Out Of Control

Book 3: The McClouds & Friends

by Shannon McKenna

Genres: General Fiction; Romance; Suspense

Synopsis

Disillusioned P.I. Davy McCloud has an ironclad rule: never follow blind impulse when it comes to women. But he breaks it the instant gorgeous Margo Vetter shows up to teach at the gym next door. The sexual hunger-and the instinctual protectiveness-that she awakens is much too strong to resist.



Broke and on the run, framed for a murder she didn't commit, Margot has no one to turn to but Davy McCloud. But the closer he comes, the more Margot discovers that holding back-or hiding-from this enigmatic, powerful man is impossible. In every way . . .



Then passion flares with unexpected intensity. But Margot's past has finally caught up with her, and life is about to get more than complicated. It's turning deadly . . .

Release date: July 5, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 416

Sample

San Cataldo, California

A poke in the eye, that’s how it felt.

Mag Callahan curled white-knuckled hands around the mug of lukewarm coffee that she kept forgetting to drink. She stared, blank-eyed, at the Ziploc bag lying on her kitchen table. It contained the evidence that she had extracted from her own unmade bed a half an hour before, with the help of a pair of tweezers.

Item #1—Black lace thong panties. She, Mag, favored pastels that weren’t such a harsh contrast to her fair skin. Item #2—Three strands of long, straight dark hair. She, Mag, had short, curly red hair.

Her mind reeled and fought the unwanted information. Craig, her boyfriend, had been uncommunicative and paranoid lately, but she’d chalked it up to that pesky Y chromosome of his, plus his job stress, and his struggle to start up his own new consulting business. It never occurred to her that he would ever…dear God.

Her own house. Her own bed. That pig.

The blank shock began to tingle and go red around the edges as it transformed inevitably into fury. She’d been so nice to him. Letting him stay in her house rent-free while he bugswept and remodeled his own place. Lending him money, quite a bit of it. Cosigning his business loans. She’d bent over backwards to be supportive, accommodating, womanly. Trying to lighten up on her standard ballbreaker routine, which consisted of scaring boyfriend after boyfriend into hiding with her strong opinions. She’d wanted so badly to make it work this time. She’d tried so hard, and this was what she got for her pains. Shafted. Again.

She bumped the edge of the table as she got up, knocking over her coffee. She leaped back just in time to keep it from splattering over the cream linen outfit she’d changed into for her lunch date with Craig.

She’d come home early from her weekend conference on purpose to pretty herself up for their date, having fooled herself into thinking that Craig was only twitchy because he was about to broach the subject of—drum roll, please—the Future of Their Relationship. She’d even gone so far as to fantasize a sappy Kodak moment: Craig, bashfully passing her a ring box over dessert. Herself, opening it. A gasp of happy awe. Violins swelling as she melted into tears. How stupid.

Fury roared up like gasoline dumped on a fire. She had to do something active, right now. Like blow up his car, maybe. Craig’s favorite coffee mug was the first object to present itself, sitting smugly in the sink beside another dirty mug, from which the mystery tart had no doubt sipped her own coffee this morning. Why, would you look at that. A trace of coral lipstick was smeared along the mug’s edge.

Mag flung them across the room. Crash, tinkle. The noise relieved her feelings, but now she had a coffee splatter on her kitchen wall to remind her of this glorious moment forevermore. Smooth move, Mag.

She rummaged under the sink for a garbage bag, muttering. She was going to delete that lying bastard from her house.

She started with the spare room, which Craig had commandeered as his office. In went his laptop, modem, and mouse, his ergonomic keyboard. Mail, trade magazines, floppy disks, data storage CDs clattered in after it. A sealed box that she found in the back of one of the desk drawers hit the bottom of the bag with a rattling thud.

Onward. She dragged the bag into the hall. It had been stupid to start with the heaviest stuff first, but it was too late now. Next stop, hall closet. Costly suits, dress shirts, belts, ties, shoes, and loafers. On to the bedroom, to the drawers she’d cleared out for his casual wear. His hypoallergenic silicon pillow. His alarm clock. His special dental floss. Every item she tossed made her anger burn hotter. Scum.

That was it. Nothing left to dump. She knotted the top of the bag.

It was now too heavy to lift. She had to drag it, bumpity-thud, out the door, over the deck, down the stairs, across the narrow, pebbly beach of Parson’s Lake. The wooden passageway that led to her floating dock wobbled perilously as she jerked the stone-heavy thing along.

