“I know magic.”

“Sure you do.”

He studied her with indolent eyes, not saying anything until she recited his address.

His defenses went up. “How do you know so much about me?”

“Like I said, magic.” Lauren raised her right hand, palm forward so he couldn’t see the driver’s license trapped by its edge between her first two fingers.

“I’m not a big believer in magic.”

With a flourish, Lauren shook her hand and his driver’s license appeared at the end of her fingers. For a moment, Heath didn’t know what to say. Before he could recover, she flicked her wrist and sent the plastic rectangle spinning at him.

Heath caught the license in his left hand. His free hand slid down to his pants pocket, then he looked surprised. “You picked my pocket at the morgue.”

About the Author

MEREDITH FLETCHER lives out West where the skies are big, but still close enough to Los Angeles to slip in for some strategic shopping. She loves old stores with real wooden floors, open-air cafés, comfortable boots, the mountains and old movies like Portrait of Jennie while sipping a cup of hot cocoa on a frosty day. She loves action romances with larger-than-life heroes and heroines with pithy repartee. She has pithy repartee herself, but never when she seems to need it most! She’s much more comfortable at the computer writing her books. Please contact her at meredithfletcher@hotmail.com or find her at www.whatmakesmyheartbeatfaster.blogspot.com.

No Escape

Meredith Fletcher

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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For Matt and Alyssa, who found each other.

Chapter 1

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

Throttling the urge to scream in rage and pain, Lauren Cooper stared down at the body of Megan Taylor. “She’s— She wasn’t my friend. We were sisters.”

On the other side of the stainless-steel table that supported Megan, the coroner consulted a small spiral-bound notebook. Intensity clung to him like a second skin. He didn’t look like a guy who smiled much, but he was handsome and would have had a nice smile when he put himself to it.

Being a coroner wasn’t a profession that lent itself to a lot of smiles, though. Not even in Jamaica.

His white lab coat was stretched tight across broad shoulders. The notebook nearly disappeared in his big, callused hands. A faded half-moon scar showed on the left side of his cleft chin. He was over thirty, but not by much. He was six feet plus and lean. His sun-streaked bronze hair was short and neat, professional, but a little long now, a little out of control. Maybe he hit the beach a lot when he wasn’t in the morgue. His accent was Southern, somewhere in the lower forty-eight.

Lauren turned her attention from the coroner and focused on Megan. Looking at her lying there on the table was the hardest thing Lauren had ever had to do. Mornings filled with pillow fights, nights packed with shared secrets, all the things sisters did made the reality even more confusing.

Megan’s short-cropped platinum-blond hair was tangled with seaweed, and Lauren knew that she would never have wanted to be seen like that. She had to resist the impulse to comb the debris from Megan’s hair.

You can’t. It’s evidence. It’s all evidence. Tears burned the backs of Lauren’s eyes.

Megan is evidence now.

The thought almost wrung a howl of pain from Lauren. She curled her hands into fists and made herself breathe, made herself push the air out and slowly let it back in. She had to keep the air going out. It was too easy to hold it in.

Looking at Megan’s body lying on the table and covered to the neck by the white sheet was a nightmare. She’d been twenty-seven years old, the same age Lauren was. Both of them were similarly built, athletic with curves.

With her fair hair and dazzling blue eyes, Megan had been the one of them that was the light. Dark haired and dark eyed, Lauren had been the shadow. Megan had always fearlessly rushed in, and Lauren had always waited on the outside, watching before she dove in.

That had changed later. Megan had remained fearless, but Lauren had learned to seize the limelight whenever she needed to. Success in her job had depended on that. She was suddenly aware of the silence in the morgue, and that the coroner was staring at her.

She thought back frantically, trying to remember any question she might have missed. There were so many questions swirling through her head right now. “I’m sorry. Did you ask me something?”

“I did. Which of you is married?”

The question surprised Lauren. It didn’t seem like the kind of information a coroner would want. But this was Jamaica. She didn’t know how things worked down here. She’d never been to the island country.

“Neither of us is married.”

The coroner’s eyes were gold with green flakes that stirred restlessly. He didn’t blink. “Different last names. Is one of you divorced?”

“No.”

“But you said you’re sisters?”

“Yes. I was adopted.” Rescued was more like it. Lauren still had nightmares about the orphanage and foster homes. Her adoptive mother told her those memories would fade, but they hadn’t. Lauren had always been thankful for the second chance she’d gotten, and being orphaned once had made losing her adoptive father to a heart attack four years ago even harder. Megan and her mother were all that Lauren had left.

And now Megan was gone.

“You kept your birth name?”

“Yes. It was all I had left of my parents.” Lauren had wanted to keep something from them. They had died tragically. It hadn’t been their fault that they’d left her. From everything she remembered of them, they had been good people.

“Do you know who Ms. Taylor came down here with?”

“She came by herself.” Lauren looked down at her sister. There had been so many wild things Megan had gotten her to do when they’d lived at home and during college.

“Was she in the habit of doing things like that?”

Lauren kept her voice soft. “She liked her adventures.”

“Adventures?”

“That’s what she called them. Her adventures.” Lauren’s eyes burned, but she refused to let the tears fall. She wasn’t going to do that in front this stranger. She had always been emotionally reserved.

Except with Megan. With Megan she’d always been able to just be herself.

Now that was gone.

“Coming down here by herself was risky.”

The flat tone in the coroner’s voice stopped just short of insulting, but that somehow made the statement worse. He winced, as if he’d just realized how harsh he’d sounded.

“Sorry. Something like this, it’s hard to take even if you’ve seen it dozens of times before.”

The morgue, for all its stainless-steel and tiled-floor impersonality, suddenly seemed too small. Lauren made herself breathe out. He’s just here to do his job. Just answer the questions. She worked to unclench her fists and failed. She wanted to defend Megan, wanted to explain how her sister loved life and new experiences, and she wanted to lash out at the coroner all at the same time.

“Megan was impulsive.” The statement felt naked and indefensible to Lauren’s ears. She desperately wanted to make the man understand, but she just couldn’t find the words. There were words. She knew there were. “She wanted to see Jamaica. She’s— She’d been going on about it for weeks. This trip was something she’d promised herself when she finished up a project at her advertising firm. This was a celebration. A getaway from the 24/7 life she’d been doing the last few weeks to close the deal.”

“So there was no particular reason she came to Kingston?”

“She wanted to come here. For Megan, that was reason enough.” Lauren thought back to her discussion with Megan before her sister had left. “There was some movie she’d seen lately. Something about an island cop.” She shook her head. “I can’t remember anything more than that. She caught a movie on Netflix, and she decided this was where she had to go.” She took a breath. “That’s just Megan. It’s always been Megan.”

The coroner made another notation in his book. “Was she meeting anyone down here?”

“No.”

“Would she have told you if she was?”

“Yes. When Megan was in discovery mode, that’s what she called it, she didn’t want anyone else around that she knew. She said having a friend along was too limiting. It didn’t let her really explore a new environment.”

The coroner studied her with those gold eyes. “Would you say you and Ms. Taylor had a good relationship?”

It took a moment for Lauren to answer the question because her voice was thick and felt like shattered glass. “Yes. We did.”

“You knew she was here?”

“Yes.”

“Who else knew she was coming?”

“I don’t know. Lots of people. Megan was people-friendly. That’s why she was so good at her job. She kept a Facebook account and updated it regularly. She let everyone know she was taking this trip.”

He wrote something else down. “So someone could have been meeting her here?”

“You’d have had to know Megan. If she knew something, or even thought she knew something, she told you. That’s how she was.”

“Did she have many romances?”

Heat filled Lauren’s face, and she glared at the man.

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I apologize. That wasn’t supposed to come out like that.” He waited a moment to see if she would respond. When she didn’t, he went on. “I just wondered if there’s the possibility that she was currently seeing someone and you didn’t know about it.”

“No. Not that I’m aware of. Maybe Megan wouldn’t tell me about a new guy in her life at the time that relationship started, but I always knew. Megan thought she could hide things like that, but she really couldn’t. Not from Mom. Not from me. I knew.” Lauren looked down at her sister and wanted to believe that. No, she did believe that. She would have known.

The air-conditioning unit cycled, and the cool air washed over Lauren. She wrapped her arms around herself and trembled slightly. Her fists still wouldn’t open. She couldn’t remember feeling so cold and so alone.

“If Megan had been meeting someone here, I would have known.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“I’m positive.”

“Was Ms. Taylor casually seeing anyone back home? Someone that didn’t come along on this trip?”

