The Taken

for a party, for one, covered instead in unrelieved black, including her skin, her close-cropped hair, and the smoky shades shielding her eyes.

Not a wife, either, Kit was willing to bet. People of color weren’t traditionally a part of the Mormon Church, and while there was still a lot Kit didn’t know about Chambers, she got the feeling that he was extremely traditional in this regard.

“Were you drawn in by my song?” the woman asked, ignoring Kit’s question. “ ‘Amazing Grace.’ You people are supposed to like that.”

So she wasn’t Mormon… but thought Kit was? “Are you supposed to be here?”

The woman laughed, so that her lips pulled tightly against her teeth. “Of course not. And neither are you.”

“Well, I-”

“Time to go home.” She rose, thin and taller than Kit initially thought, and crossed to stand before her with an airy grace. Looking down her nose at Kit, she sniffed. “Time for us both to go home.”

For some reason, that made Kit’s heart skip a beat. Then it sped up again and stayed revved. She didn’t like the way this woman was looking at her. Or the way she’d ignored Kit’s question. Or her cryptic words. Yet instead of challenging all of that, as she normally would, Kit just wanted to back away.

“Do you read the Bible?” the woman asked Kit suddenly.

“Um, I have before.”

“Then you might be familiar with the apostle Paul. He argues in Romans, chapters six through eight, that humans have two competing natures. The flesh and the spirit. The pure spirit follows God. But when people allow their fleshly nature to take over, they follow their lower desires. And that is sin.” Her lips thinned in disgust.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I hate sin.” The woman looked down at her body, her flesh, like she hated it, before her attention returned to Kit without altering. “Plus, I don’t want you to be surprised when you see me again… though the competition will be over by then.”

“The comp-?” Kit drew back. “You mean, between the flesh and the spirit?”

“Don’t look so alarmed,” the woman said, careful not to touch Kit as she handed her the Bible. “Even when you lose, you’ll still win.”

Kit frowned, dropped the Bible onto the bed, and rushed to follow her from the room. “Hey-”

But the woman was already gone, leaving only an empty hallway again, the notes of “Amazing Grace” still trembling on the air.

Chapter Seventeen

A promise?” Kit repeated, disbelieving as she and Grif left the Chambers estate’s serpentine two-lane road behind, and the neon outskirts began building up around them. “He made you promise not to tell me about the sexual bacchanal going on in the back of his Mormon palace?”

She shook her head, less bothered by the fact that such events existed than she was by not knowing about them sooner.

Grif stared straight ahead as they entered the city, neon swallowing them up as they headed toward its belly. “Not just you. He’s hiding it from the world at large, and it doesn’t take much to keep the other men silent. There were cameras all over the place. As soon as you walk into that back room you’re part of the club.”

“Which is why he let you in,” Kit guessed. “And I bet some not-so-subtly-applied peer pressure in the personage of one Officer Schmidt ensures everyone stays that way.”

Grif huffed, a sound Kit was starting to anticipate. “I didn’t see Schmidt, but most of the men didn’t look like they needed much convincing.”

“I’ll bet.” They were silent for a bit, the road sluicing easily beneath the trim car’s tires, a sound Kit normally found soothing. Biting her lip, she looked over at Grif. “So what about Nic? What about the Wayfarer?”

He kept his gaze trained forward, but jerked his head. “There’s still no proof that Chambers was involved, Kit. And my gut tells me that’s precisely why he allowed me back there. Not just to find out what I know… but to show me we really know nothing.”

“Arrogant jerk.” Squinting out at the road ribboning before her, Kit shook her head. “No, there’s definitely more going on in that house than musical sex-partners. Why else would Anabelle Chambers have to drug herself into a coma?”

“What?”

Kit tightened her fingers around the wheel as they slid onto Industrial Avenue. “Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you…”

Biting her lip, Kit shot Grif an apologetic look in advance, then told him about her foray upstairs. It was only when she mentioned the strange woman with the Bible, however, that he lost it.

“What the hell is wrong with you? You can’t take a simple order, can you?”

She opened her mouth to say orders weren’t hers to take, but he didn’t let her speak.

“If I tell you something, it’s to keep you safe! What’s so hard to understand about that?” He sat forward, back, then forward again. If they hadn’t been driving, she would have sworn he’d have walked away. “I guess it’s just your nature to disobey and do what you want anyway.”

“My nature?” The mysterious woman’s words revisited her in a whisper. “You mean my fleshly nature?”

Grif frowned, thinking about it. Then he nodded. “Yes. Yes, that’s exactly it.”

Kit jerked her steering wheel so hard that Grif crashed into the door and cursed. She was glad they were at their destination, Masquerade, because she wasn’t feeling so calm, either. “Griffin Shaw, you’re starting to piss me off!”

“Yeah, well you’re not exactly a peach to be around!” And he started ticking off annoyances on his fingers. “You’re flighty, girly, impossibly cheerful, and you never stop moving or talking!”

“Those are not bad things!”

“And you’re stubborn!” he said, trying to name something that was.

“So are you!”

“Don’t insult me,” he said, climbing from the car.

“It was a compliment,” she said, slamming her own door shut. “And what’s your problem? I’m doing my best here!”

“The problem,” he said, edging around the car, “is that I don’t like your cavalier attitude! Not about danger or sex or-”

Kit straightened. “I am not cavalier about sex! I take my sex very seriously, thank you… not that you’ll ever find out-”

“Good.”

“Because you’re too busy polishing your halo!”

“Hey!”

She took a step forward and got in his face. “Furthermore, I am a survivor. I don’t need you to protect me. I’ve gone almost thirty years surviving the death of my parents, the decline of my newspaper, and now there’s a murderer on my trail. But I’ll survive this, too.”

He looked for a moment like he was going to disagree, then tilted his head. “Is that all?”

“No.”

That drew a low growl from him. Good. She didn’t want him calm when she wasn’t. She actually, suddenly, wanted to annoy the shit out of him. So she took another step forward and poked him in the chest. “You. Are not. An. Angel.”

“Fine, honey. I’m not.”

“Those are not wing… lumps on your back.”

“Wing lumps?” he asked, with one raised brow.

“They’re cysts!” She poked him again, but there was less heat now. She was calming down.

“Just like the bumps on your head.”