“Do you know something you’re not telling me?”

Sure enough, that got her attention.

“Back off,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

Marc didn’t move. “I’d be a fool not to consider your behavior suspicious.”

She was breathing heavily. But what he saw in her smoky gray eyes wasn’t just guilt or fear. It was desire.

As her chest rose again, his gaze dropped to her breasts and the hard points of her nipples jutting against the soft cloth.

In that moment, he felt very masculine and powerful.

Dear Reader,

June brings you four high-octane reads from Silhouette Romantic Suspense, just in time for summer. Steaming up your sunglasses is Nina Bruhns’s hot romance, Killer Temptation (#1516), which is the first of a thrilling new trilogy, SEDUCTION SUMMER. In this series, a serial killer is murdering amorous couples on the beach and no lover is safe. You won’t want to miss this sexy roller coaster ride! Stay tuned in July and August for Sheri White Feather’s and Cindy Dees’s heart-thumping contributions, Killer Passion and Killer Affair.

USA TODAY bestselling author Marie Ferrarella enthralls readers with Protecting His Witness (#1515), the latest in her family saga, CAVANAUGH JUSTICE. Here, an undercover cop crosses paths with a secretive beauty who winds up being a witness to a mob killing. And then, can a single mother escape her vengeful ex and fall in love with her protector? Find out in Linda Conrad’s Safe with a Stranger (#1517), the first book in her miniseries, THE SAFEKEEPERS, which weaves family, witchcraft and danger into an exciting read. Finally, crank up your air-conditioning as brand-new author Jill Sorenson raises temperatures with Dangerous to Touch (#1518), featuring a psychic heroine and lawman, who work on a murder case and uncover a wild attraction.

This month is all about finding love against the odds and those adventures lurking around every corner. So as you lounge on the beach or in your favorite chair, lose yourself in one of these gems from Silhouette Romantic Suspense!

Sincerely,

Patience Smith

Senior Editor

Dangerous to Touch
Jill Sorenson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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JILL SORENSON

has been an avid reader for as long as she can remember. In the small Kansas town where she was born, there wasn’t much else to do. She picked up her first young adult romance at age eleven and fell in love with the genre at first sight. When she discovered Silhouette Intimate Moments, she didn’t leave her room for a month.

Jill moved to San Diego and fell in love all over again, with awesome weather and year-round sunshine. She met her third great love, her husband Chris, in high school, and they married after only eight years of dating. Before becoming a full-time mom and a part-time romance novelist, Jill held down a number of odd jobs, most of which involved children and/or animals, but none of these jobs were as rewarding as writing.

Jill earned a degree in English literature and a bilingual teaching credential from California State University. Upon graduating, she promptly decided to stay home with her new baby. She started writing one day while her daughter was taking a nap and hasn’t stopped since. She is delighted to be working with Silhouette Romantic Suspense, formerly Silhouette Intimate Moments, her first crush.

To my agent, Laurie McLean, who finally agreed

to represent me after reading the first three chapters

of this book.

To my editor, Stacy Boyd, who writes brilliant editorial

comments and draws cute little hearts in the margins.

To my daughters, without whom I never would have

started writing this book.

To my mom, without whose incredible generosity and

superior babysitting skills I never would have finished

writing this book.

And to my husband, who will have to wait for another

book (he knows which one) to get his rightful dedication.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 1

Sidney woke to the sound of a dog barking.

For a moment, she thought she’d fallen asleep in the office at the kennel again, but when she opened her eyes she saw the pale yellow paint and outdated light fixture gracing the ceiling of her own bedroom. Her cat, Marley, was curled up into a soft tortoiseshell ball at the foot of the bed, unperturbed.

She threw back the rumpled sheet and climbed out of bed, wondering who had gotten a dog. In this neighborhood, just steps away from Oceanside City Beach, everyone owned or rented tiny two-story houses, like hers, each with the same nonexistent yard space. Dogs weren’t allowed on the beach, either, so most area residents didn’t own them.

Especially not large, menacing dogs with deep, resounding barks, which was most assuredly what she’d heard.

Yawning, Sidney strode over to the open window in her underwear and pushed aside the gauzy curtains to catch a glimpse of heaven. She inhaled the salty ocean scent, studied the play of the early morning light off the rippled water, listened to the rhythmic crash of waves breaking against the shoreline.

There was no dog barking.

Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she stepped away from the window, dismissing the noise as a remnant of a particularly vivid dream. Visual illusions, unfortunately, were not an infrequent occurrence for her. Now she was going to have to add auditory hallucinations to her list of oddities.

With a wistful glance at her comfy wrought-iron bed, Sidney grabbed a pair of jeans off the floor and pulled them up her slender hips. Shoving her feet into old sneakers, she performed a hasty morning toilette that consisted of washing her face and brushing her teeth.

As she left the bedroom, Marley let out a staccato farewell meow, indicating that she was sleeping in.

Downstairs, while Sidney waited for a bagel to toast, she turned the knob on the ancient ten-inch television atop her kitchen counter, more to distract than entertain herself. She only had three channels, and all of them were broadcasting news, the Sunday morning variety, high-fluff, low-violence. As she sipped hot coffee, enjoying the jolt of caffeine to her system, Crystal Dunn—a petite blond reporter whose sweet countenance and angelic blue eyes couldn’t mask a cutthroat nature—broke in with an important newsbreak.

“Hal and Sandra, I’m on location in a quiet residential neighborhood known as Sunshine Estates. Candace Hegel, who lives in the area, was last seen walking her dog here early yesterday morning. Her sudden disappearance has caused a local panic. Friends and family fear Miss Hegel may have fallen into the hands of a serial killer.”

At the news desk, even the coanchors appeared skeptical. “Crystal, has law enforcement given any indications of foul play?”

Crystal batted her dark lashes engagingly. “No, Hal, they have no comment, but if you remember Anika Groene, the killer’s first victim, you’ll note the similarities. Anika was presumed to have been taken while walking her dog, a dog which was never found. Miss Hegel’s dog is also missing.”

Sidney’s half-eaten bagel transformed into a hard lump in the pit of her stomach. Photos of Anika Groene, a fresh-faced college student, and Candace Hegel, an attractive woman in her thirties, flashed across the screen, along with home-taken snapshots of both dogs.

“Anyone with information should contact the Oceanside Police Department…” Crystal continued, reciting a hotline number.

Anika Groene’s dog was a goofy-looking Doberman with a poorly done ear crop. Sidney felt a rush of sympathy at the sight of his sweet, lopsided mug, sure the dog had met the same fate as his owner.

Candace Hegel’s dog elicited a very different reaction. He was an Australian Shepherd mix, by the look of him, although he didn’t appear to have the friendly personality typical of the breed. With his mottled blue-gray coat, mangy appearance, and fierce, colorless eyes, he was the kind of dog you crossed the street to avoid.

He also looked perfectly capable of making a loud, insidious bark—just like the one she’d heard that morning.

“Ridiculous,” she said, switching the television off abruptly and promising not to turn it on again for another six months.

At Pacific Pet Hotel, the business she’d been scraping a living off of for the past five years, Sidney found something far more unsettling than the Sunday morning news: Candace Hegel’s hell-hound, stalking the fence line.

“Why me?” she whispered, slowing to a stop in front of the gate and resting her head against the steering wheel. It made no sense. The kennel was miles from Sidney’s house, but she knew with one hundred percent accuracy that this dog’s barking had disturbed her slumber.

Grumbling, she got out of her truck to unlock the gate and roll it open. As she drove into the small parking lot, the dog made no move to follow. He merely watched as she exited the vehicle again. By the time she called the police department, he could very well bolt.