Lauren tried to keep up, but the questions just kept coming with staccato regularity. The man was like a machine. “No.”

“There wasn’t anyone she’d started seeing a little more of before she left? Maybe someone she was interested in but not officially seeing?”

“No. Like I said, with Megan, every potential romance was a big deal. I would have known.” So would everyone on Facebook. Megan liked being in love. None of her suitors had stood the test of time, though. Megan had liked her diversions, but most of her exes were still friends of hers. That was just how she was. No one would hurt her.

Except that someone had. The dark bruising around Megan’s throat testified to that.

“Was there anyone your sister had stopped seeing recently?”

“No.”

“Anyone she’d stopped seeing in the past that would hold a grudge?”

“Look.” Lauren’s tone came out sharper than she’d intended. “You didn’t know Megan. She wasn’t like that. No one would want to hurt her. Not even an ex-boyfriend. She was the kindest, gentlest, most innocent person I’ve ever known.” A tear fell from her right eye, and she felt it skid down her cheek. She refused to brush it away because she knew that would only open the floodgates.

“Where are Ms. Taylor’s—” The coroner stopped himself and offered a correction. “Your parents?”

“We lost our father a few years ago. Mom’s not well. She’s gone through chemo and isn’t able to travel. She asked me to bring Megan back home.”

“I see. I’m sorry to hear that.” For the first time, the cold, impersonal voice softened just a little.

Lauren took a deep breath and looked at the bruises around her sister’s throat. They looked almost like handprints. “Can you tell me what happened to Megan? The police inspector I talked to on the phone wasn’t very informative. I’m supposed to meet with him later.” She didn’t want to know what Megan went through in her last moments. She knew her mom wouldn’t want to know, but they had to know so they would be prepared for what was going to happen next. For when whoever had done this was caught. “He said there’s going to be an investigation.”

“What were you told?”

Again with the questions. Lauren made herself breathe out. “A police inspector, Wallace Myton, contacted my mother and told her that Megan had drowned. When my mother told me, I knew that couldn’t be true.”

“Why?”

“Megan was a strong swimmer. And she didn’t take chances out in the water.”

“But you said she was impulsive enough to come to Jamaica on a whim.”

Lauren’s voice tightened and grew sterner. “I’m telling you what I knew the minute I was told what had happened. My sister did not drown.”

He looked at his notebook. “I see that. You called Inspector Myton back and insisted that your sister could not have drowned. You wanted him to investigate your sister’s death.”

“That’s right. The inspector was very polite, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.”

“He believed you after the bruises showed up postmortem on your sister’s neck.”

Lauren closed her eyes. She couldn’t believe the man had stated that so coldly. “That’s when the police knew Megan had been strangled.”

“I’m sorry.”

Keep breathing. Deal with this. Mom is counting on you. Lauren opened her eyes and looked back at the man.

“Did your sister know a magician named Gibson?”

The question came so far out of left field that Lauren couldn’t help being surprised. “No.”

The coroner looked puzzled. “Your sister didn’t know Gibson. But I can tell by your expression that you do.”

“I don’t know him. I know of him. Everybody who loves magic knows who Gibson is. I’ve seen him perform.” Lauren didn’t like the way she suddenly felt guilty. That came from the coroner, not her. She grew more uncomfortable with the questioning, but she told herself she’d never dealt with something like this before and that her answers would help catch whoever had hurt Megan.

“What do you know about Gibson?”

That question was easier to answer. Lauren knew about Gibson. She answered automatically, pulling up the information effortlessly, and was grateful for the change of subject. “The man’s a master illusionist. He’s up there with David Copperfield. Criss Angel. Doug Henning. Siegfried & Roy.”

Frowning, the man shook his head. “I’ve heard of Criss Angel.”

Lauren could tell from the coroner’s reaction that he didn’t care much for the magician.

“And I thought Siegfried and Roy were lion tamers.”

“Magic is a part of their show.” Lauren studied him. “I don’t suppose you care for magic shows or magicians.”

“Magicians are just another type of con artist.”

Under other circumstances, Lauren knew she would have argued the point and maybe even gotten angry. Magic and illusion were an art, and shows depended on audiences wanting to be fooled just as much as on magicians and illusionists. For now, though, she just let it go.

“Why would your sister have been interested in Gibson?”

“I don’t know that she was.”

The coroner reached under the lab coat and took out a photograph. He held it so Lauren could see it.

In the photograph, Megan sat at a table in an elegant club. She held a wineglass in one hand and looked as carefree as ever. The lights sparkled in her blue eyes, and Lauren knew her sister was having a great time. She didn’t look frightened or under duress. Her smile was carefree.

The man sitting beside Megan was instantly recognizable. Gibson—that was the only name anyone knew him by—was a virtuoso of illusion. He’d had shows in Vegas and in Europe that were always sold out.

Dark and broody, a wild flip of hair hanging down into his face, Gibson looked mysterious and otherworldly. His persona, if it was a persona, never slipped. In the few interviews he’d done, he’d maintained his distance and hadn’t revealed much about himself. No one knew where he came from. He’d just appeared on the magic scene almost as if by arcane means. If it was a shtick, it worked for him.

The black suit was Italian, neatly pressed, and fit him well. In the darkness of the club, he almost seemed to be disappearing into the shadows, as if the darkness around him was drawing him in under its protective wing. His was a hatchet face fleshed out by hard planes and deep-set eyes. A thin beard edged his jaw and pooled in a goatee around his thin-lipped mouth. The pale complexion made him look stark, as if he never saw the light of day.

Lauren had followed his career and had gotten to see him when he’d played at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago. Megan had bought the tickets and planned their whole night—including a blind date with an accountant for Lauren that was nice but didn’t really have any spark.

“Is that Gibson?” The coroner jostled the photograph and broke the hypnotic intensity.

“Yes.”

“Ever met him?”

“No.”

“Your sister obviously knew him.” He put the picture back inside his jacket.

Lauren didn’t know what to say to that. She thought for a moment. “That picture wasn’t on her Facebook page.” She had looked at Megan’s Facebook information and updates several times since she’d gotten the news about her sister. Until the night of her death, there had been constant updates and Tweets. “When was it taken?”

“The night she went missing.”

Pain racked Lauren. “Megan was reported missing?”

The man nodded. “You didn’t know that?”

“No.” Lauren focused on her control. She needed to listen. She needed to learn. Her mom would want to know everything. “The first contact we had was Inspector Myton’s phone call to tell us—to tell us Megan was gone.”

“Your sister was reported missing.”

“By whom?”

“A friend she’d made over the last couple days.”

“What friend?”

The coroner hesitated, then answered. “A man she was supposed to have breakfast with the next morning. The guy called the police because he didn’t feel like your sister was someone who would just stand someone up.”

“Megan wouldn’t. If she didn’t want to go somewhere, she didn’t go. If something came up, she called. That’s just how she was.”

“Then we have to assume she went with whoever did this to her.”

Lauren looked down at her sister and shook her head. “No. Megan would never go with anyone that would do something like this.”

“Then she didn’t know what the guy she was with was capable of.”

“How do you know it was a guy?”

The coroner held up his hands. “Her killer had big hands.”

An image of someone’s hands around Megan’s neck squeezing the life out of her nearly brought Lauren to her knees. She thought she was going to be sick. The room spun around her.

A strong hand took her by the elbow and lent her strength. “Easy. Just keep breathing.”

Lauren did. She forced her legs to hold her up and concentrated on the door on the other side of the room till the room stopped spinning. “Did you find out where this man was when Megan went missing?”

“He was with friends. Iron-clad alibi.”

Iron-clad alibi? What coroner talked like that? Obviously he had been watching too many cop shows. “If the police knew Megan was missing, why didn’t they do something?”

“Adults come down to Jamaica to go missing all the time. There were no signs of foul play in her room. The police checked. She just didn’t come back to her room that night.”

Because she was dead.

“Normally three days have to pass before an adult is presumed missing.” The coroner’s voice was flat, but she knew he was trying to help her understand what had happened. “Since there was no evidence that she was abducted, the police kept on the lookout for her.” He hesitated. “Things happen down in the islands. The police know that, too. Because they were looking, they knew who she was when they found her. Otherwise she could have been here in the morgue for days before anyone knew who she was.”

That was a horrible thought. Lauren couldn’t bear the idea of Megan lying here in this place of the dead for days without anyone knowing where she was.