She heaved it over the edge of the dock with a grunt. Glug, glug, some pitiful bubbles, and down it sank, out of sight. Craig could take a bracing November dip and do a salvage job if he so chose.

She could breathe a bit better now, but she knew from experience that the health benefits of childish, vindictive behavior were very short-term. She’d crash and burn again soon if she didn’t stay in constant motion. Work was the only thing that could save her now. She grabbed her purse, jumped into the car, and headed downtown to her office.

Dougie, her receptionist, looked up with startled eyes when she charged through the glass double doors of Callahan Web Weaving. “Wait. Hold on a second. She just walked in the door,” he said into the phone. He pushed a button. “Mag? What are you doing here? I thought you were coming in this afternoon, after you had lunch with—”

“Change of plans,” she said crisply. “I have better things to do.”

Dougie looked bewildered. “But Craig’s on line two. He wants to know why you’re late for your lunch date. Says he has to talk to you. Urgently. As soon as possible. A matter of life and death, he says.”

Mag rolled her eyes as she marched into her office. “So what else is new, Dougie? Isn’t everything that has to do with Craig’s precious convenience a matter of life and death?”

Dougie followed her. “He, uh, sounds really flipped out, Mag.”

Come to think of it, it would be more classy, dignified, and above all, final if she looked him in the eye while she dumped him. Plus, she could throw the panties bag right into his face if he had the gall to deny it. That would be satisfying. Closure, and all that good stuff.

She smiled reassuringly into Dougie’s anxious eyes. “Tell Craig I’m on my way. And after this, don’t accept any more calls from him. Don’t even bother to take messages. For Craig Caruso, I am in a meeting, for the rest of eternity. Is that clear?”

Dougie blinked through his glasses, owl-like. “You OK, Mag?”

The smile on her face was a warlike mask. “Fine. I’m great, actually. This won’t take long. I’m certainly not going to eat with him.”

“Want me to order in lunch for you, then? Your usual?”

She hesitated, doubting she’d have much appetite, but poor Dougie was so anxious to help. “Sure, that would be nice.” She patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a sweetie-pie. I don’t deserve you.”

“I’ll order carrot cake and a double skim latte, too. You’re gonna need it,” Dougie said, scurrying back to his beeping phone.

Mag checked the mirror inside her coat closet, freshened her lipstick, and made sure her coppery red ’do was artfully mussed, not wisping dorkily, as it tended to do if she didn’t gel the living bejesus out of it. One should try to look elegant when telling a parasitical user to go to hell and fry. She thought about mascara and decided against it. She cried easily; when she was hurt, when she was pissed, and today she was both. Putting on mascara was like spitting in the face of the gods.

She grabbed her purse, uncomfortably aware, as always, of the 9mm Beretta that shared space with wallet, keys, and lipstick inside. A gift from Craig, after she’d gotten mugged months ago. A pointless gift, since she’d never been able to bring herself to load the thing, and had no license to carry it concealed. Craig had insisted that she keep it in her purse, along with an extra clip of ammunition. And she’d gone along with it, in her efforts to be sweet and grateful and accommodating. Hah.

If she were a different woman, she’d make him regret that gift. She’d wave it around at him, scare him out of his wits. But that kind of tantrum just wasn’t her style. Neither were guns. She’d give it back to him today. It was illegal, it was scary, it made her purse too heavy, and besides, today was all about streamlining, dumping excess baggage.

Emotional feng shui. Sploosh, straight into the lake.

By the time she got to her car, the unseasonable late autumn heat made sweat trickle between her shoulder blades. She felt rumpled, flushed and emotional. Frazzled Working Girl was not the look she wanted for this encounter. Indifferent Ice Queen was more like it. She cranked the air-conditioning to chill down to Ice Queen temperatures and pulled out into traffic, the density of which gave her way too much time to think about what a painful pattern this was in her love life.

Used and shafted by charming jerks. Over and over. She was almost thirty years old, for God’s sake. She should have outgrown this tedious, self-destructive crap by now. She should be hitting her stride.

Maybe she should get her head shrunk. What a joy. Pick out the most icky element of her personality, and pay someone scads of money to help her dwell on it. Bleah. Introspection had never been her thing.

