The Dark Gate. Pamela Palmer

lifted one wry, teasing brow. “You do know how to get a guy’s attention.”

      “Yeah. Well…” Her embarrassment melted beneath his gentle humor. “On that note, I’m going to bed. Alone,” she added as she walked with forced calm down the hallway to Jack’s bedroom.

      Larsen closed the door, then sank back against it, her legs refusing to hold her upright a second longer. She struggled to suck air into her lungs, struggled to remember how to breathe after that kiss.

      Every nerve in her body hummed with electricity. She could probably light the entire room if she shoved her finger in the light socket. Her fingers went to her lips, trailing over flesh that still tingled.

      The man could kiss.

      With a groan, she closed her eyes and leaned her head against the door. Why had she let him do that? Now he was going to want more. She was going to want more.

      When what she needed to do was put distance between them.

      She banged her head silently against the door at her stupidity. It was time to find that rock-solid control she’d always prided herself on, and find it fast.

      The sound of Jack’s cell phone ringing in the living room permeated the room, followed by the low murmur of his voice.

      With a determined sigh, Larsen pushed away from the door and grabbed the borrowed sleep tee off the bed. She was just pulling it on when she heard the rap on her door.

      “Larsen, that was my partner on the phone. Come watch the news. There may be a break in the case.”

      Her pulse leaped with a bone-deep if fragile hope. “Thank God.” She wrenched the door open and followed him into the living room as the newscasters appeared on the television screen.

      “In our top story, two congressional interns are missing tonight. The young women were last seen leaving a pharmacy on Dupont Circle this morning with an unidentified male. The event was caught on the store’s security camera.”

      Larsen watched the screen change to the grainy black-and-white videotape, then gasped as she saw him. The albino. His back was to her as he stood in the middle of the tape, but she was certain it was him. The same stark white hair, the same odd clothing.

      Her heart began to pound. She hadn’t imagined him.

      In the background, the two young women chatted as they walked into the store. Neither seemed to pay any attention to the white man standing feet away.

      The albino lifted his arm and the pair stopped abruptly, going suddenly, unnaturally, still. The purse one carried dropped, unnoticed, to the floor.

      Chills raced over Larsen’s skin as she watched the evil man step around them and leave the store, the two women turning to follow. As the three exited onto the sidewalk outside, two small figures emerged from the right and followed them out the door.

      The station cut back to the newscasters, but not before Larsen got a look at the last two. Though she wore a baseball cap and a different T-shirt, one of them was the cancer girl—the girl who had shot her.

      She heard the click of the remote and the television screen went dark. Larsen turned toward Jack, suddenly afraid she hadn’t hidden her reactions. Her heart sank when she met his gaze. Gone was her friendly companion of a minute ago. In his place stood an angry, hard-eyed cop.

      “I want the truth, lady…and I want it now.”

      Chapter 4

      Jack’s sugar-spun fantasy of spending his life with the one woman who could cure his madness crumbled beneath a slug of hard reality. How could he have forgotten Larsen Vale was a liar?

      She stood beside him, her fingers gripping the back of his leather sofa, her face pale, her eyes wide with guilty dismay.

      He’d called her into the living room to ID the bald girl Henry had seen at the end of the tape. Instead she’d visibly jerked at first sight of the prime suspect, the latter-day Pied Piper who seemed to have led the little group right out the store.

      “You know him.” The implications ricocheted across his brain.

      “What?”

      “The Pied Piper. The leader. You’ve seen him before.”

      Something pained moved through her eyes. “No.” She unhooked her fingers from his sofa and turned to face him, raising that stubborn chin. “I recognized the cancer girl.”

      She looked so damned innocent standing there in her soft pajamas, her golden hair damp and curling under her jaw. Another man might have believed the act of innocence, but not a cop. Not him. Beneath those soft golden lashes, her wide eyes crawled with guilt.

      Jack slammed the remote on the table. “Don’t. Don’t lie to me. You nearly came out of your seat when you saw him.”

      Larsen crossed her arms over her chest, her gaze sliding away. “If I reacted to him, it was only because of his weirdness.”

      He stared at her, feeling the fragile connection between them fray and split. “How stupid do you think I am?”

      She froze, then seemed to shake herself loose, her gaze shifting to the blank television screen. “I swear to you, Jack, I’ve never seen him before.”

      Dammit. His fingers flexed with the need to grab her and shake her, to scare the crap out of her until she told him what he wanted to know. At the same time, he wanted nothing more than to sink to his knees and beg her to trust him.

      He turned away from her, shutting his eyes over the battle raging inside him. “Go to bed, Larsen.” Before he destroyed what tenuous connection remained between them, losing his only chance at a life without madness, his only chance at a future.

      Larsen paced the darkened bedroom, the room lit only by the soft wash of light slipping under the door from the hallway. She’d been pacing for more than an hour, but she wasn’t the only one still awake. Beyond the door she could hear the low sound of the television and knew Jack was still up. And probably still furious with her. What was she going to do?

      She couldn’t tell him what she knew. As a kid, she’d believed she somehow caused the tragedies she foresaw. The shame and self-loathing kept her silent. Then in college, she’d done some research on visions and premonitions and realized she was just a type of fortune-teller. Seeing the future didn’t mean she was causing it. But neither did it mean others would understand, if they knew. It didn’t mean they’d accept her, not think she was a freak. It wasn’t a risk she was willing to take.

      But now she didn’t know what to think. The albino saw her. He saw her. If she were merely a fortune-teller, merely a seer of the future, that wouldn’t be happening. So, what did that make her visions? What did that make her?

      The old fear that she was somehow to blame clenched like a fist in her stomach. The feelings that she was evil rose like bile in her throat.

      She couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t tell anyone. But those cop eyes of Jack Hallihan’s saw way too much. He already suspected she knew something. He had an uncanny ability to see right through her lies. He was dangerous. She needed to get away. In the morning, she’d make some calls. She wasn’t a prisoner…yet. But he certainly wasn’t going to let her walk out of here after she’d given herself away with that video.

      No, she needed help. The kind one got from friends in high places, which she happened to have, thanks to her skill in the courtroom. She’d rescued the daughter of a D.C. circuit court judge from an abusive marriage just last month. She had little doubt George would put a bug in the right ear and she’d be free of Jack Hallihan before lunch.

      Regret pressed down on her with surprising force.

      She’d been attracted to him for months. But that mild infatuation was nothing compared to the attraction that had built over the past couple of days, catching fire in his arms tonight. Strangely, her attraction to him was more than physical. When