The coroner’s voice was lower, softer, and the Southern accent was more pronounced. “I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Cooper. But I’m going to get the guy who did this. For what it’s worth, I can promise you that. He won’t get away with what he’s done.”

The conviction in his voice startled Lauren. It was raw and hoarse. She looked into those gold eyes and saw the stormy intensity of his gaze. She cleared her throat to make her voice work. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name.”

The morgue door opened, and a rotund man in his fifties stepped into the room with a file in one hand and a mug of tea in the other. He wore dark blue scrubs and a matching surgical hat. A mask hung loose around his neck. He gazed heatedly at the coroner standing beside Lauren.

“What are you doing in here, Detective Sawyer?”

The coroner ignored the older man and focused on Lauren. “Are you okay? Can you stand?”

Not knowing what was going on, Lauren drew away from the man.

“Never mind what you’re doing here.” The new coroner set his cup down on the nearby counter and grabbed the door. He pulled it open. “You’re leaving. Get out of here.”

The coroner—Detective Sawyer—looked at Lauren, tried to say something, then shook his head and left.

Lauren watched him go and didn’t understand anything that had happened, but she was going to find out. She headed for the door, hurrying to catch up.

Chapter 2

You’re some piece of work, Sawyer.

Sighing in self-disgust, Heath Sawyer slipped out of the white lab coat as he strode down the hallway from the morgue. His long legs ate up the distance, but he couldn’t get out of the building fast enough.

He’d wanted to see the dead woman’s body himself, to get a feel for her and how she’d died. Whenever he was working a case, he wanted to know as much as he could about the victims. Seeing them at the crime scene or the morgue helped, but the trade-off was demanding. That kind of intimacy was a lodestone for nightmares. Years later, he could still remember the faces of the first case he’d investigated. He hadn’t planned on running into the sister on this one.

But that didn’t stop you from taking advantage of the situation when it presented itself, did it?

A wave of guilt assailed him, but he pushed it away. He’d learned to do that on the job, and he was on the job now, even out of his jurisdiction. Hell, he was out of his country.

Memory of the woman’s perfume teased at his mind. Lauren Cooper was holding herself together better than a lot of grieving relatives Heath had dealt with over the years. In fact, she was holding it together better than he had when he’d found out about Janet.

He dropped the lab coat onto the counter where an older woman talked on the phone and entered data on a computer that had seen better days. A Bob Marley poster hung on the wall beside a calendar that said, Welcome to Jamaica. Have a Nice Day.

The woman narrowed her eyes, and her face pinched into a frown as she watched Heath. “Hey. Hey, you. You come back here and put that where it goes. I’m not your maid.” Her island accent was thick.

Heath ignored her and headed for the stairs because they were faster than taking the elevator. He couldn’t wait to be outside again where he could breathe. The island temperature was cooler than it currently was back in Atlanta, but the humidity was worse. He fished his sunglasses from his shirt pocket and slid them into place.

The area was dangerous, and that woman—Lauren Cooper—didn’t look like someone used to dealing with dangerous situations. She had no business being at the hospital. The State Department should have taken care of the arrangements for getting her sister’s body back to Chicago.

That image of her standing there beside her dead sister was going to haunt him. He felt guilty for having noticed how pretty she was. He didn’t know what it was, but there was some indefinable quality about Lauren Cooper that had caught his attention.

Heath forced himself to keep moving. The woman wasn’t his problem. She wasn’t his responsibility. She couldn’t help him because she didn’t know what had happened to her sister. He was here looking for a murderer.

The man who had killed Janet.

As the pain and loss took him, Heath closed his eyes and tried to push it away. He had work to do, and he’d taken a leave of absence from the P.D. to get it done, to clear the ghosts from his head.

And he knew who his target was. Finally, in the picture of Megan Taylor, he had another link in the chain he intended to hang around Gibson’s neck before he dropped the man into the ocean.

Let’s see him magic his way out of that.

A trio of young nurses came down the stairs. They chattered in English and a smattering of other languages Heath couldn’t identify. And they laughed as they talked about the party they’d gone to last night. He gave way before them and pulled to one side of the narrow stairwell. He nodded a silent greeting.

Then someone’s hand dropped onto his elbow and yanked him around. He almost slipped on the narrow stairs, but his left arm came around, hand turning and curling over his assailant’s wrist. The move broke the grip at once.

His right hand curled into a fist at his side, and his weight shifted on his knees as he prepared to throw a punch. The response was automatic, drummed into him from years spent on Peachtree and other violent streets in Atlanta while he learned his tradecraft in law enforcement. Mostly, he’d learned how to stay alive. And truth to tell, some of that willingness to hit came out of his Waycross, Georgia, roots, as well.

The identity of the person who had grabbed him surprised him.

Lauren Cooper no longer looked vulnerable and confused. Her dark eyes blazed with fury. Her black hair was cut close and followed the shape of her head down to her jawline and stopped just short of touching her shoulders. He remembered the style was called a bob, something he’d had to learn while taking witness statements.

She was beautiful. He’d noticed that when he’d talked to her in the morgue. Her sleeveless navy blue dress hugged every curve. Tiny silver hoops glinted at her ears, and a small silver cat pendant hung on the slope of just a hint of cleavage. Her mouth was generous, full-lipped, and her chin was strong and fierce. He hadn’t noticed earlier, but there was a small spatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She wore short, black leather boots with buckles, and she looked as if she wanted to plant one of those boots where it would hurt.

As soon as that thought struck him, Heath turned sideways just a little, enough to hopefully allow him to block anything she might throw at him. He held up his hands in surrender. In his rumpled suit, one of the charcoal pinstriped numbers he wore on the job, he felt overdressed for the coming fight, but it had been enough to get him through the morgue staff.

“Who do you think you are?” Lauren reached out and grabbed him with both hands.

Pain ripped through Heath as he realized she’d grabbed shirt and chest hair, and he was pretty sure that was what she’d intended to do. “Hey, take it easy.”

“Don’t you tell me to take it easy. You just lied to me back there. Do you get off on doing that?”

Heath grabbed her wrists and tried to disengage her. “Look, I’m sorry. You don’t know what’s going on here.”

“No. And you’re going to tell me.” Lauren set herself and shook him. It wasn’t hard to do. On the stairs he was off-balance, and there was the added problem of him not wanting to hurt her.

Heath scrambled to keep his balance, but one foot slid off the step, and he had to shift quickly to stop himself from falling. The woman was prepared for that. As soon as he moved, she yanked again, pulling him into her and backing into the stairwell railing. He knew her next move was to set herself again, twist and shove him down the steps. It was what he would have done. If he’d allowed himself to get in so close to a perp.

So he did the only thing he could do under the circumstances: he let go of her wrists and wrapped his arms around her, holding on tight. Her muscular body tensed against him, and he was surprised at her strength. She was five feet eight inches tall without the boots, and the low heels pushed her up another couple inches. She smelled sweet, a hint of vanilla and something else, some kind of berry. He was pretty sure of that, but his senses were swimming.

“Hey. Hey. Hold on.”

“No.” She pushed against him, but he held on tightly. She tried to knee him, but he turned the blow aside with his thigh.

He put on his cop voice. “Miss Cooper, you need to calm down.”

“I am calm.” She pushed against him, harder. Her short-cropped hair flicked in his face as she struggled. An inarticulate scream ripped from her throat. Then she lifted her boot and drove the heel down his shin and into the top of his foot.

Pain burned the length of Heath’s shin, but he held on to her, afraid that she was going to fall down the staircase and get hurt.

Two heavyset orderlies in hospital scrubs raced down the hallway. The woman at the desk urged them on, speaking in French or Chinese for all Heath knew. He was pretty sure it wasn’t Spanish. He knew Spanish and Spanglish from the streets.

One of the orderlies grabbed Heath by the shoulders. “Let go of the woman, mon. Let her go now or I’m gonna mess you up.”

The other man grabbed Lauren Cooper and pulled her back.

Heath released the woman, then shifted his arm under the arm of the man holding him and forced the man’s grip over his head. The guy scrambled and tried for a new hold, but Heath spun around behind him, caught the guy’s hand, and twisted it into an armlock behind the man’s back. He held the orderly between him and Lauren like a shield. Pain drove the man up onto his toes.

“Okay.” Heath made himself breathe normally. “We’re all just going to take a step back. Take a minute. Think this through a little. Before somebody gets hurt.” The man he held on to tried to break free. Heath moved the arm up just enough to let his captive know he could break it if he had to.

The other orderly hesitated, standing there looking uneasy.