She parked her car outside the newly renovated brick warehouse that housed Craig’s new studio, and braced herself to see Craig’s tech assistant bouncing up to chirp a greeting. Mandi was her name. Probably dotted the i with a heart. Nothing behind those big brown eyes but bubbles and foam. She had long dark hair, too. Fancy that.

There was no one to be seen in the studio. Odd. Maybe Craig and Mandi had been overcome with passion in the office in back. She set her teeth and marched through the place. Her heels clicked loudly on the tile. The silence made the sharp sounds echo and swell.

The door to Craig’s office was ajar. She clicked her heels louder. Go for it. Burn your bridges, Mag, it’s what you’re best at. She slapped the door open, sucked in air and opened her mouth to—

She rocked back with a choked gasp. The panty bag dropped from her hand.

Craig was dangling by his wrists from the pipes in the ceiling, suspended by one of his own ties. Naked. Blood streamed from his nose and mouth. Her brain picked out random details to focus on with preternatural clarity. The tie knotted around his wrists, cruelly tight. Beige silk, tasteful accents of gold. One of his favorites.

His bloodshot eyes rolled when he saw her. His mouth worked, but no sound came out. Fine hairlike things protruded from his naked body. Needles. He was stuck full of them. They were everywhere.

She lunged forward, a hoarse croak that felt more animal than human jerking out of her throat, and stumbled to an abrupt stop.

Slim legs sprawled wide on the floor, one shoe on, one shoe off. Gartered hose. Bare, pale, skinny bottom. Mandi. She lay terribly still.

Mag’s horrified gaze locked with Craig’s. His desperate eyes flicked to a point behind her, to her left. She slowly turned her head.

A flash of awful pain, fire, and ice combined stabbed into her neck, down into her arm, up into her head, where it proceeded to explode.

Fireworks were overtaken by blackness. The world was gone.

 

“She has to die, Faris.”

Marcus’s voice on the cell phone Faris clutched to his ear seemed soft with puzzled regret, but he knew the cold steel beneath it very well.

Faris stared at the naked girl lying on the hotel bed. Her coppery hair was snarled against the pillow. He stroked the curve of her belly, the indentation of her navel. Her translucent skin was so soft and fine.

He was so gifted. He deserved this. Her love would fill that hollow ache that tortured him whenever Marcus had no jobs for him to do.

“No,” he whispered.

“This was meant to be a murder-suicide, Faris. You were supposed to recover what Caruso took from us. Not ignore my orders and wander off to indulge yourself.”

“But the scenario is almost exactly what you wanted,” Faris protested. “Caruso’s jealous girlfriend burst in on what will look like kinky sex. She shot him and his lover with her gun, threw it into the nearest Dumpster like the panicked amateur she is, and disappeared.”

“Faris.” Marcus’s voice was ominously soft. “That’s not what we—”

“I know where the mold is,” Faris broke in. “I’ll get it for you now. What difference does it make if she disappears or dies? She’s the obvious suspect. The police have no reason to look any further. Let them waste their energy looking for her. They’ll never find her.”

“Faris.” Marcus’s reproach was palpable. “That’s not the issue. My trust is the issue. I invested a huge amount of energy and money in your training. I made you the best of the best. And like a spoiled child, you say no?” He paused. “Perhaps you’re less worthy than I thought.”

Faris’s fingers traced the poignant hollow beneath her rib cage, where her vital organs lay protected only by smooth muscle, silky skin. Normally, Marcus’s anger would distress him to the point of vomiting, but with his red angel at his side, he felt untouched by it. Almost…free. “I’ve never asked for anything for myself before,” he said, in a dreamy voice. “I always do everything you say. Always.”

Marcus’s sigh was sharp and impatient. “We can’t risk our plans over something so banal. Women are expendable. No one knows this better than we. Be reasonable. I will give you ten of her. A hundred.”

No. There was not another one like her on the face of the earth. His red angel. Faris’s fingers feathered down to circle her hip bones.

“I am shocked at your attitude. The Callahan woman is worthless as anything but a prop. Finish the job. I want to hear the tragic conclusion of the Caruso/Callahan saga on the eleven PM news tonight. Failure is unacceptable. Do we understand each other? Faris?”

Faris broke the connection and turned his attention back to the girl. The cheap synthetic bedspread was not worthy of her. She should be lying on an altar of crimson velvet, draped with cloth of gold.

