Nightwalker

But Tanner Green sensed him, and he was having none of it. He turned and stared hard at Dillon.

And then he disappeared, fading like mist taken by a sudden wind.

“You scared him!” Ringo said accusingly.

Inwardly, Dillon cursed himself. He should have watched the man a while longer. He should have been patient. But if Tanner Green was walking around in some spiritual limbo, it was imperative for Dillon to reach him. Speak with him.

And he had moved without menace. This was one spooked ghost—no pun intended, he thought with a grin.

The guard looked at him and nodded, mistaking him for a parent. “Kids will be out in a little while, maybe twenty minutes or so. A lot of them hang around to get their pictures taken with the cast.”

“Thanks,” Dillon said, turning away from the guard and putting his hand up to his face as if rubbing his chin, so he could speak softly to Ringo without being overheard.

“Why was he so frightened of me?” he asked.

“Duh. The man was murdered,” Ringo pointed out, as if pointing out the obvious to a three-year-old.

Irritated, Dillon chose not to respond to his ghostly companion’s sarcasm. Ringo might be from the Old West, but he had adopted the modern vernacular with enthusiasm, as if that somehow made him more a part of the earthly world.

“Maybe he was afraid of you, then,” Dillon asked. “You’re the one carrying a gun.”

“That actually makes sense,” Ringo admitted. “He probably hasn’t seen many other ghosts, and, if he has…well, I guess an old gunslinger might be a bit too much for him to handle. And he probably doesn’t want to believe that he’s dead, either. Probably hasn’t accepted it yet.”

Whatever the cause, Tanner Green was scared.

Even so, he had come out in the open to stare at Jessy Sparhawk, the woman he had been lying on top of as he breathed his last.

And she had seen him. Dillon would swear to it.

The play finished and the kids rushed the stage. The performers posed for pictures, laughing, talking, signing miniposters that seemed to come out of nowhere. He watched Jessy pick up a toddler for a photo, then talk to the little girl and sign a poster. She seemed totally at ease—until she glanced back toward the door and an uneasy look crossed her face.

Then she saw Dillon and was visibly startled. After that she looked…frightened, rattled, though she continued to smile as she interacted with the kids.

He waved to her at one point, and she waved back.

The security guard with the broad shoulders and pleasant smile walked over to him. “You a friend of Jessy’s?” the man asked. “Not just a waiting parent?”

“No,” Dillon told him, shaking his head. “And yes, I’m a…friend of Jessy’s.”

“You can go on in if you want,” the guard said.

“Thanks,” Dillon said and headed toward the stage, Ringo still at his side.

He noticed a woman turn around as they passed, a puzzled look on her face. She drew her sweater more closely around her, as if she had suddenly felt a chill. That was the way it was for most people. They didn’t see the dead, couldn’t communicate with them, but something inside told them that someone was there.

Dillon smiled at the woman and kept going, hoping Ringo wasn’t feeling mischievous and wouldn’t tease her with a tap on the shoulder or a tug at her skirt. He moved quickly, because if you weren’t looking, Ringo wasn’t as prone to act up.

Jessy was still onstage, posing with the last of the kids.

She looked at him over the head of a toddler, and he sensed she wasn’t all that pleased to see him. But she was in performance mode, so she forced a smile to her lips.

“Very impressive,” he told her, reaching the stage. He saw her fellow cast members glancing his way and whispering to one another. He was being assessed, he knew.

“What a surprise to see you here,” she said.

He decided not to mince words. “I need to speak with you.”

“Oh? This isn’t a great time. I have to get out of costume, check my schedule for the next few days.”

“I’ll wait.”

She glanced away, biting her lip. She might be a good performer, but she was a lousy liar. She didn’t have a good excuse for refusing to talk to him, and she wasn’t going to invent one.

“I’m not having a great day,” she said. “I’m really tired.”

“I won’t take much of your time. And you have to eat, right? Why not let me take you to the fast-food establishment of your choice, and then I’ll leave you alone, I promise.”

She let out an uneasy sigh and gave in. “Sure. I need about half an hour.”

