Twice

her. He needed to keep his distance.

“You got that right, cowboy,” she said, her voice growing hard. She sensed his unease and it insulted her. “What I have is going to cost you more than that.”

“Tell me what you’ve got first and I’ll decide how much it’s worth.”

She laughed a deep, hearty laugh… a man’s laugh. Then she moved to get out of the vehicle.

“Okay, okay. How much?” he said.

“Five hundred,” she answered.

He took the money from the breast pocket of his leather jacket and handed it to her, watched as it disappeared into her bag. He could feel hard calluses on her hands as she grabbed the bills from him. It was what he had expected to pay her anyway. She settled into the passenger seat and got comfortable, held her hands up to the heat coming from the vents and rubbed them together for a minute.

“All right, Danielle, enough fucking around,” he said, losing patience. “Tell me what you know.”

“Um-hum, I just love that accent. It’s so sexy. Take me to McDonald’s, Daxie, and get me a Big Mac and fries, huh? I’m starving. I’ll tell you everything over a hot meal.”

Her face was a mess. Her nose had been broken and never healed right, leaving a large bump on the bridge. Her violet contact lenses looked ghoulish in combination with her dark, scarred skin. Dax noticed that her lip quivered and her hands shook slightly. As he looked at her, his impatience gave way to pity. He started the Rover and moved away from the sidewalk. It was going to be a long night.

chapter eight

Lydia had never been so acquainted with her toilet bowl as she had become over the last few days of morning sickness. She felt like her insides were being ripped open by some alien creature trying to get out. She was weak and tired, sleep having eluded her the last few nights. She’d dreamed of Julian Ross and the painting they’d seen, but she couldn’t remember the content, just that she’d awakened sweating and with a feeling of restless unease. She rested her head on the rim, bracing herself for another round, but was grateful when the nausea seemed to be subsiding.

“You all right?” asked Jeffrey, entering the bathroom, kneeling beside her, and placing a hand on her head.

“I’m okay,” she answered, trying to smile at him. She looked into his eyes and saw how happy he was, and it made her happier, too.

She pulled herself together and got up from the marble floor, leaned against the sink and inspected her face closely in the mirror. He stood behind her and smiled at her reflection. He was dressed already, wearing a royal blue Ralph Lauren oxford and charcoal pants, a black Italian leather belt with brushed chrome accents and matching buckled boots.

He put some of her Sebastian gel in his hair behind her as she brushed her teeth and pulled a comb through her jet-black hair.

“Come have a cup of coffee with me before I go?” he said, hugging her from behind.

“Sure,” she said, and trundled downstairs behind him still in her purple silk pajamas. She had a few hours before she had to meet Eleanor Ross at the office, so she planned to do a little exploring on the Internet, see what she could find about Julian Ross and her past. Dax was sitting on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table watching The Today Show as they came down the stairs.

“When did you get here?” asked Jeff.

“A couple of minutes ago,” he said, not looking up from the screen. “I made some coffee.”

“He has a key?” asked Lydia.

“I thought it was a good idea,” answered Jeff with a shrug.

“God, why doesn’t he just move in here and start paying rent?”

“Katie Couric is really hot, you know. She’s got this whole sexy girl-next-door thing going on,” said Dax.

“So where did you go yesterday, Dax?” asked Lydia, grabbing two coffee mugs from the cabinet. They’d just left the gallery and were walking toward the Yum Yum Diner when Dax’s cell phone rang. He had about a thirty- second conversation, which seemed to mainly consist of grunts. Then he had hung up quickly and said, “I gotta go. I’ll see you in the morning.” He had walked away without another word, disappearing around the corner.

“None of your bloody business,” he said gruffly. “Christ, you’re nosy.”

“All of a sudden you get this call and then you just disappear like James Bond on a mission.”

“I have other clients, you know,” he said, standing up and walking over to them, pouring himself some more coffee and then handing the pot to Lydia. “You are not the center of my universe,” he continued, patting Lydia on the cheek. “A concept that I know is difficult for you.”

“Oh, come on, Dax,” she pleaded, “give it up. You’re too mysterious. I can’t stand it.” Her curiosity about him, his life, and his past was like an itch that she couldn’t scratch. She placed the cups on the counter, poured some coffee in each, and put the pot back in the machine. She was about to press Dax further when she was struck by yet another powerful wave of nausea. She turned and ran to the downstairs bathroom, slamming the door behind her. When she was gone, Dax turned to Jeff and said quietly, “I got a lead on him.”

Jeff raised his eyebrows. They’d agreed that if they got a handle on Jed McIntyre, they’d take care of it themselves, without the FBI… and without Lydia.

“Is it reliable?”

Dax shrugged. “I think so. We’ll need to check it out. Sooner rather than later.”

“Lydia has a meeting at the office in a couple of hours with Eleanor Ross. Let’s talk then.”

Dax nodded as Lydia waddled back into the room, holding her stomach, looking gray and sweaty. She threw herself on the couch with a groan. “This kid is kicking my ass already.”

“You know,” said Dax, sitting beside her and dropping his arm around her, “you don’t have that healthy glow so many pregnant women seem to have.” He gave her an affectionate squeeze.

“Oh, fuck off, Dax.”

Lydia’s office, which had been more or less transplanted from the home she’d sold last year in Santa Fe, took up the greatest square footage on the first floor of their apartment. The south wall faced Great Jones Street and was comprised largely of four ten-foot windows. The east wall was floor-to-ceiling bookcases, containing the intellectual clutter of most of the books she had read and all she had written in her career. Across from her desk sat a large sienna leather couch and matching chair, between them a mahogany wood table, which had once been the door of an eighteenth-century Spanish castle.

It was a peaceful place, a cocoon, and as she settled into the black leather chair at her desk and booted her laptop, she listened to the hushed street noise that only just barely made it through the thick glass of the windows. A scented candle beside her gave off a hint of jasmine, though it wasn’t lit. On the wall behind her hung a clutter of awards, her Pulitzer chief among them. Several black-and-white photographs accented empty wall space: an adobe church against a darkening sky threaded with lightning, a photograph of her taken by Herb Ritts during a shoot for a Vanity Fair feature in which she looked a pleasing combination of haunted and mysterious, mischievous and wise. It had surprised her then that she looked so utterly together, when she was really just lost inside. She had been relieved that it didn’t show.

Here, in her office, she was free. She didn’t have to think about Jed McIntyre, or about her pregnancy. She only had to focus on the case at hand, give in to the buzz, and search for the pieces of the puzzle. It was like a drug she used to escape her reality, even as she was chasing someone else’s.

When her computer was up and running, her fingers danced across the keyboard as she logged in to her powerful search engine. She entered Julian Ross’s name and came up with over a thousand entries. Lydia wasn’t necessarily interested in the accounts of Julian’s first husband’s murder. She had more details from Ford McKirdy’s old files and Jeff’s memory than she would find online. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for exactly. She was just looking. She would know she’d found it… when she felt the familiar jolt of electricity course through her veins.