is it?"

"Nothing. Come on," he said, abruptly turning from the window and propelling her deeper into the house. His grip delivered an edge of pain, and Kate wrenched her upper arm free of his grasp, glaring at him when he rounded on her. He'd snatched his cell phone off of one of the lace-doilied end tables in the formal living room.

"Tell me what she said."

"She said 'come here,'" he told her after a moment's hesitation.

She studied his face, the way his fingers curled tightly around the sleek black cell phone. "You're lying."

But Jaxson was already talking into the phone. "Jake," he said, turning away from Kate and lowering his voice a few octaves until she could only make out every other word or so.

She took a step forward, but Jaxson retreated a few more paces, closer to the staircase, and finally she gave up, crossing her arms over her chest in irritation but otherwise keeping silent. There would be time enough to corner him as soon as he was off the phone. A moment later, she dropped her arms to her sides and stared, open-mouthed, at Jaxson as he slapped his hand against the eggshell-white wall.

"Goddamn it, Jake! He saw her with me. Don't you get it? He didn't stop the car until he saw her over here, with me. He's going to come after her. What do you— Jake, you don't—" Jaxson exhaled and curled his hand into a fist as Kate watched, her stomach tightening. "Because I know. He wants her. I don't know. Because she's blonde, because she was with me, who the fuck knows, but he'll try and take her. She's next. I need to get her out of her," he snapped. "No, that's not enough. Fuck!" he growled, abruptly hanging up and sending his phone sailing across the living room.

Kate blinked when it was stopped by the wall. Then she rounded on Jaxson. "Do I even want to know?" she asked, tapping one foot against the plush carpet beneath her toes.

One corner of his mouth quirked up without humor. "Probably not. Come on, we're getting out of here," he said, crossing the room and looping one hand around her wrist in a firm grip. But Kate dug her heels in and held firm.

"No," she protested. "Not until you tell me what's going on."

"I will," he promised, staring down at her with a pained expression on his face. "But later. Tonight. When we're far away from this godforsaken hell hole," he muttered, turning toward the door again and propelling her along behind him. Again, she stopped him in his tracks.

"Damn it, Jaxson. Stop," she demanded, ignoring the glare he leveled on her as he swung around impatiently. "What. Is. Going. On. You're telling me now, right here, or else I walk out the door. Explain."

"It's not good."

"Yeah, I gathered that," she said wryly.

"It's really bad, Kate," he warned.

"Worse than my house being haunted by a ghost who probably wants to kill me?" she asked dubiously, her blood chilling in her veins as she briefly wondered if Mira Rathe could actually kill her. Considering what she'd done to the window earlier, Kate figured that was a line of thought she didn't want to examine further.

Grimly, he nodded. "Yeah, it's worse than that." He started for the door.

Kate tugged on his arm. "Jaxson."

"I screwed up," he said hoarsely.

"You screwed up," she repeated, searching his face. "Okay."

"Not just now, although I've managed to fuck this up, too," he said, ramming his fingers through his hair and cursing when he knocked his wig askew. "I'm not an exotic dancer at a club—well, I am, right now, but I'm undercover."

"You're a cop?" Her eyes widened.

He snorted. "No, sweetheart. I'm not a cop. I'm an ex-con. Before I came to Florida, I was an accountant. I did some business with the wrong people, and I got arrested—"

"Arrested? What sort of business?" she interrupted, taking a small step closer, curious.

"Financial business," he said, deliberately vague. "Racketeering. Gambling," he finally explained, hanging his head and exhaling slowly.

"Oh." She nodded, hoping her expression was neutral.

Jaxson's head came up, and his eyes were questioning before they became shuttered again. "One of the people I handled some financial... business... for was a man named Roger Klein—the man you saw outside earlier. The blue car," he added when Kate remained silent.

She took a deep breath. "What does that have to do with me?" she asked, though she could more or less connect the dots. The picture that was beginning to take shape wasn't pretty.

"After my arrest, the FBI came to question me. Roger Klein is more than just some shifty club owner. He's also the sole suspect in the murders of at least three women. All young—all blonde."

Kate recoiled, even though she'd seen that coming. "So they had you dress as a blonde woman to try and, what, trap him in some sort of cop show sting operation?"

Jaxson nodded, looking almost relieved for some reason. "The other man you saw here, the one that drives the Buick, is a cop, back in New York. He's my uncle Jake. At first, I was a suspect in the murders. Once they determined that I wasn't Roger Klein's accomplice in anything besides money laundering, they started to pump me for information about him, about his club."

"And the other dancers in the club, do they dress like you?" she asked, not even sure why she was curious about such a thing at a time like this. Maybe she was going into shock again, she mused, still focusing on Jaxson's tense face.

He nodded. "Transvestites? Yes. And no, this isn't my normal style of dress."

"I didn't think it was," she murmured, promptly closing her mouth. "So, your uncle?"

"Right. He came up with the idea of the sting operation starring yours truly. The next thing I knew, I was being offered a plea bargain. My full and total cooperation in exchange for a suspended sentence on the racketeering charges. I took it. And now here we are."

"Roger Klein has been baited to come after you," she said, breathless and slightly nauseous again. The idea of Jaxson being dangled in front of a serial killer was enough to make her see red. She didn't stop to question when her feelings for her quirky, screwed-up neighbor had developed into something deeper, something she was hesitant to name. Then again, the tipping point didn't really matter, did it? Her entire acquaintance with Jaxson Green had been bizarre—and kind of wonderful.

"Yeah, he's supposed to come after me. And I think it would have worked. Until he saw you." Jaxson shook his head and leaned in, pressing his forehead to hers and closing his eyes. "I should have followed my own advice and stayed away from you after that first night. Fuck, I practically led him right to you."