Lauren wrapped her arms around herself and glared at him. She blew a strand of hair out of her face. “What were you trying to do in there? Why were you asking me all those questions? How could you do that to me?”

“Miss Cooper, those are all very good questions, and I respectfully decline to answer them. In a few more minutes, members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force are going to be here, and I don’t feel like talking to them. It would be better if we could just agree that our meeting—timing and all—was a mistake.”

“A mistake? I’m the only one who didn’t know what was going on in there.”

“Yes, and for that I’m truly sorry. I wish I could have made that easier, but I couldn’t.” Heath tried to think of something to add, but Hallmark didn’t make a card for what he’d done to her. And trying to explain why he’d done what he’d done was just too involved. She didn’t need to think about what he knew.

Besides, she needed to pick up her sister and get back home. She’d be safe there.

At least, Heath hoped she’d be safe. Gibson was still out there prowling, and the man was a predator. Heath was the only one who was convinced of that. Given the man’s resources, he could disappear and strike anywhere he wanted to, then disappear again.

Losing Janet was proof of that.

Heath leaned close to his captive’s ear and spoke softly. “I’m going to let you go now, partner. You just make sure that woman doesn’t come after me. And if you come after me, I’m going to hurt you. Understand?”

Reluctantly, the man nodded.

“Good.” Heath released the orderly and backed away. Three steps later, when there was no pursuit, Heath turned and fled up the stairs. The woman didn’t come after him, and he was a little surprised at that. She didn’t seem like the type to give up.

Back at the fleabag hotel where he was staying, Heath took the hotel key card from his shirt pocket and swiped it through the reader. The lock made a thunk and the light cycled green. He put his hand on the doorknob and drew the snub-nosed .357 Magnum from a holster at his back. He’d bought the revolver off an eleven-year-old boy shortly after he’d hit Kingston four days ago. Guns were easy to get. It was answers that were hard.

For a moment, he just held on to the door handle and listened. Nothing moved inside the room. That didn’t mean anything. Neither did the electronic lock. The hotel wasn’t a security showcase. That was one of the reasons he’d checked in after he’d found it.

Cautiously, he pushed the door inward and followed it inside the room. The hinges squeaked just a little, but he liked that. Besides the thunk of the lock, he also had the squeak as an early warning system.

A quick sweep of the room revealed that no one was waiting for him. The hair trapped between the second drawer down and the frame of the chest of drawers told him no one had searched the room.

He locked the door behind him, holstered the pistol, and got down to business. He took off his jacket and threw it on the unmade bed. If maid service was available in the hotel on a daily basis, the sign on the door would keep them out. Maybe. He didn’t like leaving anything to chance.

His shin still ached from where Lauren Cooper had scraped him with her boot heel. He cursed softly at the discomfort, but he didn’t hold the action against her. He’d deserved everything he’d gotten and probably more.

In the bathroom, he raised his pant leg and surveyed the long, bruised and bloody scrape down his leg. Lauren hadn’t been messing around. She’d known exactly what she was doing. Good for her.

He returned to his unpacked suitcases and took out a small medical kit. Methodically, he cared for the scrape. On the island, with all the heat and the potential for disease in some of the areas he was traveling in, there was a good chance of infection.

He returned the medical kit to his suitcase and took out a small wireless printer. After plugging the unit in to the wall, he took out his phone and brought up the images of Lauren Cooper he’d taken while she’d been grieving over her dead sister.

At the time he’d taken the pictures, he’d felt like a heel. Now, looking at the woman’s grief-stricken face, he felt even worse. As a police detective, he’d seen more than his share of devastated people, physically and emotionally. He’d been told that in his job as a homicide investigator, he was always meeting people on the worst day of their lives.

Heath sent the pictures over to the printer and took them as soon as they’d come through the unit. The Lauren Cooper he saw in these shots didn’t mesh with the wildcat who had met him full-on there on the stairs. He tried to think of how many women he knew who would have tried something like that. There weren’t many.

Janet would have. She’d fought her killer. But in the end it hadn’t done her any good. He’d killed her just the same. In fact, Gibson had probably enjoyed the struggle.

Realizing the black anger was about to consume him again, Heath pushed it away. He couldn’t let that happen. The anger was raw and vicious, worse than any drug an addict could crave. When the anger was in bloom within him, there wasn’t room for anything more.

He’d learned that as a kid at Fort Benning, Georgia. His father had been a drill instructor for the army, stationed at the post. Heath had had to take a lot of grief as a teenager, and he hadn’t always chosen wisely. For him, the world was black-and-white. That view of things had led him into the military and into the police department later. He loved being a detective, balancing the scales a little every time he broke a case. He’d learned to put away the anger, but since Janet’s death, it was back with a vengeance.

He went to the small closet and reached up for the ceiling. Gently, he pushed and popped out the section he’d cut the first night he’d stayed in the room. In the darkness that filled the closet, the cut he’d made couldn’t be seen.

Reaching up, he took down the roll of canvas he’d bought from an art store on his way to the hotel. Walking over to the wall near the small desk, he unrolled the canvas and tacked it to the irregular surface. The canvas was three feet wide and eight feet long. The dimensions weren’t those of the whiteboard he generally used in the detective bullpen, but the canvas gave him plenty of room to work.

Photographs from crime scenes and printouts from reports were secured to the canvas with double-stick tape. The seven women stared out at him from their pictures. All of those shots were from before Gibson had finished with them. All of them had a photo of a black card with an embossed white rabbit on them. They’d been sent to the various police departments within days of the discovery of the murders.

Below them were crime scene photographs. Some of them were bloody. Sometimes, and the profilers attached to the murders didn’t know why, the killer liked to cut his victims. Other times, like with Megan Taylor, he just killed them.

Muriel Evans, the weather girl in Newark, New Jersey, had been shot through the head.

Tina Farrell, the masseuse in Los Angeles, had had her neck broken in a manner that suggested Special Forces training.

The Taylor woman had been the first to get strangled.

The White Rabbit Killer didn’t seem like a disorganized killer. He was too methodical, too good at what he did. But an organized killer often used the same weapon. Like the knife.

Janet had been tied up and thrown into a hotel room shower, then had a naked electrical cord dropped in after her. Her death hadn’t been easy. Heath still smelled her burned flesh in his nightmares.

So far, the White Rabbit Killer hadn’t killed the same kind of victim or in the same city. Not even in the same state. The serial killer was a traveler, but he took some kind of pride or satisfaction in his kills because he always left a calling card behind: a black card embossed with a white rabbit.

At first, no one in the media or in the homicide squads that were investigating the murders knew what the white rabbit meant. Janet had been the first detective to match the white rabbit to the magician Gibson. She’d been the one who’d discovered Gibson had been in all of the cities of the victims during the time they were killed.

But there was no evidence linking Gibson to the murders. And now, even with Janet among the victims, there was still no evidence.

The killer’s pace was picking up, though. Only two weeks had passed since he’d killed Janet. His timetable was picking up speed. Either he was growing more confident, or whatever he got from murdering women wasn’t lasting as long as it had.

Heath took the pistol out and placed it on the desk. He reached into the small refrigerator near the desk and took out a beer. The air-conditioning in the room was weak and he was already sweating.

In the center of the canvas, Gibson stared out with those malevolent eyes and that mocking smile.

Heath sipped his beer and considered his next move. Gibson was on the island. He stayed locked away somewhere up in the hills. No one Heath had met knew for certain where, and the local police force wasn’t being overly helpful in finding the man. They had no reason to interfere with the man’s privacy. Or maybe they didn’t know.

Gibson wasn’t wanted in Jamaica, and he wasn’t wanted by anyone in the United States, either. At least, not yet.

Heath’s cell phone buzzed for attention. He took it from his pocket and glared at it. The unit was a throwaway he’d gotten in Atlanta before leaving the city and didn’t have caller ID, but he knew who it was. Only one person had the number.

Cursing, Heath took the call. “Yeah.”

“How’s it going down there?” Jackson Portman sounded totally relaxed, but then he always did. An ex-football player and African-American, Jackson’s build and don’t-cross-me demeanor made him look more like a movie heavy than a homicide detective.

“It’s too hot.”

“Can’t be no hotter than ‘Lanta.”

“Did you call for a reason? Or are we just gonna talk about the weather?”

“You busting any heads yet?”

“No. Why?”

“Got a call about you.”

“From the locals?”

“Nope. I already talked to them. Inspector Myton don’t look like he’s gonna be a fan of your work anytime soon. Said you had no business bein’ up in their business.”