He checked her pulse, fingers lingering over the tender skin of her wrist. He prepared a dose of a drug that would keep her unconscious for two more hours and slid the needle tenderly into her arm.

He considered tying her to the bed, just in case he was delayed, but he was reluctant to start off their love affair by scaring her.

He wanted to be tender with her. Indulgent. Two hours was plenty of time to recover the mold for Marcus. A few minutes with Faris’s needles, and Caruso had been very forthcoming about where he’d left it.

This was a pathetically easy job, in fact. Almost beneath his dignity. If all went smoothly, he would not even have to torture her.

He hoped not. Faris was a master at the art of torture, but he preferred that she love him. If he had to torture her, things would be much more complicated. Women took things so personally.

Faris lingered by the bed, hating to leave her so soon after he had found her. He groped for his snake pendant, the symbol of his order, and lifted her head to place it around her neck, arranging it carefully between her perfect breasts. His most prized possession. He stroked the soft skin, the lush curves. There. Better. It was tangible proof of his commitment. It would protect her until his return. She looked perfect.

This ecstatic emotion made him giddy. Strong enough to bear even Marcus’s anger. He left the room, imagining how grateful and admiring she would be when he came back to wake her.

She owed her very existence to him. Every moment of her life was now his. She should be grateful to him for every breath she took.

A detailed and highly sensual fantasy of all the ways she would express her gratitude kept him pleasantly entertained as he drove.

Seattle, Washington, eight months later

Dragon sinks into the ocean…

Davy McCloud’s body flowed through the form, unencumbered by conscious thought, in harmony with the ancient sequence of movements. Grab with dragon claw. Sink down to pull his phantom adversary to the ground. Breathe low and soft, to pull qi down into his vital organs and circulate it. His body was fluid and relaxed, his attention focused, mind, body and spirit in perfect equilibrium. Qi focused out through the eyes.

He was the dragon, the cloud where it formed, the ocean where it lived. Balanced on air. Suspended in space.

The door of the dojo made no sound as it opened, but his heightened senses felt every minute change in temperature and air currents. He recognized her energy without even turning. He knew the way it felt in the back of his head. Like the ringing of a zillion tiny bells.

Seconds later her scent hit him. Spicy. Ginger or clove. Woodsy, like cedar, with a hint of orange. Mouthwatering. It strengthened as she approached the tatami where he was practicing, and damned if he wasn’t making a tiger claw now, a downward ripping movement instead of the softer, circular dragon claw. He corrected himself instantly and took a split second to gather his concentration.

Dragon stretches out his left claw… she must have just finished teaching her aerobics class at the Women’s Wellness Center, the all-women gym next door. He’d heard the pounding music ease off a timeless infinity ago, which the tracking mechanism in his brain identified as about fifteen minutes. Deep into that remote no-man’s-land in his brain, he’d barely registered the high-pitched chatter of the women heading out of the gym into the pedestrian mall towards the parking lot, buzzed on endorphins.

And here she was. In his face. In his space.

Dragon stretches out his right claw… what the hell was she doing in here? He’d been so fucking careful to avoid her, and now his breathing was hard, too tense and dynamic, too high in the chest. His heart beat fast, thudding against his ribs as if he were afraid.

Concentrate, goddamnit. He softened his breathing, but that just let still more of her warm female scent into his lungs. Damp sweetness. Perfumed soap, shampoo, or whatever other female goop she smeared on her body, activated by the heat of exercise. If he turned and looked at her, her perfect skin would be glowing with a pearly sheen of sweat.

He did not look. He did not even look at her, and still his groin tightened. It made him furious with his own body.

Dragon grabs the rainbow… the bright pink spandex workout gear she was wearing jarred the corner of his eye as he turned. Distraction was just another challenge to face and overcome, he reminded himself. So were surges of irrational anger. He knew the drill. Dispassionately observe his reaction. Let it go. Move on.

He should welcome challenges to his concentration. It was just a mind game. Ideally, he should be able to maintain perfect focus even if the sky fell around his ears. Dragon stretches out his left claw…

Yeah, but the falling sky didn’t have that sweet, spicy smell that punched through his defences like armor-piercing rounds.

He spun around, leg extended, and couldn’t help but note again that she was wearing the hot pink two-piece leotard, a seductive French-cut thong. One of his favorites. He’d memorized her workout gear in the six weeks since she’d started working next door. Every last piece.