She raised one hand to touch the side of his face. Beneath her fingertips, his skin was hot, bordering on feverish. "You don't know that he's after me. He could have stopped the car earlier to stare at you," she pointed out, stroking her fingers down to the tense line of his jaw. "And, anyway, we live next door." She sighed. "Assuming he saw me and I... fit his type, you wouldn't have had anything to do with that. I could have walked out of my house to go to the grocery store, or to go to work, and he could have driven by and seen me then, all the same."

He brought his hands up to frame her face. "Sweetheart, you don't understand. He doesn't just want you because you're young and blonde. He thinks you're mine. It's a competition for him. It's about the chase. He wants to take you away from me. The thought excites him."

"You can't know that," she gasped, allowing him to pull her from the room. They both paused at the front door to stare silently at her house. The crashing sounds had stopped, for the moment, anyway, but the lights still flickered crazily from one room to the next.

"It's true, Kate. He's going to come after you next."

"But how—" Abruptly, she stopped, her gaze shifting from her house to Jaxson's grim expression. "She told you all that, didn't she? Or you heard it in her thoughts."

He nodded. "I'm—"

She held up one hand. "Don't you dare say you're sorry again," she said absently. "I already told you it's not your fault. Damn," she swore. "Are you sure about all of this?"

"I'm sure. Now come on, I've got to get you out of here," he told her, shoving the screen door open and steering them both across the porch and down the steps to the damp lawn below.

Kate shielded her eyes with one arm, only vaguely aware of leaving her sunglasses on Jaxson's dining room counter. "Hold on. Where are we going?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. It doesn't really matter. Right now, we focus on getting as far away from Florida as possible. We'll figure it out on the way and worry about the rest later."

"But if we run, what then? You'll go to jail, won't you? And when does it end? When is this Roger Klein person going to give up?"

"When he's fucking caught." Jaxson scowled.

"And then you'll go to prison," she repeated, glaring back. "You will, won't you?"

"Yeah, so what?"

"So, no."

"Kate, you don't understand. The police aren't going to help us. My uncle can't get you out of here. You can't rely on the cops to get you to someplace safe. This is the only way."

She exhaled, agitated and scared at the same time. "Then I'll go alone. Okay? I'll get in my car right now and take off. But I can't let you go to jail."

His arms closed around her in the next instant, and he buried his face in her hair. "I can't let you do that."

"I'll be fine," she argued, her heart thumping.

"Yeah, but I won't be," he said, brushing his lips over hers. "I can't let you go alone. I can't just sit here. Don't ask me to do that."

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't go alone," she demanded, feeling breathless and off kilter.

"Because this is partly my fault. And because I can't let you walk away from me," he said quietly. "I don't... I know this is crazy, and you don't need me, but when I think of you going off on your own, I can't—" He shook his head. "If anyone gets near you, I'll fuckin' take him apart. I'll keep you safe, Kate."

She stared up at him until her neck ached. He stared back, his breathing shallow. He was tense, his expression guarded as he waited for her response. The thought of walking away from him felt... wrong, but— "Your plea deal—"

His features softened. "Shh. Let me worry about that, okay? Jake's not going to let me go to prison. Not for keeping a civilian safe."

"Okay," she finally said, not believing him about that for so much as an instant. If he left with her, he would be rearrested. But it was also clear to her that he wasn't going to agree to do this any other way. So, she'd take his advice and worry about the rest of the mess they were in—the legal mess he was in—later. "Okay, we'll go now," she relented, not stopping to question why it was so easy to think of herself and Jaxson as a "they." Why she felt safe with him. She paused, turning in his arms to stare up at her house. "But we can't leave without Gollum."

"Your cat?"

She nodded. "He's still in the house. Poor baby, he's got to be terrified."

"He's probably hiding," Jaxson said, releasing her and planting his hands on his hips. "Are you sure about going in there? I think he'll be fine, really."

Kate gulped, but squared her shoulders. "You said she won't hurt me, right?"

"I'm ninety-nine percent certain she won't hurt you."

She froze halfway up the walkway. "Ninety-nine?"

"Well, she is a ghost. They're not known for being predictable. Or rational," he added. "You're sure you won't leave without the cat?"

"Positive," she said, plunging ahead, up the porch steps and through the front door, with Jaxson hot on her heels. He eased her forward a few inches so that he could shut the door behind them. Inside the house, all noise and activity came to an abrupt halt. Around them, silence reigned supreme, broken only by the ticking of a clock in the front parlor. Kate glanced behind her at Jaxson. When he nodded, she took a few tentative steps forward.

"Gollum," she called, clearing her throat when her voice came out sounding like a cross between a croak and a whisper. She tried again, steadier this time. "Gollum, come here, baby. You can come out now. It's okay." To her surprise, the small gray cat darted out from under the sofa in the front parlor almost immediately. She met him halfway, in the doorway of the sitting room, bending down to scoop him up in her arms. She gasped and Jaxson swore and shoved her behind him as the books began to spontaneously fall from their places on the shelf at the other end of the room. The fireplace ignited, and one by one the books were flung into the fire, as if they were being thrown by an invisible hand. Behind them, the sound of the latch on the front door clicking into place as it locked made Kate's heart practically leap into her throat.

"Come on," Jaxson ground out. "We've got the cat. Let's go."

"M-my keys," she stammered, her stare fixed on the crackling fire in the hearth.

"Where?"

"Bedroom. Upstairs. Wait—" she called out as he started for the stairs. "They're in the kitchen," she remembered. "Hanging over the chair." Then Jaxson was gone, and she was alone in the front parlor.

