Dark Pursuit

nine

The fabric silks across Hugh’s palms like the soft kiss of a lover.

Black with green stripes. An alluring sight, fraught with familiarity. He balls the long, enticing strip, raises it to his nostrils. Breathes in deeply. The scent of promise and lust, joy and betrayal, ecstasy and revenge.

The scent of death.

His eyes consume her lithe form across the dim and crowded bar. She leans with nonchalance against a railing, wine glass in hand, held up and crooked toward her bare décolletage. So casual, so cool. In a motion of pure fluidity her left fingers ease a strand of blonde hair from her temple. Her glossed red lips are parted, bent in a slight smile of amusement at the story of the hopeful male before her. Her lashes are feathery, thick. When she laughs her head tilts back, exposing the tan suppleness of her throat.

Hugh’s fingers flex.

She is a goddess.

She is a witch.

No one pays the slightest attention to him, but that’s the story of his life. No matter. He has learned to edit its once stuttered prose. He sits in a corner on a three-legged stool, his face and torso beyond the umbra of light. Pale white rays from an overhead lamp spill across his jeaned legs, puddling on the hardwood floor. His hands, rubbing the black and green vesture of his vengeance, rest against his chest. Hugh arches his shoulder blades against the wall, imagining the mystery his half-illumed body must surely project—should anyone notice.

No one will.

They don’t see, though they seek him. They don’t know, though the criminal profilers have psychoanalyzed him to the core.

The cloth brought him here. To her.

Whenever he lifts it from his dresser drawer, cradles it in his arms, Hugh feels the power. It electrifies his veins with desire. Always, always it sings him into the night, and he follows, captive to its siren song. Until it leads him to the one who must die.

Across the bar, for no apparent reason her head turns—and she gazes in Hugh’s direction.

What thought made her

He stills.

Emotion wells within him.

His hands

No. Not yet

He is

A

Her

He

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ten

Darell studied his granddaughter’s reaction. She may have fooled him before but not this time. He wasn’t a doddering old man. He still had his wits about him.

Kaitlan’s cheeks washed white. She stared at him, arms sliding up to cross against her chest. A protective gesture.

Her grandmother used to do that.

Darell’s heart cramped.

Kaitlan had grown to look so much like Gretchen. She was no longer the ragged, hard-faced teenager with movements jerky from crack. Her features had softened, filled out. And she had a new confidence. Those wide-set brown eyes held light in them, even now through her fear. Her shoulder-length hair was lustrous, stylishly cut in layers with bangs. That upturned nose, the oval face—all Gretchen.

Don’t get sucked in. She still could be a lying little thief.

Darell’s fingers tightened on his cane. He set his jaw, casting a sideways glance at Margaret. No deceit on that face he knew so well. She looked completely flummoxed. He could practically hear the wheels turning in her head. She held his gaze, obviously trying to read him, trying to figure out if this was one of his “loose goose” moments.

Stupid woman.

“Your manuscript?” Kaitlan swallowed. “I don’t … what do you mean?”

He looked down his nose, surveying his granddaughter under half-hooded eyes.

No sign of her lying either.

It hit him then—a punch in the solar plexus. Breath snagged in his throat. Could this be true? A real-life killer, copycatting his newest antagonist?

The killings—she said they’d started a year ago. Just about the time he began to write.

But how could anyone get hold of the manuscript?

If you could even call it that. Scattered, unfinished, frustration-producingscenes was more like it.

No. A manuscript. The plot will come.

Sudden weariness blanketed Darell. This was too much; his brain couldn’t hold it all. His shoulders drooped. Quickly then he caught himself and straightened as best he could. Whatever was happening here, he must remain in control.

“Kaitlan,” he spoke her name harshly, “I will hear you out. But I want to sit down. Follow me into the library.”

He turned and headed toward the north wing.

Behind his back he sensed the exchanged questioning looks, the bonding of females in their shared confusion. So be it. He could handle them both.

His heart fluttered. Who has gotten hold of my manuscript?

Darell crossed the entryway and headed toward the long hall. He passed the formal living room on his left. Ten feet from the end of the hall he turned left into his stately library.