She knew enough about dogs to understand that this one would need careful handling and a lot of finesse, two attributes she didn’t associate with most officers of the law.

Keeping her truck door open, she whistled engagingly. “Go for a ride?”

He sat on his haunches.

On impulse, she lowered the tailgate and sat, thumping the space next to her. “Go for a walk?” she tried.

He didn’t move an inch.

She sighed, feeling a reluctant respect for a dog that couldn’t be bought so cheaply.

After disengaging the kennel’s rinky-dink security alarm and entering through the side door, she wrenched open a can of puppy food and dumped it into a stainless steel bowl. Grabbing another bowl, she filled it with water from the sink and walked back out.

He was still sitting there, watching her.

She placed the bowls just inside the fence line. His jet-black nose quivered with interest, but he didn’t move. Intending to trap him in once he came, Sidney rolled the gate until it was almost closed, leaving him just enough space to get through. As she waited for hunger to overcome good sense, she studied him.

It had to be the same dog. He was tall and rangy, more German Shepherd than Australian, now that she saw him in person. He probably weighed at least ninety pounds, and he didn’t have that energetic, innocuous expression Aussies wore. His ears were straight up, not floppy, alert rather than playful, and his coat was more wiry than soft.

If not for his coloring, he’d look purebred, but that thick, charcoal-gray fur, liberally spotted with black, was a dead giveaway for his mixed heritage. Blue roan, they called it.

“So what’ll it be, Blue?”

He cocked his head to one side.

“Is that your name?” she asked softly, not surprised she got it on the first try. She had a gift—or a curse, to be honest—for guessing right.

The dog entered the space warily, his hind legs shaking, ready to run. Instead of going for the food, he came right to her, sat down and put his head against her jeans-clad thigh in a move that was positively heartbreaking.

“Oh, honey,” she said, securing the fence behind him and placing her hand on his trembling head.

In an instant, she was swept away into a maelstrom of images.

Blue was running, running. His teeth were numb from chewing and his head hurt. Fuzzy. Everything was fuzzy.

He was running in shallow water, through fields and over gravel roads, running. Running away from the bad man, the pain, the sound of gunshots and the acrid odor.

He had to follow the river.

He had to get back home.

The last thing he remembered was walking with his mistress, like any other day, before everything went fuzzy. He woke up in a strange car, chewed and clawed and broke his way out. He searched for his mistress, knowing she was hurting.

He smelled her blood.

Then gunshots and the bad man and now he was running.

He had to get home, find his mistress. So he was running. Running along the river that flowed into the ocean, running home…

Sidney lifted her hand, returning slowly to reality as the stream of consciousness ended, feeling drained. She hadn’t experienced such a strong outpouring of emotion in a long time, maybe never, and she was far out of practice. Her touch didn’t always produce a vision, which made her particularly unprepared for the strong ones.

Normally she took precautions against physical contact, even with animals, but the dog had been so forlorn, so needy. She couldn’t deny him the simple comfort of her touch.

“Damn,” she whispered, hating herself for being so careless. Keeping this information from the police would be like failing to report a heinous crime. Whether they believed her or not, she led the risk of ridicule, humiliation and exposure. “Damn,” she repeated, trying to think of a way to share what she knew without sacrificing her anonymity or revealing how she’d discovered the information.

She clenched her hands into fists, and felt a hot sting cut into her palm. Opening her hand, she saw that a chunk of safety glass had embedded itself in her skin. Scowling, she yanked the glass out and threw it aside before she realized it might be evidence.

Examining Blue critically, she saw burrs, stickers and a few more shards of safety glass. Perhaps he was carrying enough clues in his mottled gray coat as to make divulging her secret unnecessary.

After all, what did she know? Dogs weren’t exactly a fountain of specific information, any more than humans were. Brain waves weren’t as easy to read as storybooks, and visions didn’t provide foolproof information.

She rested her elbows on the top of the fence, a more practical problem occurring to her. The police would have to open the gate to get in, or to get Blue out. If he ran away, and she figured he was wily enough to do just that, so would the evidence.

She’d have to take this troublesome mutt to the station herself.

Lieutenant Marc Cruz had seen better days.

Deputy Chief Stokes had sentenced him to two Sundays of desk duty as punishment for failing to use his allotted vacation time. He couldn’t, in good conscience, take off in the middle of a case, and it seemed he was always in that unenviable position. Worse, she was making him catch up on paperwork, his least favorite activity.

He hated sitting at his desk almost as much as he hated idle time, but for every minute of actual police work it seemed like he had to complete an hour of computer-generated logs.

“I’ve got a lead on a missing person,” Stokes said to the mostly empty room.

Marc straightened immediately.

“Some woman outside says she’s got Candace Hegel’s dog.”

Dog? He hunched down at his desk, trying to make himself invisible.

No such luck. “Cruz, you and Lacy take it,” she said, narrowing her shrewd eyes on him. “After Crystal Dunn yapped her fat mouth all over the news about the connection to Groene, we can’t afford to treat this like anything but a possible homicide.”

He arched a glance at his partner, Detective Meredith Lacy, who was hiding her smile behind a manila folder. She was here on Sunday because she was new, barely out of beat, and didn’t have any choice in the matter.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said under his breath.

“What was that?”

“I said we’re on it,” he replied, and Lacy strangled a laugh.

Stokes waved a hand in the air, indicating that his presence was annoying and superfluous. She’d been especially testy since the trail for Anika Groene’s killer had grown cold, but she couldn’t seem to stay home, or let it go.

“Your favorite,” Lacy said as they walked down the hall.

“What’s that?” he said, his mind still swimming with computerized forms.

“Dogs.”

“Don’t get smart, Lacy,” he muttered, striding into the lobby. The last time Stokes had taken out her petty revenge on him, she’d made him stand in as a training dummy for patrol’s attack dogs. He had all of the protective gear on, but one of the ferocious beasts had knocked him down and dislodged his face mask. The handler called off the dog, but not before Marc humiliated himself by fainting. That was two years ago, well before Lacy joined homicide, but he still hadn’t lived it down. Apparently stories like that never got old.

When the woman standing alone in the lobby turned toward him, all thoughts of dogs and deskwork vanished.

At first glance, she wasn’t his type. She was dark-haired, for one thing, and short-haired, for another. Nothing about her clothes or manner was designed to attract a man’s attention, either. Maybe he was shallow, but he liked women who weren’t afraid to show a little skin. She looked like she might jump out of hers.

Her faded green T-shirt was several sizes too big, and her battered blue jeans were two inches too short, exposing a pair of trim, nicely tanned ankles. She was wearing dingy white sneakers with Velcro straps, no socks.

The clothes were atrocious, but the body underneath warranted further examination. She was tall and slim, almost to the point of being skinny, except for her breasts, which looked soft and malleable. If she had a bra on, it was one of those no-frills types that molded to her shape as well as the worn cotton T-shirt.

Her face was even better than her breasts. Her features were finely drawn and angular, her eyes a misty, ethereal gray, framed by lush black lashes. With her close-cropped black hair, unisex style, and no makeup, she resembled an exceptionally beautiful teenage boy. He dismissed her as one of those women who couldn’t be bothered with men. She already had one, she wasn’t looking for one, or she’d given up on finding one.

“Miss Morrow?” he inquired, introducing himself politely.

She looked down at his outstretched hand with undisguised distaste. Puzzled, Marc dropped his arm. Taking the hint, Lacy didn’t even attempt a handshake.

“I have the dog in the back of my truck,” she said quickly, pointing outside. She was wearing latex gloves. “If you can just tell me where to take him, I’ll be out of your way.”

He looked out at a sturdy red pickup in the parking lot. Sure enough, an ugly mongrel just like Candace Hegel’s was in an extra-large dog cage in the back. “Any chance of him getting out?”

