Lover's Bite. Maggie Shayne

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      She shook her head. When you fall in love, Jack, you’re not even going to know what hit you, much less be content with living alone any longer.

       Ha!

      She shrugged and gazed again at the man in the bed. Mid-thirties, brown hair, starting to show a little gray and some thinning in the center. He had a bit of a belly, too, expanding the blankets that covered him. Mortality sucked. She glanced at Jack. So what’s the plan?

      He grinned at her, then walked over to the bed and crouched low. Bending close to the man’s ear, he said, “Wake up, pal. We’ve got some talking to do.”

      The man’s eyes flew open wide, and he immediately sat up in the bed.

      Jack slammed a palm into his chest, pushing him flat again. “You aren’t to speak until I ask you to. I could kill you very easily, and way faster than you could get to the telephone.”

      “Wh-what do you want? You want money? Jesus, take it, just don’t—”

      Jack gazed hard at the man, and Topaz knew he was exerting the power of his mind. The man’s jaw clamped shut and his eyes went wider. Jack was preventing him from speaking as effectively as if he’d clapped a hand over his mouth.

      “I said not to speak until I ask you to.” Then Jack smiled. “Oh, yes. That’s right. We’re not your garden-variety burglars. We’re not even human. Now, there are two ways this can go. You can tell us what we want to know, and we’ll leave here and you’ll never see us again. Or you can be stubborn and make us torture it out of you. Either way, we’ll get what we came for. Is that understood?”

      Les strained to move his mouth.

      Jack smiled. “Oh. Sorry. Go ahead, you can answer now.”

      Les opened his mouth experimentally, then rubbed his jaw with one hand.

      “Do you understand your options?” Jack asked.

      “Yeah. I got it.”

      “Good. This lovely lady has a few questions for you. You will answer them. And you will tell no one of this visit. Unless you want it repeated in a far less pleasant manner.”

      Frowning, Les looked at Topaz. Then he looked again, his eyes straining.

      “Who was your source for the Tanya DuFrane story that ran today?”

      His eyes widened. “Holy shit. You—you’re her, aren’t you?”

      “That is not the answer to my question, Mr.…Adams, is it?”

      “You haven’t aged,” he muttered. “That photo I ran of you was ten years old. I couldn’t find any more recent ones—”

      “There aren’t any more recent ones.”

      “But you haven’t changed…except—”

      “I’m paler, I know. I am not, Mr. Adams, pink. Now, will you tell me what I need to know?”

      He shook his head. “No. I…I can’t.”

      Sighing, she looked at Jack. “Make him tell me, Jack.”

      Nodding, Jack said, “I was getting hungry anyway.” Then he bared his fangs and jerked the man out of bed by the collar of his pajamas. Jack held him a foot above the floor.

      The man’s scream was pathetic and loud.

      Jack gripped Les’s chin and tipped his head back, moving closer to his throat.

      “Don’t! Don’t. I’ll tell you! It was Argent.”

      Topaz blinked in shock. “Kimber Argent? The woman who owns Avalon?”

      “No. Her husband, Albert. He recognized you as soon as he saw you.”

      “We never met face-to-face,” she said.

      “He’s right next door in the apartment. Besides, he has cameras all over that place. He feeds me stories all the time. Makes more money for me than any other source. Hell, that villa of his is bugged till hell won’t have it. There’s video surveillance, too, but Argent says it’s malfunctioning or something. Celebrities stay there all the time, and I get a ton of gossip on them from him.”

      Topaz muttered, “I should have guessed. So who broke in there tonight? Was it you, looking for more dirt?”

      “Someone broke in?” he asked, wide-eyed.

      “Yes, someone broke in. Was it you?” she repeated, growing impatient.

      “No!” He swung his gaze from her to Jack and back again, afraid, she thought, that they didn’t believe him. “I wouldn’t need to break in, Argent would let me in if I asked him. But I haven’t asked. And I won’t.” He was clearly terrified. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were—whatever the hell you are. I’ll fix it. I’ll print a retraction, say it was all a mistake.”

      “I’m afraid the damage has been done, Mr. Adams,” Jack said. He dropped the man back onto the bed. “You’ll sleep now. You’ll remember this as a bad dream, nothing more. And you won’t run any more stories about Tanya DuFrane, no matter how tempting those stories might be.”

      “I won’t. I promise. I—”

      “Sleep.” Jack said the word firmly, with a piercing gaze, and the man sank back onto his pillows. His eyes fell closed. “It was a bad dream,” Jack whispered, leaning closer. “It was nothing but a nightmare. We were never here.”

      Topaz touched his arm. “You could have used that same technique to get him to talk in the first place, you know.”

      “Of course I know. But scaring the hell out of him was much more fun. Besides, he had it coming. Bottom-feeding slug.”

      She didn’t entirely disagree with him, she thought as they walked out of the man’s house.

      “Where are you taking me?” she asked as Jack drove through the rapidly fading night. “This isn’t the way back to Avalon Mansion.”

      “It’s almost dawn. Surely you don’t want to spend the day there.”

      “That was the plan.”

      He sent her a look of disbelief. “We’re completely defenseless when we sleep. You have no idea who broke in there, and they could come back.”

      “What for? They already searched the place and took what they wanted.”

      Jack drew a breath. “Unless what they wanted was you.”

      “Don’t be melodramatic.”

      “I’m not. Topaz, consider what you’re doing here. You’re trying to unmask a killer, a person who has spent the past thirty-six years believing he got away with murder. You don’t think that tabloid story made him nervous? You don’t think СКАЧАТЬ