As quickly as the fire was kindled, it extinguished itself, or, rather, Mira extinguished it. Kate glanced wildly around the empty room and struggled to hold on to her composure. Her gaze dropped to the single book that remained on the hardwood floor in front of the fireplace. It was small, much smaller than the other books had been, and she hadn't recalled seeing it on the shelf. Had it been tucked behind one of the others? The front cover on the leather-bound book flipped open to reveal a page crammed with handwritten notes. Even the narrow margins were full of the same surprisingly neat, tiny, block-like handwriting. Still keeping a firm hold on the cat, she crossed the room and knelt down to pick up the journal. She took it with her to the sofa, glancing around the room one more time before she set Gollum carefully beside her and placed the book on her lap. Her hands trembled as she traced one finger along the writing on the first page:

December 8th

Subject: Tanya, Age: 19

Lagoon, Sarasota, Orange ribbon

The rest of the page was filled to capacity with seemingly insignificant, minute details of Tanya's life, from the first time he'd seen her in a grocery store, to what time she'd eaten breakfast the morning of November fifteenth, to what time she got home on the evening of December seventh, and everything in between. What she ate, what she wore, her schedule, her daily routine. Pages and pages. Oh God. She flipped through the book, faster now, until she was staring at the back cover. Frantically, her eyes scanned the inside back cover for a name, but there was none. It didn't matter. This was Stan's journal. Bile rose in her throat as she thumbed back through the pages, shivering, feeling as if the invisible layer of filth that covered the book was being transferred to her now that she was touching it.

Someone touched her shoulder, and she dropped the book and screamed. It was Jaxson.

"Your purse," he murmured, setting it beside her and shooing Gollum to the other end of the sofa so he could sit beside Kate. "What's that?" he asked, pointing to the journal.

Numb, Kate leaned over and retrieved the book from the floor. "It's my uncle's journal. It's his kill book," she ground out. "He stalked all these women, and he wrote it down. He fucking recorded it all—" She broke off as the faded, tattered ribbon fluttered out from between the pages of the journal and fell to the floor. With shaking fingers, she passed the journal to Jaxson and knelt down on the floor to pick the item up.

"Kate?" Jaxson frowned.

Orange ribbon.

"I think I'm going to be sick," she gasped, dropping the ribbon again and shooting to her feet, one hand clapped to her mouth. "It was hers."

"Mira?"

"No, one of the others. Tanya," she said after struggling for a moment to recall the name that had been written on the first page of the journal. "He took souvenirs... to mark his kills."

Jaxson stood and gripped her arms, forcing her to look at him. "Kate. Are you sure, one hundred percent, that your uncle died that day? Are you sure it was him hanging there?"

She nodded. "Yes. I mean, I think so."

"Was there an autopsy?"

"I don't know. I—what are you saying? What are you thinking?"

"Your uncle targeted young blonde women. Roger Klein targets young blonde women," he said, falling silent and letting her connect the dots.

"No. No way." She felt her stomach lurch again and took a step back. "No. Stan is dead. I saw him." He couldn't have staged his own death. It wasn't possible; it didn't make sense. Then again, the more reasonable part of her brain insisted, the whole Stan-Roger coincidence didn't sound all that plausible, either. What were the odds.

"Okay, come on, let's get out of here," he said, giving her arm a quick squeeze.

"Wait, I need to go upstairs and get some clothes."

"We can—"

"It'll only take a minute. I'm just going to toss a few things in a bag."

"Fine," Jaxson said. "But we need to hurry."

Kate nodded, Jaxson grabbed Gollum, and they sprinted up the stairs and pounded down the hall to her bedroom. She half expected Mira to pop out, or materialize, at any moment, around every corner, but the house was silent. Jaxson thumbed through the journal as Kate yanked a large green duffel from the top shelf of the closet and began to haphazardly stuff clothing and toiletries into the bag.

"Kate," he said after several minutes had passed.

"Hmm?" she asked, zipping the bag and straightening.

"Your uncle Stan is dead."

She frowned, slinging the duffel over one shoulder. "I know. I already told you that."

"Yeah. But he didn't work alone."

Her mouth formed a small O as Jaxson crossed the room and took the duffel bag from her. He handed her the journal, open to a page about midway through the book. "Read this."

She dropped down to sit on the edge of the bed, her heart pounding as she read the entries he'd pointed to. Jaxson was already talking, confirming what she was reading, before she'd even finished that page, then another, and another still.

"Your uncle met Roger at the club. They hooked up and discovered they had some common interests," Jaxson said, shaking his head, clearly disgusted.

"Like young blonde women," Kate said without taking her attention from the page. "And stalking."

"And murder."

"God," she murmured, sickened as she continued to read. "It was a competition to them. A game." Page after page detailed the exploits of the two men. In his notes, Stan referred to himself and Roger Klein as kindred spirits, like minds, "hunters." And above all—competitors. The things they took from the women, from their "kills," were the trophies. The orange ribbon. An earring; a bracelet; a lock of hair. A bone. The souvenirs seemed to escalate with every kill. Sometimes they would even stalk the same quarry. Those kills were the most prized—like Mira. Her eyes quickly scanned the last entry in the journal, and her blood ran cold.

"The glass room," she uttered, forcing the words through lips that almost refused to work.

Jaxson nodded, his expression grim. "Was built to contain the ultimate trophy."

"A human soul."

"Come on, we've got to get out of here." Jaxson reached down and snagged her wrist, pulling her to her feet. The journal slid to the floor, forgotten in Kate's haste to leave the house and her past far behind. She was in full fight-or-flight mode now. The only thing on her mind was escape.

She didn't see it coming. One second, she and Jaxson were running down the hallway, heading toward the stairs, and the next, a dark figure collided with them at the top of the stairs, rushing Jaxson and swinging the hilt of a knife in a wide arc, sending the heavy bone-colored handle crashing into his temple. He went down like a stone, without a sound. Kate's scream was frozen in her throat as she tripped and fell over Jaxson's unmoving, silent form. Quickly she scrambled to her hands and knees, stumbling backward until she was in the glass room. Her gaze never left the eerie, unblinking, icy blue stare of the man who steadily advanced on her.

"Y-you're Roger Klein, aren't you?" she stuttered, hugging her arms around her midsection and frantically searching for a way out. There wasn't one. She was trapped in the glass room. The only way out was through the large, knife-wielding man who stood between her and the door. Why? She silently berated herself, fear for Jaxson and for herself making her light-headed. Why in the hell had she just allowed herself to be backed into a corner?