Vaguely perverted of him, once he thought about it.

But he shouldn’t be thinking at all. At this point, no more than twenty-five percent of his concentration was focused on the form. The other seventy-five was hyperconscious of Margot Vetter watching him as he practiced in the twilit, silent dojo, making him as self-conscious as a teenage boy. He’d taken off the cotton jacket of his gi, and his bare torso dripped with sweat. If he could smell her from this distance, she could smell him, too, and after teaching two karate classes back to back, it wasn’t pretty. A nose full of ripe, sweaty male animal.

Stop it, forget it, cancel it out. He sank down into the opening pose once again, grimly determined to get through it. Crane flies into the sky… leap, land lightfooted in left cat stance, right hand scooped under left into crane cools his wings… and it was fucking useless, with those tiny bells ringing, shooting his concentration to hell.

He finished the form, just because his own nature would not permit him to leave a thing unfinished once he had begun it, and sank down into crane guards its nest.

Wasted effort.

Nothing should knock him off balance when he was in that meditative zone. Nothing ever had until Margot Vetter had shown up at Women’s Wellness next door to teach the aerobics classes. He was thirty-eight years old, and he had a stupid-ass crush on the woman.

Which is all it could ever be. He’d known it since the evening that Tilda, his tenant who ran the Women’s Wellness Center, had introduced them. A night spent tossing in bed until all the sheets were ripped off the mattress and wrapped around his sweating body. Imagining Margot twined around him, on top of him, bent over in front of him. He’d given up on sleep halfway through the night and gone to the computer to do what any man with a functioning brain should do when contemplating getting involved with a woman. A comprehensive background check.

The results of that check had put him in a foul mood for weeks.

He took a deep breath, and let it out very slowly before he turned.

“No shoes on the tatami,” he said.

“I’m already barefoot,” she said. “I left my flip-flops at the door.”

Her husky alto voice brushed over the nerves on the surface of his skin. His hairs prickled, and his groin was heavy, and he was angry at himself for being angry, embarrassed for being embarrassed. His gaze traveled rapidly over the length of her body: slim bare feet, graceful ankles, turquoise leggings clinging to long, muscular legs, the hot pink spandex leotard hugging every lush curve. She was tall, broad-shouldered, wide-hipped. Not too skinny, with that round ass that stuck out a little in back, and the soft, lush swell of her belly. Head high, back straight. An uppity, hip-swaying walk that could hypnotize a man into driving up onto the sidewalk and into a parking meter.

Which he had nearly done the first day he’d caught sight of her.

The sports bra top that went with the thong contained big, soft-looking tits. One of these days he would have to stroll through the gym next door under the guise of a neighborly visit and look in on one of her aerobics classes, just to monitor that bra’s performance. But he would have to see those breasts bare and unbound to truly believe them. Until then, he would remain skeptical about God’s existence.

Wrong. No. Wouldn’t be going there, wouldn’t be doing that. He’d slammed the door on that possibility weeks ago, but still the images spun through his mind, and now the heaviness in his crotch was solidifying into an official hard-on. The thin cotton trousers that he wore to practice kung fu would be no help in preserving his male dignity. He was so screwed.

Her eyes were a ragbag of bright colors; irises rimmed with indigo that faded to bluish green and then to gold around the pupil. They met his so directly, he had to fight the impulse to drop his gaze and stare at his own feet. Jesus. Next he was going to start to stammer and blush.

The charged silence was driving him nuts.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. Embarrassment made his voice harsher than he’d intended.

She sucked her full, rosy bottom lip between her teeth and chewed on it. “I’m…I’m, uh, sorry to have interrupted you.”

He shrugged. Waited.

“Your kata looks great,” she offered. “You’ve got amazing technique. I’m no expert, but…well, wow. It’s just beautiful.”

Courtesy demanded some polite acknowledgment of this remark, but all he could manage was a grunt and a nod. She waited in vain for him to pick up his cue. He clenched his teeth and concentrated on clamping down on his body’s physiological response. The biofeedback equivalent of trying not to think about a pink elephant.

Her cheeks flushed pinker. “I, ah…I had a couple questions for you, actually. I heard you’re a private investigator, and—”

“Who’d you hear it from?”

She looked taken aback at his curt tone. “That blond guy who teaches the kickboxing classes here. He told me that you—”

“Sean,” he said. “My brother. Never could keep his mouth shut.”