“Not unless he grows human hands.”

He waited for her to claim that was in the realm of possibility. When she didn’t, he shoved his own hands in his pants pockets, for they seemed to make her uncomfortable. It was as if she feared he was going to reach out and touch her, of all horrors.

“Let’s talk,” he said. “Do you have time for a short interview?”

“Can’t we do it here?”

“This is a sensitive case. We have to keep the information confidential, if possible.”

She looked around the empty lobby in confusion.

“Witnesses tend to remember more in a place free of distractions,” he added.

“Oh, I didn’t witness anything—”

“Do you have something more pressing to take care of?” he interrupted.

“It will only take a few minutes,” Lacy said with a reassuring smile, probably because he was being rude. “A woman is missing. Anything you could tell us would be greatly appreciated.”

“Of course,” she said, resigned.

Marc’s curiosity was piqued further. Most people couldn’t wait to share everything they knew, to contribute, to feel important. Most innocent people, anyway.

He followed Lacy and the mysterious Miss Morrow, employing the age-old “ladies first” excuse men used to ogle women behind their backs. There was nothing boyish about the way she filled out her jeans, he noted.

As he and Lacy took seats opposite her at the table in the interrogation room, it occurred to him that there was another reason women opted to downplay their femininity, one that had nothing to do with men. His partner, Meredith Lacy, was living proof of that.

He gave himself an illicit thrill, wondering if she was Lacy’s type. “Where did you find the dog?” he asked, dragging his mind out of the gutter.

When she met his eyes, her own darkened slightly, an almost imperceptible expansion of pupils signaling her awareness of him as a man.

Not indifferent to the opposite sex, he decided. Too bad, Lacy.

“He was outside the fence this morning,” she said, staring down at her gloved hands. “At Pacific Pet Hotel.”

A kennel worker, he thought with mild distaste. “You’re an employee?”

“I own it.”

He raised his eyebrows. She didn’t look old enough to own a business. “How’d you get him in that dog carrier?”

“I offered him some food and water. He wasn’t interested, but he seemed to trust me after that. Enough to go in the carrier, anyway.”

“Did he bite you?”

She followed his gaze to her left hand. Under the latex, in the middle of her palm, there was a bandage. “No. He had glass in his fur. And quite a few burrs and foxtails.”

“Did you take them out? Clean him up?”

“No. I just reached down to pet him and…the glass cut into my hand.”

Marc read a lot into that short pause. She wasn’t telling the whole story. “Anything else we need to know?”

“I think he’d traveled for miles,” she hedged. “He was panting, and his feet were wet. Smelly wet, like river. The San Luis Rey is nearby.”

He’d never before felt as though a person were lying and telling the truth at the same time. He leaned back in his chair, paradoxically pleased. It wasn’t every day that plausible suspects walked in off the street.

“Would you like some water?” Detective Lacy asked after an uncomfortable silence. “A soda?”

“No, thanks,” Sidney said, tucking her gloved hands under the table, annoyed with Lieutenant Cruz for scrutinizing her so blatantly. He was one of those effortlessly handsome men who made her feel sloppy, awkward and unkempt.

He was taller than she was, and his clothes fit him perfectly, hinting at a nicely formed physique. Even motionless, he managed to convey grace and power. His features were well-arranged but unyielding, showing no trace of softness or compassion. He might have appeared cold if not for his coloring. His skin was dark, his hair a rich, warm brown and his eyes a shade lighter, like smooth Kentucky whiskey or strong iced tea.

With brown hair, skin and eyes, and a tobacco-brown suit, he should have looked average, even drab. He didn’t. There was an elusive quality about him that probably intrigued women, a dangerous edge that excited them, and an overall appeal she couldn’t describe but responded to nevertheless. He was also quite young, in his early thirties at the most, although he appeared worldly rather than naive.

Staring back at him, Sidney was uncomfortably aware of how long it had been since she’d hazarded the perils of a man’s touch.

Lieutenant Cruz must have decided the interview was over, because he stood abruptly. Lacy followed suit, so Sidney rose to her feet as well.

“If you think of anything else,” he said, holding out a card with his name and number on it, “feel free to call.”

She took it from him gingerly, not allowing his fingers to brush over hers, and shoved it in her pocket. “What are you going to do with him?”

“The dog? Process him for trace.”

“And then?”

He shrugged. “Turn him over to the pound, unless his owner or another family member comes to claim him.”

“If they don’t, will you call me?” Sidney posed this question to Detective Lacy, deciding she was the more amenable officer. “I’d hate to see him put down.” Large, mean-looking dogs were rarely placed in good homes.

“Absolutely,” she promised as they walked out together.

“Is Gina working today?” Lieutenant Cruz asked Detective Lacy.

“Yep.”

“Why don’t you go sweet-talk her into meeting us over there?”

“You don’t want help with the dog?” she asked with a slight smile.

“Why would I?” he returned.

“Whatever you say, Marcos,” she said, punching him lightly on the shoulder before she ambled away. Sidney watched her go, feeling a spark of envy for the basic human ability to touch another person in kindness, humor or affection.

Detective Lacy’s tone was teasing, but something about what she said bothered him. “Marcos? Is that your real name?”

“Just Marc,” he replied as he held open the door for her. Ever-cognizant of his proximity, she moved by him carefully, resisting the urge to tell him to call her by her first name, as well. She didn’t want to remind him of her embarrassing refusal to shake his hand upon their initial introduction.

As they approached the back of her truck, he didn’t make direct eye contact with the dog or do anything else cornered animals considered threatening, but Blue let out a series of rapid barks, gnashing at the grate.

Lieutenant Cruz didn’t even flinch. “Friendly, isn’t he?”

She smiled at his dry humor. “Don’t you like dogs?”

“They don’t like me,” he corrected.

When she laughed, he turned his head to study her face. He was attracted to her, she realized in a flash of intuition that was more feminine than supernatural. Something must be wrong with him. Men were always put off by her aversion to physical contact.

“As much as I’d like to wrestle him out of there and into my own vehicle—” he gestured to a champagne-colored Audi with all-leather interior “—I think he’s more comfortable with you. If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” she said. “Where to?”

“Vincent Veterinary Clinic. You can follow me.”

“I know where it is,” she said, finding the situation highly ironic.

She was accompanying Lieutenant Cruz, the first man she wanted to touch her in ages, to see Dr. Vincent, the last man who had.

Chapter 2

Vincent Veterinary Clinic was less than a mile from Pacific Pet Hotel. Sidney often took dogs and cats there if they became sick while boarding. In turn, Dr. Vincent recommended her facility to clients, so the business relationship between them was mutually beneficial.

If only the personal relationship had been.

Lieutenant Cruz and Detective Lacy met her there, along with another young woman in a white van that said LabTech on the side. While Lacy helped her unload some kind of specialized equipment, Sidney studied the easy interactions between the two women.

Detective Lacy was petite and compact, with shoulder-length strawberry-blond hair and a smattering of freckles across her nose. The lab tech was taller, but curvy. Her dark hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail and her uniform neatly pressed.

Both of them were pretty, smart-looking and confident. Sidney didn’t need to glance in her rearview mirror to know that she didn’t match up.

She got out of her dusty pickup, a flustered breath ruffling her bangs, and climbed into the back to get Blue. Lieutenant Cruz watched her from a safe distance, and the dog came out readily, allowing her to slip a nylon leash over his head. When he saw Lieutenant Cruz, he growled.

“Easy, Blue,” she chided, hopping off the tailgate.

“How did you know his name?” he asked.

Sidney fumbled for an explanation. “I must have heard it on the news.”

His gaze caressed her face, reading the lie more easily than she’d told it.