“I’ve heard Myton talk. He doesn’t sound like that.”

“That’s ‘cause I’m paraphrasing.”

Heath took another sip of his beer. “If it wasn’t Myton that called, who was it?”

“A woman. When I first heard her voice a little while ago, I was hopin’ maybe you met somebody.”

“Overnight?”

“I ever tell you how I met my first missus?”

“Too many times.” Heath sat up straighter and looked at Lauren Cooper’s picture. “Let me guess who the woman was.”

“Sure.”

“Lauren Cooper.”

“Shocks me how you know that, bro. I mean, you should be a detective.”

“I’m working on it. Myton must have told her about me.” Heath took another sip of beer. Or the coroner told her. He hadn’t cared for Heath, either.

“I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“She knows too much about you. Stuff Myton wouldn’t know.”

Heath stared at the pretty woman in the picture. He’d missed something about her. “Like what?”

“Where you lived. About your sister and her kids. About your gym membership. About me. A lot more than I know about you, actually. That’s why I thought maybe you’d hooked up with someone down there and just didn’t tell me. Then I realized it was you I was talking about, and I thought maybe I’d call you, check that out. Now you sound like you ain’t any too happy to hear from her.”

For a second, Heath felt a faint tickle of fear. His sister and his two nephews lived not far from him in Atlanta. He’d been helping out with them when he could since her husband had left her. “I’m not.”

Jackson waited a beat. “You want to tell me how Lauren Cooper knows so much about you? Especially if you ain’t all chummy and everything?”

There was a knock at the door.

“I’ll call you back.” Heath picked up the .357 and got up. He walked to the door and avoided the peephole. Quietly, he slid the cell phone into his shirt pocket, then dropped a hand onto the door handle and popped it open just enough to see out into the hallway.

Lauren Cooper stood there with her arms folded. “We need to talk, Detective Sawyer. Now.”

Chapter 3

“Are you alone?”

That wasn’t the response Lauren expected from the man. She’d expected him to be contrite or defensive, or at least surprised, maybe even outraged that she’d found him, but he didn’t seem to be anything more than irritated.

“What?”

“Alone? Are you alone? It’s not a hard question to answer.” Heath stepped through the door and glanced out at the courtyard in front of the motel room. He held a gleaming black revolver in his right hand, tucking it close behind his thigh so it couldn’t easily be seen.

“Yes. I’m alone.” Even as she said that, Lauren wondered if coming here alone was intelligent. Now she was wishing she’d gone to the local police. But she also realized that course of action probably wouldn’t have gotten anything done. Heath Sawyer might have been there on police business, and even if he wasn’t, he hadn’t broken any major laws.

Heath grabbed her by the elbow and tugged her through the doorway. Lauren set her heels and started pulling back. He glared at her. “You came to see me, lady. I didn’t come knocking on your door. So either leave or come in. This door isn’t staying open.”

For a moment, Lauren seriously considered turning around and leaving. That seemed to be the path of least resistance. Except that she’d just seen her murdered sister and she wanted some answers that she felt certain the man in front of her had. Inspector Myton hadn’t had many. Then she spotted the canvas spread out on the wall behind Heath.

On autopilot, Lauren stepped into the room, barely aware of Heath shutting and locking the door behind. She kept walking, taking in the photographs and police reports secured to the canvas thumbtacked onto the wall. Her gaze slid over the images of women who were obviously dead, all of them taken at crime scenes.

Then her eyes found the photos of Megan. A feeling of vulnerability descended over her. Sharp pain shot through her stomach. She closed her eyes and took a breath.

Heath crossed over to the canvas and took it down. Despite the speed at which he moved, he was careful with the photos and reports. “I’m sorry, Miss Cooper. You shouldn’t have had to see that.”

She turned to him. “You’re a cop.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Not a cop. I’m a homicide detective. Something like what happened to your sister? I’m a professional. I’m the guy you call when something like this happens.”

Focus, Lauren. She made herself breathe out and put distance between herself and the pain. “Who called you about my sister?”

He hesitated. “Nobody.”

“You were here four days before my sister was murdered.” Lauren had gleaned that from the receipts in his wallet, which she had pilfered during the physical altercation they’d had at the hospital.

Heath nodded warily, no doubt wondering how she’d known that. “I was.”

“Why?”

“I took some personal leave that I had coming. Thought I’d see the sights.”

“Did you know she was going to be killed?”

The question rocked him on his heels. Despite his efforts to remain calm, Lauren saw that she’d caught him by surprise.

“No. How could you think something like that?”

“It’s a lot easier than you think. Especially since the masquerade in the morgue.”

“I went there to get information.”

“About what?”

“About whoever killed your sister.”

“I thought you had that figured out.”

“I believe I do.”

Lauren pointed at the rolled-up canvas. “Then tell me what’s going on. Explain to me what my sister’s picture is doing on that. Tell me who killed her.”

He scowled and walked over to a small table surrounded by three chairs. He raised the beer bottle he’d liberated from the small refrigerator in the corner of the room. “Can I get you a drink?”

“No.”

Heath sat in one chair and put his feet up in another. He sipped from the beer bottle. “I really would like for you to leave. What’s it going to take to make that happen?”

Folding her arms over her chest, Lauren ignored him, keeping her focus on the rolled canvas. She felt confident he wasn’t going to try to physically remove her from the room. He’d have already done that if he’d wanted to. And she was certain he didn’t want to have anything to do with the local police after the confrontation in the morgue. The actual coroner had been very vocal about Heath’s presence there. “Do you think Gibson killed Megan?”

After a brief hesitation, Heath looked at her. “Do you want me to lie to you? Because what I think doesn’t matter.” The note of sarcasm in his voice surprised her. At first she thought it was directed at her, then realized it was more personal than that.

“I want you to be honest with me. If you can.”

“I can. And I think Gibson killed your sister. Getting someone else to believe that can be difficult. I know. I’ve tried.” He frowned. “A lot of people, evidently, aren’t prepared for that kind of honesty.”

Even though she’d asked for the answer, the words hurt. Lauren wasn’t as ready to hear them as she’d thought she would be. Still, she kept her composure. Being weak in foster homes wasn’t something that let a kid survive. She’d learned to keep her emotions inside and present that hard shell to the world.

“I’m sorry.” Heath blew out a breath.

“It’s fine.”

“No, no it’s not. A person shouldn’t have someone taken away from them like that.”

Lauren heard the note of wistful hurt in his words, and she knew that she wasn’t alone in her pain and misery. As a foster child, she’d learned to read tones and expressions and body language at an early age. That was part of the self-preservation tool set. “Who did you lose?”

The wince and the slight hunching of his shoulders, like a boxer who had just taken a blow, let her know her instincts had been dead-on. This wasn’t just a case to the detective. “A friend.”

Lauren nodded toward the canvas. “Is she on there, too?”

He ran a big hand across his stubbled jaw and took a breath. He didn’t bother looking at the canvas. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s a visual victimology. My friend doesn’t belong with those others. When Gibson killed her, it was different.”

“What was different?”

“The motive for the murder. Gibson made Janet’s death personal because she’d made her pursuit of him personal.”

“How did he make it personal?”

Heath leaned back against the wall. Green flakes stirred restlessly in those gold eyes, but he looked tired. She hadn’t noticed that earlier in the coroner’s office. Looking at him now, seeing him better, he looked slightly pale beneath the new redness from the sun.

“We worked a homicide in Atlanta. A real-estate agent. Thirty-two-year-old mother of three.”

“‘We?’”

Heath drained the rest of the bottle and set it on the window ledge. “Yeah. Janet and me.”

“She was a police officer.”

“Detective. Like me. She was working as lead on the Celeste Morrow murder, working the case with her partner. She used me as a sounding board. We did that for each other when we caught cases where we got stuck and needed an outside opinion. Janet let me have a look at the case.” He stared at the wall, but Lauren knew he wasn’t seeing it. “We both knew the serial killer was a sociopath. All the traits were there. Random killings. Nothing tying the victims together. But the killings were usually savage.”

Memory of the crime scene photos on the canvas played inside Lauren’s mind. There had been so much blood. “My sister was drowned. She didn’t die like those others.”

“No. She didn’t. But I learned that Gibson’s name came up in the investigation.”

“He was identified by the picture she took with him.”

Heath nodded. “I’ve been monitoring Gibson, trying to stay up with him, but he vanishes whenever he wants to.”

