Morgan snapped his fingers as if to underscore and lament a lost opportunity.
“And here I was, hoping to hoodwink you,” he told her. “Another hope dashed.”
“You know,” Krys told him as she helped herself to a second slice of the extra-large, thin crust, meat supreme pizza, “you seem to be a lot different tonight than you were this morning.”
He shrugged, waiting to finish eating what he’d bitten into before he answered her. When he did, he said, “I guess I just grow on some people.”
She was trying to be serious in her assessment and he was being flippant. She tried again.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” she told Morgan. When he raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to explain what she was trying to say, she complied. “You just seem to be nicer. Is it because you think of me as family?” she asked.
“Well, there’s that,” he granted, pausing before taking another bite, “but even more than that, I believe you.”
“Believe me?” she repeated, slightly confused.
“Yes, that someone’s trying to kill you,” he told her. “You’d be surprised just how many people say something like that just to get attention, or because they have some ulterior motive. Not everyone is honest.”
“Don’t I know it,” she murmured. “I make my living separating the liars from the people who actually have something to tell the public at large.”
“How did you happen to get into this line of work anyway?” Morgan asked.
Krys shrugged, not wanting to get into it right now. But she could see that he was waiting for an answer, so she did her best to give him one. “When I was a kid, I always loved a mystery, getting to the bottom of what was going on. Solving it,” she declared proudly. “Eventually, doing that just seemed to carry over into real life. Nik investigated insurance claims. And I wound up investigating things that had a bigger impact on the general public.” That was just the way things had happened, she thought. She hadn’t set out seeking this way of life.
Morgan nodded as he took his fourth slice. “Like a man who romances lonely, rich women, sweeps them off their feet and then winds up taking them for everything they’ve got.”
“You’re forgetting one important, damning point,” she told Morgan. “He kills them so he can continue living his lifestyle, romancing women for profit.”
And then she sighed, hating the fact that someone like that was still out there, doing these heinous things.
“I really hope your cousin is as good as you say she is and that she can track this guy down, because more than anyone I’ve ever exposed, he really deserves to be made to pay,” Krys insisted with feeling.
“For trying to kill you,” he assumed, nodding his head.
“And for killing those other women. All they wanted was for someone to love them and instead, they wound up dead. That isn’t right on any level.”
“So I take it that you’re pretty convinced this Bluebeard character is the one trying to get revenge by killing you,” Morgan assumed, polishing off yet another slice of pizza. So far, he had managed to eat six slices to her four.
Where was she putting all this, he couldn’t help wondering. The woman was exceedingly slender.
“It does seem likely,” Krys answered. “But convinced?” she questioned and then she shook her head. “No, not completely.” And then she explained why. “If I can find those four drug trial subjects and discover that the reason they disappeared was because of the negative results that came up during those tests, then someone high up in the pecking order wanting to get rid of me would make a lot of sense as well.”
“If you honestly believe that, then why don’t you just stop looking into the drug trials—at least for the time being?”
Krys realized that the detective didn’t really understand what drove her.
“Because someone has to shine a light on the truth,” she told him simply. “If this drug is just some sort of a placebo that doesn’t deliver what it promises, then a lot of people hoping for a miracle are going to be more than just disappointed. They were being lied to,” she insisted with feeling. “This so-called miracle drug isn’t supposed to be a cure, but it ‘promises’ to deliver a way to arrest cancer’s progress. Maybe even long enough until such time as a cure is found.”
Her voice grew more passionate as she got into the crux of her reasoning. “If people think they’ve found that drug, then perforce researchers will stop looking for it because they feel that it’s been found. That is a horrible, gross lie on every single possible level.”
Morgan found her passion arousing. Krys seemed nothing short of deadly serious as she made her point. More than that, she made him think of a modern-day crusader.
A crusader who could very easily lose her life if she was onto something that someone was dead set against her exposing and bringing to the public’s attention.
Morgan studied her for a moment. He found himself more worried about her than he should have been. His concern went beyond his role as a detective. That was when he realized that he was having feelings for this woman. Even so, he couldn’t make himself back off. “Did you ever consider doing something that’s, oh, I don’t know, a little bit simpler and a hell of a lot less dangerous for a living?”
Her mouth curved as amusement slipped into her eyes. “You mean like hang gliding over the Grand Canyon?” she asked. “I’ve thought about it. But that’s still pretty dangerous,” she told him.
“Right,” he agreed sarcastically. “And antagonizing a cold-blooded killer as well as an entire pharmaceutical company isn’t?” Morgan questioned.
“Well, when you put it that way...” Krys’s voice trailed off—and then, inexplicably, she laughed. “I think that it was Sammy Davis Jr. who used to sing a song entitled ‘I’ve Gotta Be Me,’” Krys told her sister’s cousin-in-law, looking at