In front of her now, Roger smiled. "Hello, Kate. We finally meet."

"Why are you doing this?" She forced the words out through numb lips, her eyes darting left, then right. She was going to have to try to trick him somehow, get around him. And even if she managed to get around him, she would have to leave Jaxson behind—if he wasn't already dead. Moisture stung her eyes.

"Why? To win the game, of course," he said, bemused.

"But my uncle is dead. You've already won the damn game," she argued, a tear spilling over and tracking a path down the side of her cheek. Roger extended one arm, and Kate cringed as he followed the teardrop with the point of his knife. He licked the tip of the blade and smiled at her, the predator to the prey. He took a step back, running the blade along the mirrored wall beside the doorframe.

"Oh, no. I haven't won the game," he told her, regret tinging his voice. "Not yet. Didn't you know, Kate? You were Stan's ultimate prize. And now you're mine," he said, his eyes taking on an intense sheen as his gaze roamed over her body. "Nothing meant as much to him as you. He thought he was so clever. He never let on about you. Oh, he talked about you, but he refused to tell me who you were. But I was here. After Viola died, I was here." He laughed, gouging his knife into the glass, then rearing back and slamming the handle of the weapon into the wall, shattering the mirror. Large chunks of glass hit the floor, and cracks splintered, arcing beneath her feet. Kate gasped and took an involuntary step back. "I broke into the house, and I released Stan's catch. I was prepared to accept a stalemate, until I came across a very interesting journal, complete with pictures of you." He all but cackled, moving toward her again. "Stan won't win the game. Not this time."

Kate took a deep breath, held it. He was going to kill her if she didn't get out of this room within the next thirty seconds or so. She would have to rush him. There was no other way. She already knew she wouldn't make it. Silently, she counted down from ten. When she got to three, muscles tensed and ready to run, she saw her in the mirror beside the door, the part of the glass that wasn't broken. In her right hand was a blade, the same one she'd had before. Kate's eyes widened in horrified fascination as she watched Mira Rathe smile and lift the blade to her own face. Unflinching, she ran the tip of the knife down one side of her face, then the other, cutting herself, creating long, bloody streaks all the way down both cheeks. They looked like crimson tear tracks.

Mira stepped up behind Roger, and again she raised her knife. Wrapping one arm around his neck, she dragged him out of the glass room and into the hallway. She plunged the blade in deep, over and over, until Roger lay in a pool of blood beside Jaxson.

Kate remained frozen, backed up against the glass wall, afraid to move and half expecting Mira to turn on her, to come after her next. But in the next instant, Mira Rathe had vanished.
Epilogue

Two weeks later...

"Turn left here," Kate instructed. She winced as Jaxson raised a hand to his temple. "Do you need me to take the wheel while you take another aspirin?" she offered.

He shook his head, glancing toward her with a smile that looked only a little pained. "It's just a headache."

"I can drive, you know."

"I think I'm good for at least another hour, babe," he said, reaching out to twine his fingers with hers on the seat between them. "So, how hot do you think it is today?" he asked idly, setting the cruise control to fifty-five and leaning back with a sigh.

"Poor baby," Kate teased, using her free hand to turn up the dial on the air-conditioning another couple of notches. "There. Better?"

"I guess," he grumbled.

"Do you suppose you'll survive in Georgia for the next twelve months?" she asked, only half joking.

"As long as you're there with me?" He paused, seeming to consider this for a moment. "Yeah, I think I'll live," he finally murmured, tightening his hold on her.

"Georgia is a little cooler than Florida. Sort of," she added, mumbling that last bit. "Well, it's better than prison, anyway," she was quick to point out. "It was nice of your uncle to get the judge to agree to let you do your probation at my aunt's house—and to make sure I was never questioned any further in Roger Klein's death. I was worried I'd have to answer for that. But I couldn't exactly tell the police that a ghost killed him."

"A clear case of legal self-defense," Jaxson said, quoting the Crystal Cove sheriff's office. "I wish you'd have told them I did it, though. So, what time is your sister expecting us?"

"In about three hours." Her cell phone pinged, and she untangled her hand from Jaxson's in order to check the display. "Lindsey's already there. And she can't wait to see us." She grinned. "I miss her so much, Jax. I can't hardly wait. Me, you, my sister, and Lindsey—and of course, Gollum," she said, turning around to smile at the small, gray cat that lay snoozing in a sunny patch in the back seat of the car. "We're getting there just in time for a good old-fashioned Georgia Thanksgiving." She twisted back around in her seat, toward Jaxson. "You know what I'm thankful for?"

"That Chad wasn't real?" he guessed.

She laughed. "Well, yeah. That, too."

"Kidding. What are you thankful for?"

The phone rang. "Hold that thought," she said. "Hello? Oh, hey there," she greeted. She placed one hand over the phone. "It's Rita Cash." Putting the phone back to her ear, she listened for a moment, then grinned. "You're kidding. That fast? Well, okay. Yes, absolutely yes. Okay, great. We'll swing back by in about a week or so and sign the papers then? Oh, you can fax the contract? Terrific. They understand we can't fix the glass in the upstairs bedroom, right? Okay, then. Good." She nodded. "Yes, thank you. You, too. Bye."

"The house is sold?"

"Full asking price," Kate gushed. "Can you believe it?" She sighed. "I think our luck has finally changed."

"Who's the buyer?"

She shrugged. "A single father from somewhere up in Ohio. You know, I almost feel guilty, though..."

"Because of Mira."

"I'm basically selling these unsuspecting people a haunted house, right?"

"In a way." Jaxson shrugged. "But we haven't seen or heard from Mira Rathe since she killed Roger Klein. Besides, she wasn't the only thing in that house, and you never felt uncomfortable there before, right?"

Kate nodded slowly. "Not because of ghosts, anyway."