“Sidney!” Bill exclaimed from the open doorway, saving her from any more awkward questions. “What are you doing here?”

Bill Vincent was tall and handsome, about ten years older than Sidney, with thinning blond hair and a whipcord build he kept in shape by bicycling on the weekends. He looked casual in a short-sleeved shirt and tan slacks, and he smiled, as if pleased to see her.

Blue lunged at him, barking.

“Whoa,” he said with a jittery laugh. “You’ve got a live one there.”

“Hush,” Sidney ordered.

Blue sat.

“We’ll have to sedate him,” Bill remarked to Lieutenant Cruz. Because no introductions were made, Sidney surmised that the two men were already acquainted. Judging by the way they were staring each other down, they weren’t friendly.

Sidney was surprised. Bill was an easygoing, sociable kind of guy, especially with people he considered influential. He went out of his way to ingratiate himself to others.

“I’d like to get a blood sample first,” Lieutenant Cruz said. “In case he’s already been drugged.”

Bill’s lips thinned. “Are you volunteering to hold him for me, Lieutenant?”

“I’ll hold him,” Sidney offered, knowing it was the only way to get the job done. “He was acting sluggish when I first found him.”

“Sluggish?” Bill eyed the dog warily. “He’s certainly up and at ’em right now.” Seeing the stubborn tilt of her chin, he said, “Come on in,” making a show of checking the time on his watch. Either he billed the police department for emergency hours, or he was implying that he had better things to do.

“I’m Gina, by the way,” the lab tech offered.

“Sidney,” she replied, using Blue as a convenient excuse not to offer her hand. Bending down beside him, she hooked her left arm around his neck, securing his head against her chest. With her right thumb, she held off the vein in his forearm. It was the basic position for drawing blood, and she had a good grip on him, but as soon as Bill came close, the dog exploded.

“That’s it,” he said, backing away. “I’d like to keep my face intact, if you don’t mind.”

Sidney fought the urge to smile. Bill’s face was a matter of great importance to him.

“Let Gina try,” Lacy suggested. “The dog doesn’t seem to like men.”

Bill handed off the syringe. “It’s your funeral.”

“He won’t bite you,” Sidney said to Gina reassuringly.

“How do you know?”

“She just does,” Bill said, rolling his eyes heavenward. “She always does.”

Sidney ignored him in favor of rearranging her hold on Blue, murmuring words to comfort him. When Gina kneeled to get the sample, he was docile as a lamb.

“Good dog,” she praised, patting him on the head.

Gina gave the dog his sedative as well, a quick injection to the flank. Blue tensed at the sharp sting, but took the pain with neither a whimper nor complaint. In moments, he was weaving on his feet. Soon, he laid his head down and slept.

“That went well,” Gina said, smiling at her.

When Sidney smiled back, Lacy stepped between them.

“Thanks for the help,” she said, indicating her presence was no longer necessary.

Feeling rebuffed, Sidney glanced at Lieutenant Cruz. Again, he was watching her. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to follow you. To check out…your place.”

“Okay,” she mumbled, unable to think of a reason to refuse.

“Doing investigative work now, Sidney?” Bill asked, looking back and forth between them. “What an accommodating little citizen you’ve become.”

Sidney felt the blood drain from her face.

Lieutenant Cruz noted the exchange with interest. “If not for her, I doubt we’d have been able to get near that dog,” he defended.

Bill didn’t care for the mild reprimand, or the reminder that he’d been intimidated by Blue. “I’ll call you later,” he said to Sidney, as if they were still involved. She would have laughed at his ridiculous posturing if the situation weren’t so tense.

“Ladies,” Lieutenant Cruz said, leaving Detective Lacy and Gina to their work. He didn’t bother to say goodbye to Bill, but neither did Sidney.

“You dated that guy?” he asked as soon as they were out of earshot.

“Is that pertinent to the case, Lieutenant?”

“Marc. And probably not.”

Annoyed with all men in general, she turned to glare at him. Then she sucked in a breath, because he was standing very close.

His eyes trailed down her body. “Did he hurt you?”

She pressed her back against the side of her truck, anxious to put space between them. “No. I was like this before.”

He must have accepted her answer, because he stepped back. “Meet you over there,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away.

Pacific Pet Hotel was a small white stucco building on Oceanside Boulevard, in an industrial area populated with offices, warehouses and construction supply companies. It was a convenient location for dropping the pooch off on the way to work, or while heading out of town.

Marc let Sidney attend her duties while he cased the perimeter of the building. Other than a few glass shards, and the stainless steel bowls she’d used to offer the dog food, he didn’t find anything noteworthy.

Standing on the blacktop parking lot with the hot sun beating down on his head, staring out at the desolate landscape, he began to sweat. He’d already discarded his jacket and loosened his tie. Beads of perspiration dried on the back of his neck before they could trickle.

Studying the area, he analyzed her description of the dog’s physical condition. His paws were wet, she’d said. The San Luis Rey River was at least a mile to the north, through a thicket of weeds, sagebrush and eucalyptus trees.

Wet paws after that journey? Not bloody likely.

Another detail of her account bothered him. He knew damned well she hadn’t heard the dog’s name on the news. He’d watched the only televised segment himself, with his usual disdain for Crystal Dunn’s salacious reporting style. Crystal would sell her soul for a story, and she wasn’t above making one up, so it wouldn’t have surprised him if she’d let the dog’s name slip. But she hadn’t. He was sure of it.

Whistling a vague tune, he wandered out back to see what the strangely sexy Miss Morrow was up to.

She was hosing down outdoor kennels. Dogs of various breeds and sizes were barking happily, pacing in runs, leaping up and down, or putting their faces in full bowls of food or water. Her short black hair clung to her forehead, and a damp spot was visible between her shoulder blades. This was not a woman afraid of hard work, he thought with reluctant admiration.

Definitely not his type.

Neither did she seem a likely murder suspect. As she worked, she chatted with the dogs around her, taking the time to give each one a piece of her undivided attention. She was unusual, no doubt about that, but she was also kind.

The kennel area was small, well-maintained and clean. The dogs didn’t appear to be wasting away or suffering unduly, not that he was any expert in the care of animals. When she turned to wheel a loaded cart of empty dishes back inside, she startled, noticed him standing there for the first time.

The precariously loaded tray wobbled, and several stainless steel bowls came crashing down. As he bent to help her pick them up, his fingertips grazed across hers when they reached for the same bowl.

She froze. Having taken off her gloves, for reasons unknown, the contact with her bare skin seemed to jolt her.

To be honest, he wasn’t immune to it, either. The quick flash of heat, and matching spark in her eyes, made sensual awareness sizzle down his spine. Never had he experienced such a strong reaction to a fleeting, purely innocent touch.

Maybe that was why she wore latex—the slightest brush against her flesh had the power to bring a man to his knees. He’d figured her for an extreme germaphobe, an obsessive-compulsive, or just a kooky, off-center chick.

“Sorry,” he said, because she seemed affronted. She thought he’d done it on purpose, he realized. Straightening, he set the bowl atop the cart.

Without a word, she pushed the cart into the back door of the facility and dumped the dishes into an industrial-size sink. Grabbing a pair of yellow rubber gloves from a drawer, she shoved her trembling hands into them and hit the faucet handle.

“Do you know Candace Hegel?”

“No,” she said, adding a stingy amount of dish soap to the rising water.

“What about the dog? Did he come here for boarding?”

“No.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I know my clients.”

“You remember every dog who’s ever come in here?”

“I’d remember that one,” she said, shutting off the faucet.

He conceded her point. “The news report didn’t give his name.”

She began scrubbing furiously, drawing his attention to the way her breasts moved beneath the soft cotton T-shirt. “That dog is a blue roan. It’s an obvious choice.”