“Inspector Myton doesn’t think Gibson had anything to do with Megan’s murder.”

“How do you know that?”

“I asked him. He didn’t come out and say it, but he let me know he thinks you’re obsessed and perhaps not in your right mind.”

Heath smiled disparagingly. “Inspector Myton isn’t interested in ruffling any feathers, Miss Cooper. People die down here all the time. Sometimes they’re Americans. Myton accepts that. Part of the cost of doing business. Eventually all of that goes away. If Myton can catch someone red-handed, if that someone isn’t so connected that they’re practically untouchable, he’ll put that someone behind bars. I’m convinced that’s the truth.” Heath looked at her. “The problem down here is that money plays. That’s the name of the game. If someone has enough money, they can get away with murder. And a guy like Gibson has plenty of money.” He paused. “He’s clever, too. Otherwise he’d never have gotten to Janet.”

Lauren wondered if the two of them had been involved. It wasn’t unheard of, especially with the kinds of hours police personnel worked. She wasn’t going to ask, but something must have shown on her face.

“We were just friends.” Heath looked a little embarrassed, then hurt followed. “Actually, we were more than that. Janet was my FTO. Field training officer. She worked with me when I made detective. She got me started on my investigations, and she was there during some rough patches.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

Outside the window behind Heath, street noises filtered in. People walked by. Cars passed on the streets, rubber squeaking on hot pavement. Someone upstairs was playing the television or a music system too loud.

“How old was she?”

Heath scowled. “What?”

“How old was your friend? If she trained you, she must have been older, right?”

“Eight years.”

“Making her forty or so.”

“About that.” Heath’s eyes narrowed, and he looked at her with increased interest. “Janet doesn’t fit on that victimology board because she called Gibson’s lawyers and left a message saying she knew what he was doing, that she was going to stop him.” Pain turned his voice hoarse for a moment. “I didn’t know till afterwards. The lawyers’ number turned up on her cell phone records.” He drew in a breath. “Gibson killed Janet to prove that he could do it under our noses and get away with it.” His voice turned hard. “But that’s not going to happen. He’s going to pay.”

Desperately, Lauren sought to turn the conversation away from Heath’s dead friend. She was afraid that he would shut down, and right now she wanted—needed—information about Megan’s death. “The other women on that—” she pointed at the rolled canvas “—are in their twenties.”

“Yeah.” Heath sat up a little straighter and looked as if he was regrouping. “They are. Like your sister. Gibson has a thing for younger women. He’s older—”

“Forty-three. I know.”

He focused on her with new intensity. “How do you know so much about him?”

“I know magic.”

“Sure you do.”

Still annoyed at Heath and wanting to wipe that smug look off his face, Lauren put her left hand to her temple and closed her eyes as she tilted her head back. “Think of your address.”

“You’re joking.”

“No. I’m going to read your mind.”

“You’re a mind reader? I didn’t know mind reading counted as magic.”

Using her right hand, Lauren palmed Heath’s driver’s license from the wallet she’d taken from him earlier. She opened her eyes, took her hand away, and looked at him. Then she gave the address she’d noticed on the driver’s license earlier.

He studied her with indolent eyes, not saying anything.

“Well, is that your address?”

For a moment, he didn’t say anything. The defenses went up. She saw that in the way he held his shoulders, the way he tilted his head to look at her. “How do you know so much about me?”

“Like I said, magic.” Lauren raised her right hand, palm forward so he couldn’t see the driver’s license trapped by its edge between her first two fingers.

“I’m not a big believer in magic.”

With a flourish, Lauren shook her hand and his driver’s license appeared at the end of her fingers. For a moment, Heath didn’t know what to say. Before he could recover, she flicked her wrist and sent the plastic rectangle spinning at him.

Surprisingly, like a cat snapping a moth out of the air, Heath caught the license in his left hand. After he perused the plastic rectangle, his eyes turned to slits. His free hand slid down to his pants pocket, then he looked shocked. “You picked my pocket and stole my wallet at the morgue.”

“I borrowed your wallet.” Lauren reached into her pocket and removed the article. She tossed it to him. Before she’d arrived at his hotel room, she’d photocopied all of the documents at her hotel and left the copies tucked away in her room. Heath knew a lot about her. It only seemed fair that she have the same opportunity.

With the same easy skill he’d shown in catching the license, Heath caught the wallet. He glanced through it quickly. Satisfied that everything was there, he shoved the wallet into his pocket. His eyes narrowed. “Picking pockets isn’t a skill most people have.”

“It’s just a riff on sleight of hand stuff. I work at a magic store.”

“Where?”

“In Chicago.”

“You sell magic tricks?”

“Yes. I guess you don’t know as much as you think you do, Detective Sawyer.” Lauren hated that Heath’s lack of knowledge about the field made the shop sound pedestrian. “But they’re not the kind of tricks you’ll find for some kid’s birthday party. Professional magicians come there to buy equipment, to talk with each other, and to design new illusions.”

Heath leaned his head back against the wall, relaxing a little, or maybe only providing a deception. “Has Gibson ever been there?”

“No.”

“Why? Is he that good?”

“I don’t know. The guy just appeared on the scene one day and streaked to the top of the heap. A lot of people want to know where Gibson learned his craft. If anyone knows, if anyone is helping craft his illusions, they’re not talking.”

A frown twisted Heath’s features. “People have been trying to figure that out?”

“Sure. The guy’s a celebrity in a field where secrets are prized. Every magician wants to know what’s in every other magician’s bag of tricks. Especially if that magician is as successful as Gibson. The fascination for magic only gets deeper if you’re actively involved in the field.”

“I’ll take your word on that.” Heath leaned forward in his chair, dropping his feet to the floor and resting his elbows on his knees. “You’ve never met Gibson?”

“No.”

“Your sister hadn’t, either? Until the other night?”

Lauren thought for a moment. “Not that I’m aware of.”

Heath nodded. “Somewhere, somehow, they crossed paths. I’d like to know if it was just here, or if it was somewhere else.”

“If nothing connects the victims you say Gibson has killed, what makes you so certain he is the killer?” Lauren couldn’t believe she was asking that question so calmly, but at the moment she felt dead inside. All of the hurt and pain was pushed back, waiting in the distance like gathering storm clouds. The anger was still there, though. She wanted to know who was responsible for what had happened to Megan.

“Janet and I talked about this case for weeks. I can’t even remember which of us came up with Gibson, or how we tripped to the fact that Gibson was playing in each of the cities where those victims were killed. We’d starting checking newspapers in those cities during the time periods of those murders. We found Gibson.”

“If you were looking in the newspapers, you probably found a lot of overlapping things.”

“We did. But Janet liked Gibson for it.”

“Why?”

Heath’s lips tightened for a moment. “She was good at what she did. She could make creative leaps that other detectives never got to. Sometimes you get a serial killer who kills over a wide range of areas. Usually he turns out to be a sales rep, or maybe a long-haul trucker. We even considered that, but nothing fell into place. Then we found Gibson. And everything fit. Especially the White Rabbit card.”

“Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.”

“Yeah. The guy enjoys playing his sadistic little games. It’s his signature. He claims his victims.”

“Then why didn’t you go after him?”

“We couldn’t. We tried making our case to other law enforcement departments, but nobody wanted to go after Gibson. Everything was circumstantial and he wasn’t even in-state anymore. Chasing after him would have been expensive, and police departments have budgets that television cop shows don’t have to worry about. We couldn’t prove that Gibson had any kind of contact with any of the victims. No sightings, no meetings. No forensic evidence. Nothing.” Heath looked at her. “Not until that picture of him with your sister. That’s the first concrete clue we’ve had. And it’s down here in this place where I have no jurisdiction.”

“What are you going to do?”

Heath shook his head as if to clear it and stood. “No more questions, Miss Cooper. I shouldn’t have told you as much as I have, but I felt I owed that to you.” He folded his arms over that broad chest, and she could still see the lost hurt shining in his eyes.

“You came down here before Megan died.” Lauren kept her voice level. “You had a plan then.”

“I still do.” Heath walked to the door and opened it. “Time for you to go.”

Lauren wanted to stay and argue, but she also wanted to stay and comfort him, and be comforted. Detective Heath Sawyer was the only person she knew in Jamaica. She didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to have to go back to the hotel room and talk to her mother, but she knew she had to do that. She was already late in doing it.

And she had to make arrangements for taking Megan home.

She nodded and walked to the door, pausing only a moment to look at Heath. “Thank you for being honest with me. It… helps.”