"You'd be amazed how many places are haunted," he said. "The new owners will be fine."

"You think so?"

"Absolutely. And you still haven't told me what you're thankful for."

"Oh, that." She winked, then became serious. "This year, I'm thankful for family, and good friends... and for new beginnings."

* * *

The house looked like crap. Amber stood on the cracked sidewalk and breathed in the hot, humid air. Beside her, her brother Logan stood silent and brooding. Clearly, he wasn't any happier to be in the so-called "Sunshine State" than she was. Why did they even call it that, anyway? So far, it had done nothing but rain and storm, and there were mosquitoes everywhere.

"Come on, kids." Their dad passed them on the sidewalk and held up a set of keys, jiggling them so they clinked together merrily. "Let's get out of this heat."

"But it's a dry heat," she reminded him, rolling her eyes toward the gray, cloud-filled sky.

"Bullshit," Logan coughed beside her.

"I don't see why we had to leave Ohio," she complained loudly, tucking a section of chocolate-brown hair behind one shoulder and crossing her arms over her chest.

Logan nudged her and shook his head, then followed their dad into the house, leaving her standing on the sidewalk, alone. Overhead, the streetlight flickered, throwing strange, long shadows on the pavement before her. A chill crept along her spine, and she had the strangest sensation of being watched. Quickly she glanced back to the house, to the second story, where a shadow lingered in the house's only brand new window. But when she blinked, the shadow was gone. Shaking her head, she followed her father and Logan into the house.

The inside wasn't as bad as she'd thought it would be. She wandered up the stairs after Logan, shaking her head as he called out "Dibs!" from the largest of the bedrooms. She opened one door after another, pausing in the hallway over a dark stain in the rug. It was faded, like someone had tried to wash it out, but the marks were still there, slightly darker than the droplet-type stains on the staircase. These almost looked like...

"Is that blood?" she asked Logan, watching him amble down the hall toward her.

"Maybe." He shrugged, totally unconcerned. "Who knows. This place is old. What's in there?" He gestured to the door behind her at the end of the hall.

"My room," she shot back, turning her back on Logan and striding forward to twist the knob and shove the door open.

"What in God's name..."

"Woah."

Inside, the entire room was one perfectly seamless, spotless glass box.

Turn the page for more from Angie West.

### The Game

by

Angie West

### Chapter One

The Gift

Lei Guthrie watched as the old woman stepped off the curb. The stooped figure wrapped her hand tightly over the rounded top of a cane and took one tentative step, then another, gypsy skirts shifting as she shuffled forward. She didn't see the bus round the corner onto Ocean Drive. But Lei saw it. She shouted a warning from the corner of Fifth and Ocean, but the old woman didn't pause or even look up. Lei let her shopping bags fall to the sidewalk, uncaring of the jars and lipstick tubes and books that spilled out. The bottle of red wine hit the sidewalk next, shattering on impact and sending alcohol sloshing in all directions. She was running now, full speed ahead, toward the old woman. Was she deaf? Lei screamed, but instinctively knew she wouldn't be in time. She pumped her legs faster anyway, cursing her five-foot-three height and expired gym membership. Faster, faster, faster...

The angry screech of brakes split the air. The old woman glanced up and froze. Lei's weight slammed into her, knocking her forward a step before she closed her arms around the woman and propelled them both backward and out of the line of fire. In the next instant, enormous tires rolled to a stop where the old woman had been standing. Lei heard the whoosh as the bus came to a complete stop, then the murmur of the small crowd that had gathered. Somehow, she managed to keep both herself and the old woman upright on the now-crowded sidewalk. Peering around the woman's long gray hair, she met the wide, concerned eyes of the bus driver as he rushed out onto the sidewalk.

"Is she okay?"

Lei nodded, struggling to catch her breath. "I think so."

"She just walked out into the middle of the street," the man huffed, looking flustered.

"I know, I know..." Lei trailed off, turning her back on the driver and carefully easing around the old woman to stand in front of her. She kept a steadying hand on the bony shoulder, using her other hand to carefully part the curtain of soft, steel-gray hair to get a good look at the woman's face. "Hey, are you all right?"

Startled blue eyes met her own curious stare. The woman didn't speak, although her gaze darted around and she seemed to be aware now of her surroundings. Her lips parted, a distressed sound escaping.

"I didn't hurt you, did I?" Lei was quick to ask.

"Oh...ah, no. I'm f-fine. I didn't even see..." She shook her head.

Lei's shoulders slumped as relief hit her and she was only vaguely aware of the driver climbing back onto the bus and the passersby continuing on their way now that the threat of danger had been eliminated.

"I guess I wasn't paying attention to where I was going," the old lady was saying, and Lei's gaze swung back to her weathered face. This close, she noticed the sheer, almost filmy spot covering most of the woman's left eye. Cataracts?

"Are you sure you're okay?" The woman nodded. "Is there somewhere I can take you, then?" She scanned the area for an outdoor cafe or a bench, anything. "Do you need to sit down?"

"No." The woman paused, taking a step toward Lei and squinting hard. A moment later, she sighed. "Oh, oh no..." she cried softly, her lined face twisting into an expression of grief.

The old woman's distress had Lei doing an automatic quick sweep of their immediate vicinity. She didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. People flowed around them, going on about their business. "Ma'am?" Lei asked, alarmed when the gray head bowed. She leaned in closer.

The woman's head snapped up, her cloudy eyes zeroing in on Lei. "You have to be so careful," she whispered. "So careful."

"Okay." Lei nodded, then frowned. "Wait, what?"

Her face crumpled again. Sadness. Fear. Regret. "Oh, I don't want to tell you, I don't. It isn't fair. You just saved my life."

"Tell me what?" Lei asked hesitantly, thinking that crazy came in all shapes and sizes.

Gnarled fingers curled around Lei's and squeezed, the papery skin cool to the touch. No, not cool. Cold. Like frost. She leaned in close and spoke, her voice a whisper. "You're going to die."