With some effort, he lifted his eyes to her face. “What’s a blue roan?”

“The color of his coat. It’s like calling a black dog ‘Blackie.’ An easy guess.”

Marc was annoyed with himself for asking an important question while he was distracted. He couldn’t tell if she was lying. “Do you know something you’re not telling me?” he asked, crowding her a little. Sure enough, that got her attention.

“Back off,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

He didn’t move. “I’d be a fool not to consider your behavior suspicious.”

She was breathing heavily, from the exertion of her duties, which she performed with brisk efficiency, and the implied threat in his words. But what he saw in her smoky-gray eyes wasn’t just guilt or fear. It was desire.

As her chest rose again, his gaze dropped to her breasts, and the hard points of her nipples, jutting against the soft cloth.

In that moment, he felt very masculine and very powerful.

“Oh, get over yourself, Lieutenant,” she said, disgusted, shoving away from the sink. “Just because I look like—” she gestured to herself “—this, and you look like—” she waved her hand at him “—that, you think I’m going to fall all over you?”

He opened his mouth to protest then closed it.

“Go dominate one of your dumb blondes,” she added, leaving him standing there.

Marc couldn’t decide what astounded him more: her low assessment of her own attributes, or her scathingly accurate critique of his.

Following her, he started to ask how she knew him before he realized it was an admission. Shaking his head, he tried to get back on track. “Why do you wear those gloves?”

“Because I work with animals,” she said. “It’s very unsanitary not to.” Proving it, she removed a litter box from a roomy cat cage.

“You weren’t wearing them outside.”

“I don’t wear them when I hose down kennels. Water is clean enough.”

“Maybe I’ll ask Dr. Vincent,” he said softly.

“Go ahead,” she said, the panic in her expression belying her bravado. “I’m eccentric. It’s not a crime.”

“We’ll see,” he promised, pleased to have regained the upper hand.

After parking in the covered garage all the units on the block shared, Sidney trudged down the sidewalk to her house, feeling defeated, confused and exhilarated.

Her life must have been getting particularly monotonous lately for her to enjoy any part of being a witness and suspect in a kidnapping-murder case.

Guilt was a major factor in her unease. If she’d been completely honest, she might have been able to help the investigation. To do so would have made Marc Cruz even more suspicious. He had disbeliever written all over him.

Throwing herself down on her green futon couch, she considered the handsome detective. When he’d touched her, she hadn’t been swept away by a tidal wave of psychic impressions; she’d been completely distracted by physical sensation. His hand on her bare skin was like a match striking flame.

Then she’d noticed him studying her clinically, assessing her reaction, and she was taken back into her own memory, to a time when boys at school had poked and prodded at her just to watch her squirm.

Reaching into her back pocket, she found his card. It was a simple, cream-colored rectangle with black lettering, offering only his name, rank, department and phone number. Tracing her fingertips over the surface, she couldn’t get more of a read on him than she had before, a vague feeling that she wasn’t his type. The insulting remark she’d made about him preferring biddable blondes was an educated guess.

And a direct hit, judging by his expression.

She never knew when a psychic flash would hit her. Every time she reached out to touch someone, or something, she did so with trepidation. Usually the insights revealed to her were as mundane as a mental grocery list, and often she saw nothing at all, but every once in a while she was assaulted by ugly thoughts, dark musings people hid from others and words better left unsaid. The experience was discomforting, to say the least.

It was kind of like shaking hands with a clown and getting zapped by one of those gag buzzers. The anticipation of the shock left her on pins and needles.

Sidney tossed the card on the coffee table, rested her cheek on a throw pillow and wondered what to do with the rest of the afternoon. She kept the kennel closed on Sunday, and although she went in twice to feed and clean, it was her lightest day. Sometimes the free hours loomed rather than beckoned.

Marley jumped on her back and began a vigorous kneading, cheering her. At the same time, she became aware of a strange sound emanating from the kitchen.

“What’s that?” she asked, lifting her head.

Marley kept digging her soft paws into her back.

Sidney clambered off the couch, sending the cat sprawling. It was the answering machine. She pushed the blinking button with relish.

“Sid? Are you there? The kids are driving me crazy about going to the beach. Call my cell when you get this. Bye.”

Her sister hardly ever brought her daughters over to visit. It was one of the great sorrows of Sidney’s life. Picking up the phone, she dialed Samantha’s number from memory.

“Hello?” her sister answered in a low-pitched voice.

“It’s me.”

“Sidney?” The sultry tone disappeared. “Are you home?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God. We’re parking right now. The girls are wild today.”

Sidney couldn’t hear any background noise to corroborate that statement. Taylor and Dakota were the most sedate children imaginable.

With no further explanation, Samantha hung up.

Sidney raced upstairs to change, giddy at the prospect of spending time with her nieces, the last of her close relatives who didn’t cringe away from her touch. On impulse, she rummaged through her bedroom closet until she found the bikini her sister had given her as a birthday gift last summer.

Tearing off the tags, she shimmied into it, checking her reflection in the mirror to make sure the fabric covered all of the required parts. The bikini showed a lot more skin than the serviceable black Speedo she usually wore, in a way that was far more flattering.

It was a perfect fit, actually. Stylish and sexy, like the clothes Samantha favored. So why had Sidney never worn it before?

When the doorbell rang, she ran downstairs to greet the girls with open arms. They hugged her dutifully, with a lack of enthusiasm that was more a product of their raising than a reflection of their true feelings for her. She hoped.

“Hey, sis,” Samantha said, gracing her with an air kiss and a wooden smile.

Sidney tried to ignore the painful twist in the middle of her chest. Her sister’s rejections weren’t personal, but they hurt all the same.

The girls fawned over Marley for a few moments before returning to their mother. “Can we go to the beach now, Mommy?” Dakota asked, tugging on the edge of Samantha’s gauzy skirt. “Please?”

“You see how they are?” Samantha said, taking off her designer sunglasses. Beneath the lenses, her vivid blue eyes were bloodshot.

“Sometimes I can hardly catch my breath.”

At seven and eight, the girls required a lot of attention, no matter how quiet and well-behaved they were. Samantha relied heavily on the help of a live-in nanny, as her husband, Greg, was almost never home.

She was still recovering from the ordeal of having two babies in rapid succession.

Sidney winked at Taylor, who giggled. “Why don’t you girls grab a drink from the fridge before we go? I have lemonade.”

Dakota blinked up at Samantha. “Can we, Mommy?”

When she waved them away, they both squealed, more excited by the prospect of refined sugar than an outing with their Aunt Sidney.

“I’m off to the loo,” Samantha said, sashaying toward the bathroom, a sleek leather clutch clasped in her expertly manicured, expensively jeweled hand. Sidney didn’t need any special abilities to predict her sister was going in there to pop another pill.

On the beach, Sidney made sandcastles and frolicked in the waves with her nieces for an hour before joining her sister to sunbathe on the sand.

“You’re good with them,” Samantha said with a drowsy smile.

Sidney warmed at the unexpected praise. “They’re angels. You’re incredibly lucky.”

“Where did you get that suit?”

She glanced down at the blue and white bikini. Under the relentless sun, her tan lines were embarrassingly apparent. “You gave it to me.”

“I have excellent taste,” she murmured.

“Yes,” Sidney agreed. Samantha looked marvelous in a tiny black two-piece, her subtle, sculpted curves displayed to perfection.

“I forget you have a great body,” she said. “You’re always covered up.”

Sidney was surprised by her sister’s faintly envious tone. She often felt like a lurching shadow next to Samantha, who was petite and feminine. Fashionably thin, achingly beautiful and gorgeously blond, men stared at her sister wherever she went. And she stared right back.