A perplexed crease appeared between her straight dark brows. Probably wondering how he could possibly be related to Sean, the quintessential calendar pinup male with the flirtatious charm to match. There wasn’t much resemblance between the two of them, other than the dirt-blond shade of their hair and their bizarre background.

“Oh.” Her voice was cautious. “Is it some big secret, then?”

The thought of Sean chatting Margot up made his jaw clench. The fact that his reaction was stupid and irrational made him even angrier, like an endless feedback loop. “I’m phasing that business out. I’m still licensed, but I’m not taking on any new clients. As Sean knows damn good and well.”

“Oh.” Her voice was subdued. “Why are you phasing it out?”

He crossed his arms over his bare chest and longed for his jacket, which was draped over the weight rack all the way across the room.

“Boredom. Burn-out.” He made his voice curt and dismissive. “I’m moving on to other things.”

Her eyes dropped. She took a step back, chilled.

It was working. He’d put her off. She wouldn’t be back. Exactly what he’d intended. All according to plan.

So why did he feel like such an asshole?

“I see. Sorry I bothered you, then,” she mumbled as she turned away. “I won’t take up any more of your time—”

“Wait,” he heard himself say.

She turned back slowly. Her face looked pale in the fading twilight. Her hair was cinched into a clip, a wild explosion of spiky wisps up top. Those hollows beneath her high cheekbones were new. She’d lost weight in the last few days, and her pallor confirmed what he’d suspected the minute he saw her. That dull, dark brown hair color was false, like her name, her driver’s license, everything about her.

She looked different tonight. Fragile. An image of Kevin flashed through his mind, triggering a dull ache of pain. His younger brother, killed years ago when he ran his truck off a cliff. Davy had been in the Persian Gulf at the time, but he’d dreamed of his brother the night before he got the news. He’d seen a shadow lying over Kevin’s face.

Margot Vetter had a shadow like that hanging over her tonight.

He was deviating from his script. The woman was trouble he did not need. A walking, breathing question mark. He had enough to deal with, with the new business he was starting up.

Margot Vetter’s checkered past was not his business, no matter how curious he was. He didn’t need to know what she was running from, what responsibilities she was evading. With his constant efforts at self-mastery, he’d be damned if he would let his dick drag him into the snakepit of somebody else’s bad decisions and rotten judgment.

No more rescue missions, either. He’d tried the hero routine years ago, with Fleur, and had fuck-all to show for it.

Unless you counted the scars.

Margot jerked her shoulders, impatient with the long silence. “So?” she demanded. “Wait for what? Why are you staring at me?”

He played for time. “Why do you need a detective?”

Her full lips tightened. “What do you care? It’s irrelevant, since you’re no longer in the business. And I would hate to bore you.”

“I’m not bored. And I’ll decide what’s relevant.”

She grew three inches in a breath. “Will you? Gee, that’s arrogant.”

Arrogant. Huh. Women had thrown that at him before, but he just shrugged it off. There were worse things a woman could call a guy.

“Just tell me.” He concentrated on his command stare, which he’d used to great effect as the sole authority figure for three unruly younger brothers. He’d developed it further in the army, and honed it to perfection as a martial arts master. All the force of his will, blazing out through the eyes. Legend held that a true master of the dragon form could terrify his enemies into submission with a single glance. He hadn’t made it to that point yet, but he did all right, for the most part.

Didn’t work worth a damn on Margot Vetter, though. She just wrapped her arms over her tits and glared right back at him. “I don’t have time for idle curiosity, buddy. I’ve got a body sculpture class to teach in”—she consulted her watch—“three minutes. So go on back to your karate moves, and don’t stress yourself about—”

“Kung fu,” he said.

She gave him a death ray stare. “Excuse me?”

“I was practicing kung fu, not karate,” he clarified.

She rolled her eyes, turned her back and marched for the door.

He lunged ahead of her to block the exit, without thinking, and she shrank back, startled. “Hey! How’d you do that?” she said sharply.

The sheer variety of colors in her eyes was distracting. “Do what?”

“I didn’t even hear you move, and whoosh. You appeared right in front of me.” She stabbed his solar plexus with her finger and yanked her hand back at the shock of contact with his skin. “You scared me!”

“Uh…” He groped for any kind of response. “Dragon spirit, maybe.”