Lei wrenched her hands from the woman's grasp. "What did you just say?"

"I saw it. I always see it. I have the gift," she confided. Her intense stare seemed to touch every part of Lei's face before she sighed again. "I didn't want to tell you. But maybe you can stop it. You have to be so careful, so careful, promise me..."

Unease rang through Lei like an alarm bell, but she nodded. "Uh, I promise?" she offered in a stilted tone.

The woman nodded once, then turned and began to amble down Ocean Drive, her cane thumping rhythmically on the sidewalk as she went. Lei's shoulders slumped and she exhaled. The old lady was clearly off her medication. She probably should have insisted on taking her back to wherever it was that she belonged, just to make sure she got there in one piece and didn't get confused or wander off somewhere. Instead she stood frozen on the sidewalk and watched her go. The woman paused only once, at the corner of Ocean and Sixth, to look over one shoulder.

"Go on, now, or you'll be late...Lei."

### Chapter Two

The Game

Lei's hands shook as she swept her hair aside, pulled an elastic band out of her pocket, and snapped it around her blue-black curls in a loose ponytail. She stared after the strange woman who had just rounded the corner onto Sixth Street.

"How the hell...?" Had she been hearing things? No, she was positive the old woman had called her by name. Go on, now, or you'll be late...Lei.

With a chill that had very little to do with the temperature, she turned to stare at the mess she'd left behind her—and on herself. Glancing down, she noticed for the first time that droplets of red wine stained her tan, knee-length boots a deep crimson. Wine had even splashed onto the thighs of her white jeans. Broken glass, romance novels, and makeup littered the corner of Ocean and Fifth. Her boot heels clicked briskly on the sidewalk as she made her way back to the mess and frowned. Just about everything was ruined. She borrowed a broom from the convenience store on the corner and swept the whole mess into one of the large trash receptacles that lined the street. In the end, only two books and a tube of cold cream were salvaged. What wasn't wine-soaked had rolled into the street to be crushed in the moderate to heavy traffic that was Ocean Drive on a Friday afternoon.

Unease swamped her again as she recalled the strange woman's words. But, creepy or not, the old lady was right about one thing. Lei was going to be late if she didn't hurry. Her best friend, Iris, would be at her house at six for game night and a glass of vino. It was now—she fished her cell phone from her pocket and checked the front screen—five thirty, and she didn't have wine or a game. Lei hastily shoved the books and cold cream into her tan leather purse and hurried down the street. Cool, crisp autumn air surrounded her, invigorating Lei as she made her way down the street to her car and climbed inside. She took a few seconds to steady herself, forcefully shoving all thoughts of the old woman and her premonition aside. Today was the start of the weekend and she intended to enjoy it. With a deep breath, she craned her neck to watch a line of cars move past. When she saw a break in traffic she took it, deftly swinging the Buick away from the curb.

Ten years ago, the car—along with the security deposit on her first apartment—had been a graduation present from Grandma Chen. The thing was a boat, but it was comfortable, safe...familiar. Lei liked familiar. She'd been renting the same house for eight years. She surrounded herself with old things, from the books she read to the furniture she'd chosen for her house. Practically everything she owned was a throwback to another era, namely the 1950s, although she didn't discriminate; she showed equal love for the 80s, too. For all that, her clothing tended toward the modern, and she enjoyed a single-cup coffee maker or a latte as much as the next person. Like Lei, in addition to being an only child and part Italian, Iris was also a fellow vintage junkie, especially when it came to jewelry.

Lei smiled as she turned onto Frontage Street and squeezed the Buick into a narrow slot between a yellow Camry and a slate-gray Hummer. It was their shared love of all things vintage that had led not only to a nineteen-year friendship but also to game night. Specifically, the rules for game night. Rule number one: wine, and preferably cheese. Two: chocolate. The third and final—and most important—rule? The game changed every other week and it had to come from a thrift shop and have a price tag under twenty dollars. Over the years, the girls had loosened their definition of game to include any activity that killed an hour or two. The spare room in Lei's house was filled to the brim with old candle making kits, board games, and other odds and ends.

Pocketing her car key and slamming the door behind her, she crossed the street and walked into About Time, the bell jangling over the door announcing her arrival. She was immediately enveloped by the combined smells of leather and old books and she breathed deeply, basking in the familiar warmth that seeped into her chest every time she set foot in her favorite vintage shop. An antique bookstore-slash-thrift shop, About Time had been in the same building for twenty years and carried a decent selection of old furniture and used household goods along with jewelry and estate items and, occasionally, clothing. Large, rectangular rooms fed off a main shop area that housed all the books and games. A display case and checkout took up the north wall.

Lei waved to the girl behind the counter before proceeding to browse the aisles of the main room, bypassing sand art kits and tarot cards in favor of the gaming nook in the south corner of the room. Her gaze skimmed over Mille Bornes and Farkle, and she brightened when she spotted the '72 edition of Clue. Iris had a newer edition and had surprised Lei with the original 1949 game two Christmases ago, but neither of them had one like this. Excited, she looped her purse higher onto her shoulder and went up on the tips of her toes to reach, when a flash of silver caught her eye. On impulse she abandoned Clue and tugged the leather-and-silver box down from beside it. A thin layer of dust covered the top of the square-shaped box and she balanced the substantial weight of the package on one arm in order to brush the grime away, then shrugged and wiped her hand on her already ruined jeans. Silver threads cut through the leather in a random pattern. Scrawled across the top of the box was a single word—Méchant. Something rattled inside when she carefully turned the box over to read the back.

Play against up to four of your friends in this romance novel trivia game. From the classics to present day, Méchant puts your knowledge of romance novels to the test. Lei grinned. It was perfect. She was already using one hand to dig her wallet out of her purse as she approached the checkout and plunked the game onto the counter. "I found a live one, Bridget," she teased. "How much?"