He winced at that but didn’t say anything about his earlier duplicity. “Have a safe trip home, Miss Cooper.”

She turned and walked toward the elevator.

Downstairs and out of the building, Lauren slid behind the steering wheel and set her purse in the passenger seat. She felt the vibration of her phone inside while she was reaching for the keys to the car. She checked the caller ID.

Mom.

She hesitated only a moment, then put the phone back in her purse. She knew her mom would be worried, but Lauren didn’t want to try to talk to her until she was in her hotel room. There, at least, she would have some privacy.

After sliding the phone back into her purse, she glanced back at the hotel room where Heath Sawyer was staying. The curtain was pulled slightly to one side, and his profile shadowed the light.

Resolutely, Lauren put the car into gear and pulled away, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Gibson. Imagining him as a serial killer seemed like some kind of fantasy.

So was the idea of never seeing Megan again, but that one was dark and terrifying.

Chapter 4

At the window, Heath watched Lauren Cooper drive away and vanish into the dark streets, only realizing then how late it had gotten. Only a few blocks over, a neon fog pooled above an area near a beach where the tourists gathered. Over there the music would be too loud, college kids and twentysomethings just out in the world would be dancing and celebrating summer, beer and liquor would flow, and no one would know that the White Rabbit Killer had taken another victim.

Maybe knowing wouldn’t even slow them down. They were there to party.

Pensive and irritated, Heath thought about grabbing his jacket and heading out into the cool night, just blowing through an evening by trying to sink into the magic of the island. That would have been wasted effort, though, and he knew it. If things went well, he’d only end up more restless than ever. If things went badly, he could end up in a fight. He knew himself, and he knew the dark mood he was in.

It had been years since he’d exhibited that kind of behavior, but he knew he was next door to it now. He could feel the techno trance of the club music in his veins. That was where he would gravitate to. Trance, industrial heavy metal, something that would bang through him, something that would amp him up even more.

Country music would be worse. Those songs were loaded with pain, and he’d do his best to drown it. He’d done it before. The only reason he’d become a cop was because he hadn’t known what else to do after four years with the Marines right out of high school. He hadn’t wanted the military life his father still enjoyed, but he’d wanted something physical, something where he’d make a difference. He’d taken the police exams, thinking that if the cops didn’t want him, he’d re-up with the military.

Atlanta P.D. had taken him, though, and he’d found work that he could do that wasn’t the same thing day in and day out. He didn’t see himself as a hero. He was a guy who helped paint that thin blue line between the civilians and the savages. He’d liked busting heads, maybe a little too much.

Detective Janet Hutchins had taken an interest in him. She’d seen that he had an eye for investigation, didn’t just take the first answer he was given, and that he checked the facts. She’d gotten Heath groomed for his detective’s shield, then partnered with him for three years till he made Detective 2nd and got a junior partner of his own.

That was two years ago. The junior partner had been Jackson Portman.

Heath turned away from the window and pulled out his cell phone. He pulled Jackson up on speed dial, then punched the call through. It rang only once before the connection was made.

“There you are.” Jackson sounded relieved.

“Here I am.”

“Thought you were gonna leave me hanging just when things were getting interesting.”

“No.”

“You still got company?”

“No. I need you to do something for me.”

“Sure. First, tell me about Lauren Cooper. That’s how this favor thing works. You do something for me, I do something for you. How did that woman know so much about you?”

“She read my mind.”

Jackson snorted derisively. “Bro, the stuff she knew, even you don’t know without checking. What’s your gym membership number?”

Heath didn’t say anything because he didn’t know it. Case numbers he knew, phone numbers of snitches he knew, but not so much numbers involving his personal life.

“Well? Time’s ticking.” Jackson whistled, an off-key version of Final Jeopardy!

Heath grimaced, knowing that once Jackson was armed with the facts of what had happened, his partner would never let it go. “Back at the hospital when I was checking out the murder down here, I bumped into Lauren Cooper. She’s the dead woman’s sister. While we were in a heated discussion, she lifted my wallet.”

“Lifted your wallet.” Jackson sounded hollow, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Yeah, it means she picked my pocket.”

“I know what it means. Just surprised you’d slip up like that. It ain’t like you, bro.” Some of the colloquial accent was gone from Jackson’s words. He was deadly earnest now. “You really don’t have your game, Heath. You should come back home. Let’s sit down and sort this out. We still own one of the White Rabbit murders.”

“Two. We own two.” Neither of them mentioned Janet’s name.

“Come home. We have enough to buy into the investigation and leverage some muscle from the captain. Let’s dig into it together. If I have to, I’ll get some leave and we’ll work the investigation together.”

“The investigation is down here. This is where Gibson goes to hole up. He’s got a place down here. I found it. I just can’t get close to it.”

“All right. That’s something we didn’t know. How did you find his place?”

“Gibson made a mistake. The dead woman took pictures of his house and uploaded it to her Cloud. I got a chance to look at the data dump from her iPad, accessed the pictures, and found the house.”

“So he took the woman to his house?”

“Yeah.”

“Can’t the locals get a search warrant?”

“Gibson says he put the woman in a cab, waved goodbye, and he never saw her again.”

“Uh-huh. And they decided not to press him on that?”

“They don’t have any proof that that wasn’t what happened.”

“They find the cab driver?”

“No.”

“They look?”

“Myton says they did, but this is a tourist area. A lot of people take cabs every night.”

“You think the locals are protecting him?”

“They’re being careful. Gibson is rich. They don’t want to ruffle any feathers until they have a lock.”

“You did mention this guy is a probable serial killer? Probably gonna kill again?”

“Yeah. The cops here I’ve been talking too aren’t big fans of the American justice system, and they’re even less happy about Georgia detectives wandering in off their beats to poke around in their business.”

“That would be a problem. So tell me about Lauren Cooper. Did she look hot to you? ‘Cause from what I’m looking at here, she looks seriously hot.”

“Can I quote you on that to your future second missus?”

“Lord, no. That woman’s jealous enough.”

“What are you looking at?”

“Her file. Since she called in, knew so much about you, I thought it was only fair we know stuff about her. Only expected to get a hit on her from the Chicago DMV. That’s where she told me she’s from. Turns out she’s had a little bit of a record.”

That surprised Heath, but then he thought about how easily she had picked his pocket. Even on his worst day, he wasn’t the easiest guy to pull something like that on. “What record?”

“Breaking and entering and assault. From what I see, she broke into a guy’s apartment and punched him out in Chicago three years ago.”

“For what?”

“Says here she claims the guy stole an illusion she was working on. She’s some kind of magic designer or something. The guy claimed that they came up with this thing together, that there wasn’t a clear title to anything. The judge dropped the hammer on her because it was a home invasion. She ended up doing some community service—magic shows at old folks’ homes and orphanages—and had her record expunged. Are they serious about the magic thing?”

“She does magic.”

“She must be good at it if she can lift your wallet. ‘Course, her looking like she does, I could see how you got distracted.”

Heath ignored that. “Actually, the magic angle is what I want you to look into. Gibson picked up the woman down here. She’d taken her sister to a magic show Gibson put on in Chicago. Check and see if any of the other victims had a connection to magic in any way. Maybe Gibson is culling from a more select group than we thought.”

“Looking for relatives of people who jones on magic?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll have a look.” Jackson hesitated for a moment. “Something you told me when you first started training me to work homicide—stay detached. Look at everything from the outside. The minute you crawl inside of an investigation, you lose all perspective. I’m gonna tell you now, because you’re my friend and I love you like a brother and you’re likely gonna be my best man when I wed my second Missus Portman, that you’re all kinds of up inside of this investigation. The captain came out asking what did I know about you impersonating a coroner. I told him I didn’t know nothing.”

“I can’t be detached from this one. Gibson killed Janet. Look into those cases and let me know what you come up with regarding the magic angle.” Heath broke the connection and tossed the phone onto the rumpled bed. He got a fresh beer from the refrigerator and stood at the window looking out again, trying to figure out what his next move was going to be.

Instead, to his surprise, he couldn’t keep his thoughts away from Lauren Cooper and how she’d felt struggling against him. He closed his eyes and could smell that berry vanilla scent again. Then he forced his eyes open and sipped his beer.

There was a thread here. Nobody killed that clean. He was going to find it, and he was going to use it to strangle Gibson.

“There.” From the backseat of the Jaguar X351, Gibson pointed at the low-rent hotel off the beaten path of the city. “Pull into the parking lot.”