“Thanks. I really appreciate it,” he told her.

She nodded curtly, and he couldn’t help thinking that she made a gorgeous pirate. Her costume wasn’t risqué, but her breasts rode appealingly in the cotton blouse above the top of a leather corset. Her skirt was long, but slit up one side for dancing. Her stage makeup was heavy and came complete with false eyelashes, but even so, up close, she was stunning.

And she was afraid.

He forced himself to take a step back. She was a bit too appealing, and he had to concentrate if he wanted to get to the truth behind Tanner Green’s death. And he just knew she wasn’t going to be receptive to anything he had to say. Most likely, given that he had been there last night, his very presence was probably anathema to her already.

And things weren’t going to get better.

“I’ll meet you at Chen’s. It’s just down the Strip,” she said.

“Thanks,” he told her again. “I’ll see you there.”

He watched her head backstage. Right before she left, she looked back—and not at him.

Then she shuddered—as if she’d seen a ghost—and disappeared behind a black velvet drape.

4

There was an incredibly simple answer to what was plaguing her, of course. She was simply seeing someone who looked like Tanner Green. It wasn’t as if she actually knew the man and could be sure it was him.

Bull.

She knew his face, and that was all that mattered.

That face was etched in her mind. She would never forget it. She had been looking into his eyes as he died.

Key words. He had died.

Maybe she had been listening to Timothy too much, and now she was seeing dead people just as he saw ghost dancers in the sky.

She winced as she sat down at her dressing table. Why on earth had she agreed to see Dillon Wolf? She didn’t want to, and she didn’t really understand why. The man was attractive, courteous, charming and, well, hot, as Sandra would have put it.

But…

He was somehow connected to the extremely odd visions she was having. How or why, she didn’t know. Everything was tied up in feelings of fear and unease, and she didn’t like feeling this way at all. At least the cops were leaving her alone; they evidently knew that she’d had nothing to do with Tanner Green’s death other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

She reached for a makeup-remover pad and set to work. With her makeup gone, she looked young. And afraid. Hell, she was afraid. And she really hated that.

“Who’s the hottie?” April Brandon, one of her fellow pirates, asked, grinning.

“Pardon?”

“Tall, dark and super cool,” April said, sliding into her own chair in front of the long mirror.

“Oh, just a friend. No, not a friend. Not really.”

“An enemy?” April teased.

“No, no, I mean, I just met him.”

“Oh. Well, if you decide not to be his friend, introduce him to me, huh?” April winked at her, pulling her plumed hat from her head.

“You’ve got a boyfriend, remember?”

“Maybe, but I’m not blind,” April said. She pulled off her earrings, then turned around suddenly to survey the room.

Jessy felt as if a million goose bumps broke out over her body and asked, “What is it?”

“Footsteps on my grave, I guess,” April said, shrugging. “Sorry. I just had this creepy feeling. Ice along the spine or something.”

Jessy looked around, as well. She didn’t see anyone, but she felt uncomfortable even so. She had to get herself under control. How was she ever going to lead a normal life if she was suddenly afraid of invisible danger at every turn?

April gave a shrug and reached for her makeup remover. “Anyway, friend to friend? I’d go after him if I were you, if only just for the sex. And I’ll be wanting details when you do.”

Jessy groaned. “I prefer not to kiss and tell.”

“He’s an Indian, isn’t he?”

“The correct terminology these days is Native American.”

April rolled her eyes. “I call you an Indian all the time. People think I’m crazy, cuz you’re so light.”

“Timothy’s half Lakota,” Jessy said.

“So there you go. You are an Indian. Sorry, Native American.”

Jessy shed her boots and put them in the box under the table, then shimmied out of her pirate apparel, and quickly slid into her own sandals and knit sheath. “Gotta go,” she told April, giving her friend a pat on the shoulder.

“Take Mr. Creepy with you, okay?”

“What?” Jessy froze, turning around to stare at April.

April laughed. “Just kidding. That feeling of being watched, you know?” She shuddered. “Maybe it’s because of the newspaper.”

“The newspaper?”