The girl behind the register grinned and spun the box around. "Yeah? Looks like this is right up your alley," she said, her gaze skimming over the back of the box. "Damn, there's no sticker on this one. Hang on." She held up one finger and twisted around to yell into the back room. "Hey, Gabe! How much on this game?"

"Which game?" came the muffled response.

Bridget rolled her eyes. "Méchant."

His response was lost as the bell over the door rang and another customer walked in.

"What?"

Gabe poked his head out the open doorway of his office and smiled when he saw Lei. "Five even."

Lei nodded, then popped open the clasp on her wallet and fished out a five-dollar bill.

"I picked that one up at an estate sale out in Huntingdon."

"Yeah?"

Gabe winked. "Rumor has it, the game is haunted. Cursed."

Lei grinned as she zipped her purse and took the game from Bridget, shaking her head when the girl offered her a bag. "A haunted game, huh?"

"Mhmm. I knew you'd love that part."

"What's it haunted by?"

Gabe shrugged. "Don't know. But none of the locals at the auction would touch it. I picked the thing up dirt cheap." The bell jangled again as another customer entered the shop, a deep rumble of thunder carried in through the door as it opened. "Looks like we're in for a soaker."

"Yeah, looks like," Lei agreed. "Have a good weekend, you guys." After she said goodbye to Gabe and Bridget, she left the shop, then quickly crossed the street and jumped back into the car. But she paused in the act of pulling the seat belt across her shoulder. Thick clouds hung low in the sky and formed a dark line at the edge of town. As she watched, a jagged streak of horizontal lightning shot from one cloud mass to another. In the middle, the clouds met and began to rotate. She froze, then blinked. But when she opened her eyes, the storm clouds were once again stationary in the sky. A chill prickled along her nerve endings as she stared at the bruise-dark clouds and, unbidden, the old woman's words came back to her. Like an omen. Immediately she discarded the thought. No. It's just a storm. Shrugging, she started the car and headed for home, with a quick stop along the way for a bottle of Chianti. A couple of candy bars near the front register of the liquor store would have to do for chocolate, she decided, since a glance at her phone told her she was already five minutes late. Besides, she couldn't wait to see the look on Iris' face when she saw the latest Friday night pick.

### Chapter Three

Iris

The sun was sinking lower in the sky, and the trees that lined Lei's sleepy Pennsylvania neighborhood cast long shadows on the neatly trimmed yards as she pulled into her driveway. Iris' navy blue Intrigue was already in the driveway. Iris herself was nowhere in sight, and Lei glanced at the dash clock before grabbing the wine and the game, then leaned back into the car to scoop up her purse. She looped her purse strap around her wrist and headed up the red cobblestone walkway that led to her front porch. A glance at the horizon revealed clear skies. The storm hadn't gotten this far yet. The fake-grass outdoor carpeting seemed to sparkle in the early evening sunlight as it muffled her footsteps. She knew Iris would have used her spare key and would be waiting inside the house, so she wasn't alarmed when she turned the knob and her front door swung right open. "Lucy, I'm home!" she called out, hip-checking the door closed behind her and making a beeline toward the back of the house, to the kitchen. The warm, spicy scents of tomato and garlic filled the air in her small bungalow and made her knees weak. Home.

"Bellissima!" Iris blew kisses at her from across the kitchen island, grinning when Lei all but pounced on the bright orange plastic bowl that was overflowing with garlic bread.

"Oh thank God, Iri, I am starving!" she said once she'd chewed and swallowed a few bites.

"Whoa, what happened to you?" Iris waved her wooden spoon, gesturing to the dirt and red splotches on Lei's white jeans.

"You wouldn't believe the day I've had."

"Oh? Try me."

Lei cocked her head and watched as her friend uncorked the wine and set it aside to breathe. Her sleek dark hair was caught up in a ponytail and she wore minimal makeup. Not that Iris needed anything more than a swipe of mascara and a slick of lip gloss with her strong Italian features. Beneath her usual effusive manner and easy smile, though, Lei sensed tension. Iris' wide, deep brown eyes were filled with shadows today, though clearly she was doing her best to hide that fact.

"Okay." Lei shrugged, ripping off a chunk of bread and popping it into her mouth, deciding to give Iris a few moments' reprieve before she grilled her. "I saved an old woman from becoming road pizza in front of a bus." She moved around the island. Grabbing two plates, she passed one to Iris and they began to load up with mostaccioli and salad greens.

"Serious?" Iris gaped, then shook her head and spooned a tiny amount of pasta onto her own plate.

"Yeah, I was walking down Ocean and bam, this old woman just walks out in front of a bus," she explained, ignoring her friend's look of protest when she added a large spoonful of pasta to the paltry amount on Iris' plate. "She told my fortune as a thank-you," Lei said sardonically.

"Oh, yeah? Is there a tall, dark, handsome stranger in your future?" she asked as they took their seats at the kitchen table.

"Not unless he's the Grim Reaper."

Her best friend glanced up, startled. "Why...?"

"It's nothing, just..."

"What?"

"She said I was going to die."

Iris blinked. "Come again?"

"Don't look at me like that. I know it sounds crazy, but that's what she said. Then she made me promise to be careful and said maybe I could stop it."

"Oh...well, that's positive. Sort of."

Lei set down her fork and ran her fingertips over the space between her eyes. "But," she said, feeling her face heat, "like I said, it was probably nothing. I've had a long day."

Iris quickly smiled, but the effort looked forced and concern still etched her brow. "Here, here, superwoman."

"Right." Lei shook her head, fingering her napkin and choosing her next words with care. "But, okay, here's the thing, she knew my name, Iri. She said I was going to be late if I didn't get going, and she called me by name." She nodded as Iris set her fork down and leaned back.

"Okay, so that's a little strange."

"I know," Lei agreed, all of a sudden feeling like she needed to stand up and move. She paced around the kitchen for a minute before pouring two glasses of wine and carrying them to the table. Outside, the light was beginning to fade.