“So what have you been up to?” Samantha asked, rolling over onto her flat stomach.

She hesitated. “I met someone today.”

Samantha looked over the rims of her sunglasses. “Oh really?”

Pushing aside her misgivings, Sidney told her sister about this morning’s strange events. True to character, Samantha was more interested in the man than the fact that her little sister’s life had been turned upside down. She’d always been boy-crazy.

“A cop, huh? Is he hot?”

“Yes,” Sidney admitted.

“Mmm. What does he look like?”

“Dark. Hard. Well-built.”

“Hard? How delicious.”

“Not like that,” she said, her cheeks heating. “Tough, kind of. You know.”

Samantha smiled wickedly. “Was he in uniform?”

“A suit.”

“Did he have a gun?”

“Probably.”

“And cuffs?”

“I didn’t frisk him, Sam.”

“Oh, well. Did he frisk you?”

“No,” she said, smiling back at her.

“Ah, but you wanted him to. Right?”

When she shrugged, Samantha ran with it. “I always wanted to do a cop,” she mused. “Something about being overpowered. Or maybe it’s just the handcuff thing.”

Sidney didn’t doubt that Lieutenant Cruz would be willing to oblige her sister on that front. Samantha’s bored, sophisticate attitude and golden girl good looks were probably right up his alley. She wasn’t a bimbo, but she played the part well. And she played men, her favorite game, like a pro.

“He considers me a suspect,” she reminded her sister, and herself.

Samantha was silent for a moment. “Greg and I are getting divorced.”

Sidney laid her head back on the towel, annoyed with Samantha for changing the subject and always putting her own problems first. She and Greg had been getting divorced for years. Sidney hoped they would stop torturing the kids and get on with it.

“It’s for real this time, Sid. I think he’s cheating again.”

Sidney shifted uncomfortably, wishing she could make herself scarce.

Samantha straightened. “You already knew? How could you? I haven’t even touched you today.” She looked down the beach, where her daughters were playing in the sand. “Son of a bitch,” she said between clenched teeth, her blue eyes hard as ice. “He brings that slut around my kids? What does he do, bribe them not to tell?”

“I don’t think they understand. So he doesn’t have to.”

“Son of a bitch,” she repeated. “If I wasn’t sleeping with his business partner, I’d take his ass to the cleaners.”

Chapter 3

The next morning, it wasn’t the sound of a dog barking that rose with Sidney from the depths of her dream to the cold surface of reality. It was a woman’s scream.

She struggled to break free from the cloak of darkness that surrounded her, but her arms were bound behind her back. Thrashing her head from side to side, she fought against the restraints.

A plastic shroud covered her face.

When she opened her mouth to scream, the plastic drew closer, cutting off her airway completely.

She was sinking, drowning, suffocating.

A dark, dank cold invaded her body, seeping beneath the plastic. At first, it was a relief to gain a precious inch of space, a single breath. Then a pungent, earthy smell engulfed her, the scent of decay and sea and wet blood. The cold pressed in, crawling up her spine and around her neck, rushing into her mouth, her eyes, her nostrils…

Sidney clawed the sheet away from her face, gasping for air. Her heart was pounding, her lungs pumping hard and fast, her pulse racing.

Marley was sitting at the foot of the bed, tail twitching, highly annoyed with Sidney for disturbing her slumber.

“Oh God,” she groaned, laying her head back down on the pillow. “This has got to stop.” Her whole life, she’d been fighting against this strangeness inside herself. Now it was fighting back, mutating, stronger than ever. She could wear gloves, shun society and deny touch, but how could she chase away dreams?

The blankets got wrapped around her head while she was sleeping, she rationalized. She’d been tossing and turning all night, bothered by the uncharacteristically high temperatures outside and a deeper, more invasive heat within.

It was no more than she deserved for entertaining lustful fantasies involving Marc Cruz, tangled sheets and handcuffs.

Now she was cold. Chilled to the bone, in fact.

A gentle morning breeze from a balmy onshore flow ruffled the curtains. The oscillating fan in the corner rumbled lazily, barely causing a stir. Shivering, she climbed out of bed to switch it off, rubbing at the gooseflesh on her arms. She closed the window, too, noticing that her nipples were tightly puckered and painfully hard.

Resisting the urge to rub herself there, as well, she hurried into the bathroom and turned the shower faucet all the way to “Hot.”

Marc pulled at the collar of his shirt. It was a sticky day, hazy and warm, almost ninety degrees before 9:00 a.m.

In other parts of the country, where temperature and humidity levels soared, this kind of weather would be a nonissue. For a city whose residents were spoiled by high seventies most of the year, it was damn near intolerable.

Deputy Chief Stokes and a handful of homicide officers were milling around the gravel pull-out on Pacific Coast Highway near Agua Hedionda Lagoon. Literally translated as “stinking water,” the lagoon separated downtown Oceanside from uptown Carlsbad, educated from underprivileged, rich from poor.

Driving along PCH through O’side, one could encounter almost any kind of vice, from prostitution and drugs to adult bookstores and sleazy strip joints. Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, on the northern border of town, supplied plenty of young male clients for the burgeoning sex industry. It could also be responsible, in a roundabout way, for the number of homeless vets on the city streets.

For all its shortcomings, Oceanside was still a nice place to live. The inland hills were speckled with single family homes and quiet communities. The beaches attracted hundreds of thousands of tourists every year, so they were clean and well-maintained. Stretches of flat white sand weren’t the best venue for illicit activities, so most of the dregs of society stuck to the heavy brush near the San Luis Rey River, which offered less interference and more cover.

Carlsbad, on the other hand, didn’t have a seedy area. Or a middle-class area, for that matter. The rivalry between the two cities was pronounced, from high school sports to police divisions. With better funding at their disposal, Carlsbad usually came out on top.

Behind a police line at the edge of the water, a suited representative from Carlsbad PD was arguing with Deputy Chief Stokes over turf. The lagoon belonged to them, so they laid claim to the body floating in its murky depths. Stokes was adamant that whoever tossed the tarp-wrapped package into the lagoon had been standing on the gravel pull-out along the highway, clearly Oceanside’s territory. The Coast Guard was obliged to oversee the handling of any human remains found in coastal waters, so they were also on site, and the lagoon was part of a wilderness preserve, so State Parks was there, too.

They could debate all morning over recovery issues, but the body was under the county medical examiner’s jurisdiction until after the autopsy. Stokes talked the good doctor into working with Oceanside’s homicide unit instead of Carlsbad’s, citing the distinct possibility that the victim was local resident Candace Hegel.

The killer’s first victim, Anika Groene, had been found in water as well.

Finally the M.E. ordered the retrieval, after a consultation with an E.P.A. affiliate about algae levels and possible impact to the endangered water fowl.

Stokes leveled her evil eye on him. “Get in there, Cruz.”

Marc looked down at the opaque surface with trepidation. First dogs, now stinking water. He wasn’t queasy about dead bodies, having seen more than his fair share, but water-logged flesh was particularly gruesome, and Agua Hedionda was dark and stagnant.

No telling what was down there.

Stokes shoved white Tyvek coveralls at his chest, indicating the issue wasn’t open for discussion, and he walked to his car to change. No way was he ruining a perfectly good suit with marsh muck. Grabbing a pair of basketball shorts from the trunk, he stripped right there on the side of the road while Lacy watched.

“What are you looking at?” he asked, feeling surly.

“Nothing interesting,” she said, smothering a laugh.

Lacy had never been on the scene for a floater, he recalled, wondering if she’d lose her breakfast when they unwrapped the soggy package.

