Phantom of the French Quarter. Colleen Thompson

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      Except that one was still as stone, with her mouth agape and a lurid line of color bruising her alabaster neck.

      “Holy hell.” Reuben jerked a cell phone from his rumpled jacket. “Who is—she looks almost like—”

      “Like me, I know.” Terror pinched the living woman’s voice.

      Marcus knelt beside the crumpled female, his hand reaching to confirm what his eyes already knew. The skin of her wrist was cool and unyielding, as well as pulseless. Along the underside of her bare outstretched arm—her top was sleeveless, and ink-black to match her short skirt—he focused on the line of livid purple, then the bruising on her neck. The splash of blood at the hollow of her throat seemed garish in contrast to her otherwise unblemished pallor.

      But not nearly as horrifying as the way the eyes glittered when a ray of sunlight pierced the fog.

      Rising with an oath, Marcus backed away, taking in the unnatural sheen of the blond filaments, the glassy stare that, he saw with a jolt, was real glass. Turning his head to take in the living woman, he realized that the dead one didn’t look like her, not really…?.

      Even though someone had apparently taken pains to make her seem that way.

      Reuben began speaking into the phone, reporting their location and the discovery of a corpse, so Marcus directed his attention to the living woman.

      “That’s a wig she’s wearing,” he pointed out. “And those eyes. They aren’t natural, either.”

      She edged close enough that he could hear the quick rhythm of her breathing, could feel the nervous energy pulsing from her. Peering at the body, she said, “Why would someone do this?”

      Don’t get involved, warned the instinct that four years of running had honed to a keen edge. Yet the fear in her red-rimmed eyes, the popped pearl button on her ivory blouse and the torn knee of the pants that skimmed her slender body made her need so real and immediate, so human, that he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Who knew you would be here? Some admirer you’ve turned away? An ex-boyfriend who can’t let go?”

      Fear flashed over her beautiful features, and she shook her head. “There’s no one like that, no one in a long time. But there was this old woman—she accused me of…”

      Her trembling hand pointed to the ring the corpse was wearing, a ring with a stone so large, he suspected it was as artificial as the long blond hair and green eyes.

      Why couldn’t the body be a fake, too? A mannequin, arranged and decorated as a bad joke? But the cool flesh had felt all too human, and the horror of the gaping mouth was all too real.

      Reuben flipped his phone shut and in a take-charge voice said, “Police are on their way. They’ll want to talk to us.”

      Something in Marcus froze at those words. To hide his reaction, he turned away and scooped up his rattling Nikon, along with several small items that had fallen from the camera bag.

      “Sorry I ran into you. It was just so—so awful, seeing her, that I—” the woman said before Reuben overrode her, his flat brown stare boring into Marcus.

      “What’re you doing out here at this hour?” The huge man sounded coplike himself, suspicion tightening his clean-shaven jaw.

      Marcus raised the camera in answer, then tossed back the question. “And the two of you were out here because…?”

      “We were looking for a lost—” the woman started.

      “That’s none of his business, Caitlyn,” Reuben warned her before his voice softened. “You’re hurt.”

      “No, I’m fine. I’m…” She glanced down at a few drops of blood that had seeped through the torn material at her knee. Shaking her head, she said, “Never mind that.”

      She looked into Marcus’s face, her expression a brand of innocence he’d forgotten existed in the world. “I’m Caitlyn Villaré, from Villar-A1 Tours. This is my assistant, Reuben Pierce.”

      Considering the difference in their ages and the man’s obvious protectiveness, Marcus would have been less surprised to learn that Reuben was a doting father or an uncle. But not a sugar daddy, not to this angelic-looking blonde.

      “We were looking for something one of my clients lost here last night,” she told him. “A ring.”

      “I’m Ethan. Ethan Thornton.” The lie came smoothly, honed by years of practice at using different names in different cities. Only this time, for the first time in memory, he felt the kick of conscience. “I have an interest in funerary art.”

      “You have an interest in taking pictures of dead girls, too?” Reuben challenged. “Maybe setting up your own—”

      As Marcus fixed him with another cold stare, Caitlyn cut him off. “Reuben, this is horrible enough without you pointing fingers. I’m sorry, Mr. Thornton.”

      Reuben’s expression said he wasn’t, that he remained suspicious. But at least he backed off, muttering only a face-saving “Cops’ll be here any minute. Guess we’ll leave the questions to them.”

      The three of them stood in awkward silence, avoiding eye contact as they waited for—and, in Marcus’s case, dreaded—the first sirens to pierce the delicate veil of birdsong.

      Caitlyn glanced down at the body, then looked away quickly and hugged herself as a chill rippled over her flesh. “I’ve never seen someone—I mean, I was with my mother when she died of cancer. But that was nothing like this.”

      Reuben took her arm and steered her toward a stone bench. “Here, why don’t you sit down? You’ve had a shock, and you’re still bleeding. And there’s no need to stand there looking at…it.”

      “Her,” Caitlyn corrected, ignoring the damp slab of concrete he was indicating. “She’s still a person, isn’t she? We can give her that much, at least.”

      Still a person. Soft and serious, her words slipped beneath Marcus’s armor, beneath the skin itself. And he couldn’t help but wonder, could a woman who found humanity in a grotesquely altered dead girl see a man like him, a man who’d fallen so far and so hard, as—

      Too dangerous to go there, to allow himself to feel. At the moment, thinking was required. Thinking and watching until he finally found the right moment to fade into the background, to move on to the next city and forget those glassy, green eyes…along with their living mirror image in the face of Caitlyn Villaré.

       Chapter Two

      “Tell me more about the man who fled the scene before the officers arrived, the one who told you his name was Ethan Thornton.” In the airless interview room at the police station, Detective Lorna Robinson leaned her considerable weight onto her forearms, flattening her flesh against the table. With her cropped, red-streaked hair and her chunky wooden jewelry, she locked in on Caitlyn with a striking hazel gaze a few shades lighter than her rich brown skin. “Could you describe him for me again?”

      “Tall and on the slim side. His eyes were almost black.” Caitlyn closed her own eyes in an attempt to find the words to describe him. Exhausted as she was from her interrupted СКАЧАТЬ