"Thanks," Iris said as she accepted one of the flutes. They ate in silence, each seeming lost in their own thoughts as they watched tree limbs begin to dance in the wind that was steadily picking up. "Okay...so maybe she knew you?" Iris finally offered.

Lei nodded slowly, then stood to clear their plates. "Maybe she was a friend of my grandma's." She shrugged, privately thinking that that scenario would be one hell of a coincidence. "I'll call my dad tomorrow and see if he remembers any of Gran's friends who would match her description. And, hell, maybe I told her my name and just don't remember. It's been a crazy day, so..."

Iris sipped her wine, then grinned impishly. "Unless she's really a psychic."

"Right." Lei shook her head. Not for all the chocolate in Sweden would she admit to seriously wondering that very thing. "So, how was your day? Did you have another run-in with the BQ today?" Cassie Leone, aka the Bitch Queen, had been hired on as the new assistant at the dental clinic where Iris worked as a hygienist and never missed a chance to give Iris hell. Not that she was especially nice to anyone else in the office, except the men, but she seemed to reserve the brunt of her bullshit for Iris.

"What? No." Iris shook her head, not bothering to deny that something was wrong. "She wasn't even there today."

"Oh. Well, is it Phillip?"

Silence.

"It's Phillip, isn't it?"

"No, I mean. Yeah, maybe." She pursed her lips and glanced out the kitchen window as a bolt of lightning flashed in the sky, quickly followed by a booming clap of thunder. The storm was moving in.

Lei watched the line of dark clouds moving in before she returned her attention to Iris. "Problems?"

Iris shrugged. "Too early to tell. He was supposed to fly out this week, but canceled last night."

"Oh."

"He sounded vague," she rushed on. "But, like I said, too early to tell."

"Fair enough. But if he can't see how awesome you are, then he's an idiot."

Iris' full lips curved up in a wry smile. "And you'll get me drunk on cheap wine and chocolate if he dumps me?"

"You bet."

Iris laughed and waved her hands around. "Gah, but I don't want to talk about it anymore tonight. Like I said, I'm probably overreacting."

"Okay, then are you ready to see what I found for game night?"

She brightened instantly. "Hell yes. I was beginning to think you'd committed sacrilege and forgotten."

"Not a chance," Lei laughed. "Be right back." When she came back from the living room, Iris had already scooted the wineglasses to the edge of the table, closest to the window, to make room for the box. Lei set it down with a flourish before digging the books and chocolate bars out of her purse.

"Vintage Brown and Miller. Nice," Iris said, eyeing the covers appreciatively before turning her attention to the box. "And what have we here? Méchant?" she asked, raising a brow.

"Gabe said it's supposed to be a cursed game," she confided with a grin.

"Gabe was at the shop today?" Iris asked, momentarily sidetracked. A speculative gleam entered her eyes. "Oh, really."

Lei gave her a funny look. "He's always at the shop."

"He is when you're there."

"It's his shop," she protested, topping off her wineglass.

"Oh, come on. You know he's had a thing for you since high school. And I know, I know, you're on a dating hiatus, or whatever you call it. Still."

"I work too much to date, anyway," she mumbled, ducking her head at the incredulous look her friend sent her. "A lawyer's schedule is very hectic."

"You're a legal secretary."

"Yeah, but—"

"You get off at four thirty every day."

"There's nothing wrong with being cautious," Lei said, adding cheating scum ex-boyfriends to the list of subjects she wanted to forget about for the night.

"It's been eight months since you broke it off with Cole. I'm just saying."

"And I'm enjoying every minute of my freedom. Are we playing a game here or what?"

Iris held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. "Fair enough. Let's have a look at your cursed game."

Excitement flowed through Lei once again as she watched Iris flip the box over.

"Play against up to four of your friends in this romance novel trivia game. From the classics to present day, Méchant puts your knowledge of romance novels to the test." Iris clapped her hands. "Yes! Oh, girl, you are toast."

"Don't bet on it," Lei retorted smugly.

"Come on, then." Iris was already tugging the lid from the top of the box. "Let's do this."

### Chapter Four

The Crypt Keeper

Lei unpacked a worn deck of thick cardboard cards, all facedown, the backs of which were a plain, tan brown. Next came a pair of dice, slightly yellowed with age. Iris helpfully reached out and picked up the box, then tipped it over to deposit the folded, square game board into Lei's hands. She leaned forward, hands coming to rest on the edge of the table as Lei carefully unfolded the board and spread it out on the tabletop. Then both women froze.

Iris blinked. "Lei...?"

She met Iris' wide-eyed stare with a confused look of her own. Outside, thunder boomed as rain began to lash the windows. They were looking down at a graveyard. "I thought this was supposed to be a romance novel trivia game?" Iris added, leaning down for a closer look.

Lei trailed a fingertip along the shiny silver that rimmed the board. The graveyard filled the entire middle of the board, tall, gray, rounded-at-the-top headstones stretching toward a night sky that was, oddly enough, filled with stars. A winding stone walkway cut a path through the rows of graves and circled around to also frame the graveyard. At the end of the graveyard an enormous black-and-silver mausoleum stood sentinel over the morbid scene. The writing on each headstone was nothing more than thin, wavy lines, but each sidewalk block was inscripted with instructions to move so many steps forward or back.

Lei frowned. "What the hell."

Iris nodded. "Well, this is different."

"Iris, what do you suppose Méchant means?"

## Author's Note

Thank you for reading Jaxson's Song. If you've enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a quick rating or review. Someone once told me that a review is the best gift an author can get, and I wholeheartedly agree. I know they make my day and encourage me to keep writing and, most importantly, keep learning. For information on current projects, promotions, and other tidbits, catch up with me on my website:

http://awest2011.wix.com/angiewest

or send me an email at awest2011@live.com

XOXO,

Angie