He pulled the jumpsuit over his shorts and covered his hands with gloves to protect the scene from being compromised with trace. As he lowered himself into the lagoon, he winced at the temperature. It might be hot as hell outside, but Agua Hedionda was as cold as the Pacific, a chilly sixty-five degrees.

“Make sure it’s what we think it is,” Stokes ordered.

The oblong shape, wrapped up like a mummy in a green plastic tarp, lurked just below the surface. Grimacing, he wrapped his arms around it in a macabre embrace. When he squeezed experimentally, he felt the give of flesh and slender, feminine curves.

“It’s a woman.”

“Well, don’t yank on it,” Stokes said, as if he would. “Reach under there and see if something’s weighing it down.”

Bodies did sink on their own, and came up several days later, depending on the temperature. This one had either been dumped recently, weighed down, or both. Following the rope tied around the body’s midsection, he pulled gently, feeling tension.

He was going to have to duck under to investigate. Holding his breath, he followed the rope to its anchor.

“Cinder block,” he said when he resurfaced, trying not to smell or taste the water. “And half-inch rope. Hemp, maybe.”

“Cut it,” she said, giving him a razor knife.

He did, but the body didn’t rise.

“Fresh,” she said, nodding with satisfaction.

It was awkward, but he managed to heft the body onto the shore without doing too much damage to it, himself, or the crime scene. Even covered in dark plastic, it was plain to see that the corpse was a slight woman, about the size of Candace Hegel.

When the M.E. cut the tarp away from her face, befouled water gushed out.

Because she hadn’t been there long, and the lagoon was cold, the effects of decomposition were minimal. Enough to discolor her complexion, but not so much that her body was bloated or her skin sloughing off, which would have made sight identification difficult.

In life, Candace Hegel had been a pretty woman. In death, with a greenish tinge to her face, particles of brown algae clinging to her skin and tiny surfperch burrowing into the delicate tissues, she was hideous.

Marc’s stomach clenched, and he felt an unmanageable hatred for whoever would defile a woman this way.

Stokes narrowed her shrewd eyes at him, so he quickly blanked his expression. She’d dealt with his overenthusiastic pursuits of justice before, and didn’t consider it sound police work. Officers were not supposed to get emotionally involved.

Detective Lacy, on the other side of Stokes, was doing an admirable job of suppressing her nausea.

“Wrap it all up,” the M.E. said. “I’ll cut the rest of the tarp away on the table.”

“I want that cinder block,” Stokes said as they loaded the body into the van.

“Of course you do,” he muttered.

“What was that?”

“Right away, I said.”

It was no easy task. He could only lift the block a few feet at a time, drop it a little closer to shore and come back to surface for air. By the time he passed it off to CSI, he’d inhaled, swallowed and sputtered about a pint of Agua Hedionda.

“You’ll need a hepatitis vaccine,” Stokes said as he climbed out.

Lying on his back on the dusty gravel bank, shuddering with cold and panting from exertion, Marc prayed he wouldn’t be the one to lose his breakfast instead of Lacy.

After a hot shower and a hotter cup of coffee, Sidney was feeling warm and toasty. It was a muggy day, cloudy and warm, the thick marine layer overhead trapping the earth’s heat like a thermal blanket. By the time she reached the kennel she was sweating.

Mondays were always busy, so work kept her body, if not her mind, occupied most of the morning. She had several pickups scheduled for later that afternoon, and any dog that stayed more than three days got a complimentary bath. Time spent in close confinement tended to emphasize the “doggy” smell, and she didn’t like to send home stinky pets.

She’d just finished her last bath when the phone rang. “Pacific Pet Hotel,” she answered crisply.

“Sidney.” It was Bill. “You’ve got to come get this dog.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Trying to rip everyone’s face off.”

“What about the family?”

“They want him boarded until the owner is…found. Candace Hegel lived alone, and the dog isn’t used to men, obviously. None of her friends or relatives have female-only households.”

She glanced up at the clock. Almost lunchtime. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

At Vincent Veterinary Clinic, Sidney parked next to the employee’s entrance and let herself in. Standing on the other side of the door were Bill, Detective Lacy and Lieutenant Cruz.

She froze dead in her tracks.

“Miss Morrow,” Lieutenant Cruz said in greeting, an avaricious gleam in his brown eyes.

Her gaze darted to Bill, who had assumed a defensive posture. “You told,” she accused.

“They have a warrant for your arrest, Sid. I had no other choice.”

Feeling cornered and betrayed, she began to back away.

Lieutenant Cruz reached out and clamped his hand around her wrist. “Do you see bars in your future?”

She struggled against him, but he held tight. A woman’s ravaged face flashed before her, slimy things squirming in the soft tissues. Just like in her dream, a brackish taste filled her mouth and the smell of blood flooded her nostrils, strangling her, drowning her.

Examining her strange expression, he released her arm.

“I’m going to be sick,” she said, rushing to the nearest bathroom. She fell to her knees as the contents of her stomach came up, not swamp water or blood, as she almost expected, but the pulpy remnants of an orange she’d eaten for lunch in her truck on the way over.

With nothing more to purge, she dry heaved quietly, tears burning in her eyes, citric acid stinging her throat. When she was finished, Lieutenant Cruz handed her some wet paper towels.

“Thanks,” she said in a hoarse whisper, wiping her face.

“Do you have a weak stomach, or a guilty conscience?”

“Neither,” she muttered. “I have a sensitive nose, and you smell.”

He turned to Detective Lacy, frowning. “Do I?”

“A little bit,” she admitted.

“I thought maybe you’d had a ‘psychic vision.’” He sneered around the words, showing not only disbelief, but utter contempt.

Sidney flushed the toilet angrily.

“We’re going to need you to come back down to the station,” he said, not offering to help her to her feet.

“What for?”

“To take your statement.”

“Look, I’m not psychic. I don’t have visions. I don’t know anything more than I’ve already told you, and I’m not interested in being jerked around.”

His jaw tightened with displeasure. “Vincent wasn’t bluffing about that arrest warrant, you know. I have it right here,” he said, patting his suit pocket. Today’s was dark blue, with a crisp white shirt underneath. He looked immaculate, but she hadn’t been lying about the odor. A vaguely swampy, fishy scent clung to him. “You can come willingly, or unwillingly, it’s all the same to us.” Letting his eyes sweep down her trembling form, he added, “But I don’t think you’d like the booking process. There’s a lot of…manhandling.”

“I have a business to run,” she said, hearing desperation edge into her voice. “I’m the only employee.”

“You get a lunch break, right? This shouldn’t take much more than an hour.”

Sidney looked to Bill, who offered no support. “Can you come back here afterward?” he whined. “I’m serious about you taking that dog. He’s vicious.”

Given no alternative, she allowed them to escort her back to the station. Sitting in the back seat of Lieutenant Cruz’s Audi, she noticed a grocery bag with a pair of wet blue shorts inside. The unpleasant smell and sensation rushed her once again, and she hit the button to lower the window, needing fresh air.

“You’re not going to throw up again, are you?”

Putting her face to the lukewarm breeze, she shook her head dumbly.

“I’ll pull over,” he offered, probably more for his leather interior’s sake than her own.

She waved him on, because she didn’t have anything left in her stomach anyway.

In front of Oceanside Police Department, a crowd of reporters had congregated. Lieutenant Cruz let out an inventive combination of expletives. “What do they want?”

Lacy shrugged. “Go around back.”

He maneuvered his car into the rear parking lot and jumped out. To Sidney’s surprise, he opened the door for her. As she exited the vehicle, a tiny blonde strode toward them with a purpose, cameraman in tow.

It was Crystal Dunn, Sidney realized, mildly starstruck.

“No comment,” Lieutenant Cruz said before the pretty reporter could ask a question.