In front of him, behind the steering wheel, Roylston resettled his bulk, looking like a steroid-infused earthquake in motion. Dressed in a black business suit, his skin dark and his head shaved, he could have passed for a native to the island. Only the Boston accent marked him as an outsider. During the three years he’d been with Gibson, Roylston hadn’t ever spoken much, and never mentioned anything personal. As far as Gibson knew, the bodyguard/chauffeur didn’t have a life outside of protecting him.

But all three of the live-in security specialists who tried to manage Gibson were like that. None of them wanted to get to know him, and they didn’t want him to know anything about them. They got paid to watch over him, protect him and try to rein in his “impulses.”

Escaping the watchdogs that had been with him throughout his life had been the initial part of the Game he played now. He’d avoided his protectors when he was a boy, escaped them at times for glorious bits of freedom, but in the end he’d always let them catch him in order to satisfy his father. Even at forty-three, Gibson didn’t want to completely escape his father’s attempts to control him. That was the very best part of the Game.

That particular thrill was even better than the killing, which he relished.

The bodyguards tended to be compliant with him. They didn’t want his father to know when they lost him, so they covered up most of his escapes—except for the ones that were too egregious.

His father covered for him as well, trapped by his desire to keep his corporation protected and to have an offspring to carry on his name. Gibson had robbed the man of that as well by choosing his stage name. Still, his father held out foolish hope of someday controlling him. The man was trapped, simply couldn’t let go of the selfish dream.

That was the very best part.

Roylston glanced up at the hotel. “This is where that Atlanta detective is staying.”

The fact that the man knew so much of his business irritated Gibson. He rested his elbows at his sides, curled his elbows and steepled his fingers under his chin. “I know that.”

With obvious reluctance, Roylston guided the sedan into the parking lot. The headlights flashed against the parked cars in the lot. “This is dangerous.”

“Of course it’s dangerous. I wouldn’t visit if it weren’t dangerous. The circus doesn’t really come alive until the aerialists perform without a net, until the lion tamer sticks his head inside a lion’s mouth. Death hovers there, just a snap away. And the potential of that is what keeps the crowd on the edges of their seats.” Gibson smiled and leaned over to the window so that he could look up.

Atlanta Detective Heath Sawyer still stood at the window. His shadow was a blurry image behind the curtain.

“You know I’m close, don’t you, Detective?” Gibson smiled at that thought, savoring it because he knew that closeness was making the man’s wounds hurt even more. When Gibson had killed the female detective in Atlanta—Janet, her name rolled so invitingly across his tongue—he had known her death would push the man to go the distance. Gibson had considered killing both of them, but in the end he’d decided not to. Having a mortal enemy was a delightful concoction that he’d never thought of.

Heath Sawyer didn’t worry Gibson. He had lawyers and riches that would keep the police far from his door. And if the man got too bothersome, it was never too late to take care of that loose end.

After a couple of minutes, the shadow at the window went away.

Gibson waited for a short time longer, enough to make Roylston uncomfortable. Then he leaned back in his seat again and addressed the driver. “Let’s go.”

Roylston had the sedan rolling within the next heartbeat. “Any particular destination?”

“Downtown, I think. I want to see how the revelers are doing.” Gibson took a California ten dollar gold piece from his pocket and rolled it across his knuckles. The coin leaped and flew like it was a living thing. He closed his hand on the coin, folding the fingers in with his other hand, then opened his hand again to reveal that the coin had vanished.

He smiled at the smoothness with which he worked. He was good and he knew it. The Atlanta detective could disappear just as easily when the time came.

Until then, there was the Game to play.

Back in Lauren’s hotel room, the phone call to her mother didn’t last too long. Chemo wore her out and left her in a fog. Plus, it was so late that Lauren had woken her up when she’d called. Her mother had insisted that she call when she returned to her room. Their conversation had been sad and groggy and disjointed, and had finally trickled off when her mother no longer had the strength to maintain it.

The doctors said she was improving, that this round of drugs was battling the cancer back into submission. She wasn’t supposed to undergo any stress during this time. That wasn’t going to happen.

After leaving Heath Sawyer’s room, Lauren had had to return to the morgue to finish paperwork she’d left undone earlier when getting to know more about Heath Sawyer. She’d worked in a numb state, just plodding through the information, borrowing a computer to get information she didn’t know, and contacting the insurance company as well as the State Department.

All of that had been exhausting.

Now, she couldn’t sleep, and it was two o’clock in the morning. She kept seeing Megan laid out on that table, so impersonal, so still, so cold to the touch. But the memory was confusing because Heath Sawyer was also there. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get the man out of her mind. She could still feel the strength of him when she’d fought him, still see the indomitable will in his green-flaked gold eyes and the set of his stubbled chin.

But she remembered the pain in them, too, when he’d told her about his old partner. Lauren remembered that image of him the most, that vulnerability that she’d seen that she was sure he would deny.

There was something more behind that pain, though. Heath Sawyer had been hurt somewhere else along the way, too. She could sense it in him even though she couldn’t yet put her finger on it. It was the same way she could take apart an illusion. Something was there just behind the curtain. If she spent enough time around him, she would have it.

That was why many of the illusionists who frequented Mirage Magic in Chicago where she worked insisted on giving private shows for her as they perfected pieces of their performances. If they could fool her, they could fool anyone.

Lauren didn’t think that was true, but it was nice to hear.

Warren Morganstern, the semiretired magician who had started the business over forty years ago as a supplement to his performances, told her that she had an eye for magic. More than that, though, she had a love for magic. She wanted to believe that magic could happen, and that made all the difference.

Seven years ago, when Lauren had been in college, she’d answered an ad in a newspaper for a part-time position at the magic store. When Megan had found out about it, she’d teased her unmercifully, till Lauren had finally gone and applied, knowing she was going get turned down, just to shut her sister up.

Then magic had happened. Lauren had gotten the job at Morganstern’s shop. She’d never asked how many other people had applied or what had made her application stand out among the others. Seven years later, she had taken over the store, allowing Morganstern to completely retire from performing, though he kept active in the business to socialize with the other magicians.

Since Lauren had started working there, she’d also started booking some of the acts, and she’d gotten successful at that. After a couple of years, she had doubled the store’s business, and Morganstern was giving serious thought to moving to a larger building.

Lauren hadn’t thought of the job as permanent, but she couldn’t think of anything else she’d rather do. She loved magic. She loved the possibility of what-if.

For a while, she tried to relax and go to sleep. Her flight tomorrow didn’t leave till the afternoon. Her mind wouldn’t stop spinning with everything that had happened.

Finally, she gave up trying to sleep, sat up in bed and got her laptop computer out of the bag. She logged on to one of the community boards that she used for the magic store and started asking questions about Gibson.

Someone out there had to know who the man was. Lauren still didn’t believe the man had killed Megan, but someone had. Heath Sawyer seemed to be the only person really digging into the investigation. Lauren thought that if she could prove the killer wasn’t Gibson, maybe Heath’s attention would refocus on the case from a different perspective.

Lauren was not going to let the killer go free if she could help it.

Wearing skintight surgical gloves, Gibson took out one of the specially embossed cards he’d had made when he first decided to kill. Ordering the cards anonymously from Thailand was simple. He’d used a drop box at a box store, an online pay service that accepted cash up front, and ordered from a large printer that did a lot of volume in special jobs. He knew the police investigators had tried tracking the origin of the cards he’d sent to claim his kills, but they hadn’t been able to do that.

Still seated in the rear of the luxury car, with Roylston looking on, though he was pretending not to, Gibson played with the card. Even with the gloves on, his skills were amazing. The card appeared and disappeared with lightning quickness.

Tiring of the game, he slid the card into an envelope he’d gotten straight from a box, affixed the address label he’d cut from an image he’d downloaded from the police department’s website. He added a picture of the young woman who’d been recently killed, a picture of her in the water not far from where her body had been discovered by two young Germans looking for a romantic section of the beach. He pulled the paper from the sticky strip, made sure there were no fibers clinging to it, and sealed the envelope.

When he was finished, he waved to Roylston, who pulled over to the public mailbox in front of the seedy hotel where Heath Sawyer was staying. Gibson thumbed down the window and leaned out for just a moment, knowing there were no security cameras on the premises to catch him in the act.

He popped the letter through the slot, then sank back in his seat as Roylston guided the car through the parking lot like a big shark. Gibson hummed to himself and took out the gold coin again, rolling it deftly across his knuckles, almost mesmerizing himself as the gleaming metal caught the reflection of the neon lights.

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