Skin

“Weren’t we? Then who, Lilith?”

“The dancers all have their sad stories.” A great intro. “Like the one who just disappeared from the club. Anna Youngheart.”

“You knew her.”

“Anna? No, not really.”

“When you came back to the club the second time, you were looking for Anna.”

But Lilith didn’t know that woman. She knew Hannah, the girl hidden deep inside the stripper’s body. At least she thought she did.

“Maybe I was simply fascinated with someone who looked like me. What about you?” she asked. “You’re at the club every night, so it seems. Why?”

“I told you I’m making a documentary.” He cleared his throat. “I thought I was supposed to be asking the questions.”

She ignored the protest. “But why a gentlemen’s club? What’s your stake?”

Lilith could feel Michael’s sudden unease. He didn’t want to open himself up any more than she did.

So it surprised her when he said, “A few years back, I got kind of a shock. I learned my birth mother was a stripper. The reason she gave me up, so I would have a better life. As for herself — she’s never tried anything else.”

“And you can’t understand how she can do it.” Lilith could relate to that. It was how she felt when thinking about her sister.

“Exactly,” he said.

He was trying to keep control, but she didn’t miss the emotion in his voice. They had more in common than she could have imagined. It made her feel closer to him. More open. Part of her wanted to tell him everything. No one but Elena knew what she had gone through in trying to find her sister. Surely if she probed Michael further about Hannah — or Anna as he knew her — he would be open to talking. Hopefully something to give her a clue about the bastard who had her sister.

“So if you spend most nights at the club, how could you not know Anna?” she asked.

“I don’t get involved with my subjects.”

“But you see what they do, how they act around men, who they want to be with… or don’t.”

“I don’t make judgments,” Michael said. “I just observe.”

“What did you observe about her?” she pressed him. “You watch everything that goes on around you,” she said. “I can’t believe you never noticed what she did.”

“I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t really know her.”

“But you know things about her. Like the men she fraternized with.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“How would you put it?”

Michael didn’t answer for a heartbeat, then said, “She was looking for what she could get from them.”

Lilith’s stomach clenched, and she wanted to yell at him that he was wrong. Only she knew he wasn’t. “Like who?”

“That guy whose sister is a stripper, for one.”

“Paul Ensdorf?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s the guy’s name.”

“Who else?”

“Some guy who sits at the bar every night,” he said. “Dark hair. Muscular.”

That sounded like Gabe. Why would Hannah have spent time with him? He was there on the job. She couldn’t think of any other guy who fit the description.

“Do you have a name?” she asked.

“Why do you want to know all this?”

“It’s kind of scary knowing someone who kind of looks like me is in the hands of a killer who keeps going for the same type.”

“Anna didn’t just look like you,” Michael told her. “She could be you when you were a little younger.”

Lilith wasn’t going to let him go there. “Anyone else?”

“Not that I remember, but there was someone always after her. That disk jockey who runs the music.”

“Rudy?”

“Don’t know his name. Tall, skinny, geeky. Has an attitude.”

“Rudy.” She wondered if Pucinski considered Rudy Barnes a suspect.

“Who is doing this interview?” Michael asked.

“I prefer having a conversation. You tell me something interesting, then I tell you.”

“I’ve told you a lot already.”

“What about you?” she asked, certain he was holding something back. “Anna never spent any time with you?”

“You think I’m a suspect?”

“I don’t know. Should I?

“Anna liked to have the upper hand, so she hung out a lot with men she could control. She usually stayed away from the others, including me.”

And Gabe. No way would Hannah have been able to control the cop.

“Your turn.” Michael turned the interview back to her. “Why did you come to the club looking for her?”

“Who said I did?”

“Short memory. You did. Okay, then, why did you take the job you so obviously hate?”

“Jobs are scarce in this economy.”

“Bullshit. I thought we were having a conversation. That goes two ways. I told you something you wanted to know. More than something.”

“Okay. I saw the ad for Club Paradise in the paper. I saw Anna and I thought that could have been me.”

“Could have been?”

She stared hard at Michael’s shadowed face. Started wondering why she was there talking to him at all. Her pulse was racing, and her chest was tight. She could hardly breathe. When it came down to it, she wasn’t ready to open a vein. Not with a man who was little more than a stranger. Not even if he told her about his birth mother. He’d never actually known the woman. He hadn’t grown up with her by his side. He’d had no reason to be shocked and frantic at her life choices. She hadn’t been taken by some crazy killer who liked to play with his victims before he ended their lives.

Realizing she’d made a mistake by going home with Michael — she hadn’t learned anything substantive here — she rose from the stool and headed for the island and her bag, but he stepped in front of her.

“Don’t go, please. You’re upset. I didn’t mean to upset you like this.”

“I’m done talking, so I have no reason to stay.”

“Liar,” he said softly, his face blurring as it drew closer to hers.

His breath laved her face, and her breath stuck in her throat. No denying the attraction. Just thinking about what could happen if she would let go made her breasts tighten and the flesh between her thighs go damp.

He inched his head closer, brushed her mouth so lightly with his that sensation made her pulse flutter and her knees go weak. She parted her lips and a choked sound passed through them as she pushed herself away from him. She bolted for the island and her shoulder bag.

“Hey, Lilith, wait a minute. Don’t go. We can just talk about something else.”

Lilith ignored him and threw open the door.

“At least let me drive you home.”

She heard him follow, but he didn’t try to stop her. Luckily, she knew exactly where she was, only a block and a half from the rapid transit.

The ride home to Hannah’s building was short.

And the station that late at night was creepy. A guy looking for a handout approached her, but the furious look she adopted made him back off. Different coming home on foot than it was driving a Jaguar. Maybe she would start taking Hannah’s car to work.