Aw, shit. He regretted the words the instant they left his mouth.

“Dragon who?” She regarded him with deep suspicion.

“According to legend, a practitioner of Shaolin can, uh, use the spirit of the dragon to misdirect his opponent into thinking an attack is coming from the opposite direction,” he said lamely. “Theoretically.”

Margot’s pointed chin lifted. “Oh. I see. Are you going to attack me, then? Since when am I your opponent?”

“You’re not. You’re absolutely not,” he assured her. “I just said that, without thinking. It was stupid. I didn’t mean to imply…wait. Please. Don’t go yet.” He moved to block her as she sidled around him.

Her brow furrowed. “Hey. Are you deliberately trying to creep me out, or are you just naturally weird?”

He thought about it, and rapidly concluded that he did not want to creep her out. “Just naturally weird, I guess.”

She rolled her eyes. “OK, that’s enough,” she announced. “Out of my way. I’ve got stuff to do.” She dismissed him with a commanding wave of her slender hand.

“Meet me after your class. You can tell me about your problem. Over dinner. If you want.” He blurted out the unpremeditated, ill-considered words, and held his breath for her response.

Her eyes widened, defenceless in her surprise. She wrapped her arms across her chest, and her cleavage deepened. She had a sprinkle of red freckles on her tits. He dragged his gaze away from her chest.

“Who said I had a problem?” Her voice was belligerent.

“People who go looking for a detective always have a problem,” he said. “Tell me. At least the short version. Please.”

Margot stared down at the floor for a long moment, and let out a long, unsteady sigh. “Well…it’s just that I’ve got some sicko stalking me, and it’s freaking me out.” The words came out in a quick, nervous rush. “I just wanted to tell someone. You know. To get another point of view. I’m chasing myself in circles, thinking about it.”

“What happened?” he demanded. “What’s he done so far?”

She twisted her hands together. “I started finding red rose petals on my doorstep, which was strange, but whatever, right? Secret admirer, whoop-di-doo. It’s happened off and on for the last two weeks. Then I got burgled six days ago. Don’t know if that’s connected. But then the other day…” Her voice trailed off. She swallowed.

“What?”

The rough impatience in his voice made her flinch. “The dog. I found a dead dog on my porch. Throat slit. Blood everywhere.”

A cold, dark hole yawned open, somewhere deep in his gut. “What did the police have to say about it?”

She hesitated, and shook her head. “I, um, didn’t call them.”

“Why not?” he demanded. Though he knew damn well why not.

The shadow over her face deepened by imperceptible degrees. Her eyes flicked away. The faint, bluish smudges beneath them made her look haunted. “Look, uh…never mind, OK? I shouldn’t have bothered you in the first place, and I’m late for my class, and you’re not in the business now anyhow, so thanks for your time, but I have to—”

“Tell me the rest of it over dinner,” he urged.

She gave him a long, searching look. “You know…something tells me that wouldn’t be such a fabulous idea.”

Here it was. His chance to back off with his dignity more or less intact. You win some, you lose some, and God knows it was just as well.

“Why not?” he asked baldly.

She looked flustered. “I have to pick up my dog at the kennel—”

“I can wait,” he said. “Do you like Mexican?”

“Sure, when I can get it, but there’s no point in flapping my jaw about my personal problems if you don’t—”

“I’ve changed my mind about not taking on any more cases.”

Startled silence stretched out after his words. Her subtle shadow weighed on him, teasing him like a painful dream that slipped out of reach of conscious thought, leaving sick dread lingering in its wake.

It was a familiar feeling. The cases that he gave a shit about always haunted him. But the haunting didn’t usually start so quickly.

Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Actually, I wasn’t proposing to hire you. The plain truth is, I’m too broke to pay you. I just wanted to bounce it off somebody. My dog is tired of hearing me talk about it.”

“So bounce it off me,” he said. “While we eat.”

She bit her lip, her eyes big and apprehensive. “Your vibes are really intense, McCloud. And it’s been a long day, and I’d just like to relax and hang out with my dog tonight. So thanks for the dinner invite, but no thanks. And you can get out of my way now. Any time.”

“I’ll tone my vibes down,” he said. “I’ll get takeout while you get your dog, and meet you at your place.”

She shook her head rapidly. “Not. You will do no such thing.”

Her withdrawal made him feel desperate, as if a boat he should have boar. . .