“Are you a witness in the investigation of Candace Hegel’s death?” Crystal asked anyway, shoving the microphone in Sidney’s face.

“Death?” Sidney repeated dully.

“She has no comment,” Lieutenant Cruz grated, clamping his hand around Sidney’s bare upper arm. Even in public, on camera, no less, his touch elicited a shiver of excitement. And a startling secret: He’d been romantically involved with Crystal Dunn, at one time or another.

Her pleasure fizzled. No wonder Sidney wasn’t his type, if he chased after doll-sized blondes with rapacious personalities. As he strode across the parking lot, practically dragging her along, she could hear Crystal Dunn’s no-nonsense voice as she shared the details of the latest homicide:

“Miss Hegel was found dead early this morning in Agua Hedionda Lagoon. Police officials have no comment—”

“You’re hurting me.”

He looked down at his hand, wrapped around her arm. “Sorry,” he said, loosening his grip. Sidney could tell he was furious, although he hid it well. He probably didn’t care for Crystal Dunn leaking details of a homicide to a possible suspect.

It had been petty and unprofessional of her, actually. With so much animosity between them, it was hard to guess who dumped whom.

“Detective Lacy, would you show Miss Morrow to one of the interview rooms, please?” he asked, looking down an empty hallway. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Lacy kept her face bland and authoritative. “Right this way, ma’am.”

The women’s locker room was clear. Marc breathed a sigh of relief, knowing he’d catch hell from Deputy Chief Stokes if she found him snooping around in here.

He located Lacy’s locker and began rifling through its contents. She had some girl stuff, makeup and deodorant, but no perfume or jewelry. A clean, pressed patrol uniform hung on a wooden hanger.

He grabbed a mesh bag from the bottom. Towels, shampoo. Damn.

Frustrated, he grabbed her oversize brown leather purse, preparing to dump out its contents and use it as his prop. Inside, however, there was a flimsy purple scarf, folded into a tiny square. Perfect.

He shoved it in his pocket, hoping to discredit Sidney Morrow for good. The look on her face, right before she got sick, had been damned convincing. He was still pissed off at himself for getting caught up in her ruse, even for a second.

Lots of women could vomit on cue. It was called bulimia, not ESP.

When he opened the door to the interview room, he was all business. Lacy was intimidating the subject with a cold, hard stare, arms folded over her chest. On the other side of the table, Sidney was fidgeting.

As he took his seat next to Lacy, he studied his quarry, confused by her appeal. He liked confident women. Bold, aggressive women who knew how to please a man. Women who were well aware of their own allure.

Sidney Morrow was as timid as a rabbit. If he touched her, she’d jump. If he kept touching her, she’d squirm. She was like a bundle of raw nerve endings. Against his better judgment, he speculated on what it would be like to go to bed with her.

“Dr. Vincent says you…know things,” he began. “Sense them.”

“I don’t.”

“Come on,” he said. “You knew the dog had been drugged. You knew his name and that he’d come along the river—”

“All perfectly reasonable assumptions.”

“Either you’re a psychic or a suspect, Miss Morrow. Which do you prefer?”

When she remained silent, he slid a picture across the table, an autopsy photo of Anika Groene, her bare skin riddled with red marks. “See those bites? Whoever killed her tied her up and let rats crawl over her. They feasted on her naked body while she was still alive.”

“Please,” she whispered, looking away, her eyes watery and tortured.

Marc steeled himself against the sight. “What was he doing to Candace Hegel yesterday, while you were insisting you didn’t know anything? What was he doing while you were pretending ‘Blue’ was just a good guess?”

“I don’t know,” she moaned, twisting her hands in her lap.

Marc felt a surge of triumph, sensing her upcoming capitulation.

“Tell us what you do know,” he urged.

“I had a dream,” she said finally. “Or something. I heard a dog barking, yesterday morning, as I was waking up. When I got to the kennel, there he was.”

It didn’t make any sense, but nothing about her did. “And?”

“And I did guess his name, okay? I called him Blue, and he came right to me, so I knew I was right. When I reached down to pet him—” She broke off, searching for the words to explain. “I just knew stuff.”

“Like what?”

“That he’d broken out of a vehicle, and he was groggy. I don’t know where he’d been, but I think he heard gunshots, and he spooked.”

“Gunshots? What kind?”

“A shotgun, maybe.”

“Would you know the difference by sound?”

“No. It’s just an impression.”

“Go on.”

“He ran through the river, trying to get back to his owner. That’s it.”

Mark’s eyes narrowed. She hadn’t told him anything specific, or anything that could be disproved. By keeping it vague, she was covering her bases. Tapping the tips of his fingers on the surface of the desk, he asked, “Anything else?”

“I had another dream this morning,” she admitted. “Of suffocating, drowning. Being restrained.”

“By what?”

She rubbed her wrists. “I don’t know. My face was covered with some sort of dark, thick plastic. I couldn’t breathe.”

Marc nodded thoughtfully, as if taking her at her word. There was no way she could know Candace Hegel had been alive when the killer had thrown her in the lagoon, or that the victim had been wrapped in a plastic tarp.

He reached into his pocket. “If we had an article of clothing belonging to the deceased, could you get an ‘impression’ from it?”

“Probably not. It doesn’t work on command. I can’t always—”

“Would you try?” he asked, pinning her with a look. “It would mean a great deal to her family.”

Her stormy-gray eyes were black-rimmed, thickly lashed and startlingly beautiful. “All right,” she said softly.

He handed her the gauzy purple scarf, noting Lacy’s sudden tension beside him.

Puzzled, Sidney focused her concentration on the swatch of fabric, letting it slide through her fingers, caress her skin. Marc watched her in utter fascination, mesmerized by the performance. She was very, very good. To look at her, eyes closed, moist lips slightly parted, breath coming in short, soft pants, one would think she was lost in sensation, completely unaware of their presence.

And sexually aroused.

As her chest rose and fell, her nipples pushed impudently against the cloth of her sleeveless cotton top, hardening before his eyes.

Damn, she was good. Marc didn’t have to look at Lacy to know she was equally riveted. He couldn’t imagine a more provocative display.

Unless she actually started touching herself.

To his disappointment, her eyes flew open and she pushed the scarf away from her, cheeks tinged pink.

“Very nice,” Marc murmured when he was capable of speech.

“What do you do for an encore? Strip naked?”

Her eyes darkened. “Why don’t you two play your twisted sex games with someone else?” she retorted, looking back and forth between them.

“Our twisted sex games? That was a one-woman show you just gave us, Miss Morrow. Delightful, but all you.”

“Well, that game—” she pointed at the slinky, purple scarf “—involved two women. And neither of them was Candace Hegel.”

“Oh really?” he drawled. “My mistake.” He glanced sideways at Lacy. “I assure you I wasn’t a participant. What were these lovely ladies doing, by the way?”

“Drop it,” Lacy warned under her breath.

“Never mind,” he sighed, training an appreciative eye on Sidney Morrow. He’d underestimated her. She was frighteningly intuitive, a consummate actress and the best damned charlatan he’d ever seen.

Her distract and dazzle technique was wickedly effective, he had to admit. He couldn’t have been more turned on. “Let’s go,” he decided, stifling his lust. “No more games.”

“I can leave now?”

“After a brief stop, yes, you’ll be free to go.”

Lacy gave him an incredulous stare, which he ignored. Yes, it was foolhardy to let her walk; she might be an accomplice to murder. If physical evidence didn’t point to a male perpetrator, he’d consider her the prime suspect.

Whatever her role, he’d be watching her like a hawk until he figured out what she was up to, and before he let her off the hook, he couldn’t pass on the chance to shake her up again.

With grim determination, he led her down to the morgue.

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