“The front page is all about that guy who was killed last night.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “He worked for our boss, you know. Emil Landon, the guy who owns this place. So in a way, it was a coworker who was killed. He died right on top of some poor woman.” She looked more closely at Jessy and gasped. “What’s wrong? You’re white as a ghost. Hadn’t you heard about it?”

“No, I knew about it.”

“I’m sure it has nothing to do with us. It was probably someone he used to know before he took up the bodyguard business. Still, I guess none of us should go walking to our cars alone these days. Vegas has never been number one in the low-crime sweepstakes.”

“No,” Jessy agreed.

“You’re not walking to your car alone now, are you?” April asked her, concerned.

“No, I’m meeting—I’m going to the Strip. You have someone to walk you to your car, right?”

“I’m going to the Strip, too. Now get out of here. I’ll be right behind you!”

Jessy left the dressing room, unnerved. As she closed the door behind her, she guiltily hoped she was shutting “Mr. Creepy” in with April. She hurried past the empty theater, anxious to get to the casino floor, where there would be bells, lights and lots of people.

Dillon wondered if she was really going to show, or if she would find a way to avoid him.

But it was almost exactly half an hour from the time she had left him that she walked through the front door of Chen’s.

Vegas was filled with beautiful women. Most of them not only had killer bodies but glorious faces and legs that went on forever. And in this city, where a good showgirl was pretty much guaranteed a high-paying job, most of them came with enhanced breasts, as well.

As he watched Jessy Sparhawk come through the door and pause to look around the restaurant, he tried to analyze her appeal. Long sleek hair cascaded like a sunset down her back. Her eyes were large and expressive. Her figure was perfectly curved, but natural in every way. Her legs seemed long enough to stretch to China, and the symmetry of her features made her look simultaneously elegant, confident—and sweetly vulnerable. Nothing about her had grown hard yet, as so often happened to women out here.

He tried to figure out what made her so special, but an answer escaped him. It might have been her voice, the way she could speak so quietly yet be heard so clearly.

Hell, it might have been her ears or her kneecaps, for God’s sake. It was impossible to fathom what made her so appealing. She just was.

She was casual now. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup, and she had donned a cobalt-blue dress that echoed the color of her eyes. There was nothing showy about the way it fell to her knees and bared her arms, but when she moved, the outfit became a thing of beauty.

Ringo gave a low whistle.

Ignoring him, Dillon stood as she approached the booth and extended a hand. She accepted and sat, though she was actually perching on the edge of the seat, rather than actually sitting.

“Miss Jessy,” their waitress said, hurrying over before Dillon could say anything. Evidently Jessy had chosen a place she frequented. Was that a good sign? Or just the first thing that had come to her mind?

“Hi, Mai,” Jessy said, smiling broadly at the pretty, young Chinese woman. “How are you?”

“Good, good, I bring Michael on Saturday?” Mai asked anxiously.

“Please do. I promise we’ll see that he has a great time,” Jessy assured her.

“Thank you. I pour your tea,” Mai told her, suiting her action to her words and picking up the pot of tea in front of Dillon. He’d been pleased to discover that they brewed some of the most delicious green tea he’d ever tasted.

“So our waitress is Mai and she has a son?” Dillon said after Mai left them to decide on their order.

“She and her husband own the restaurant,” Jessy said. “And they have a four-year-old. He’s the cutest little thing I’ve ever seen.”

“If the food is as good as the tea, this is going to be a great dinner.”

She cocked her head toward him and almost smiled. Apparently she appreciated a man who knew good tea, he thought.

But not that much, he added silently as she spoke.

“I don’t understand what you want. I don’t understand what you think I can tell you. You were there last night. I never saw that man before he died on top of me,” she said, cutting to the chase.

“I just thought that, if we spent a little time talking, something might occur to you,” he said, watching her eyes.

She stared across the table at him and shook her head. “You work for Emil Landon.”

“Actually, you’ve worked for him longer than I have. I’ve only just been hired by the man.”

“Because he thinks he’s in danger,” Jessy said flatly.

“Yes.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think yet,” Dillon told her truthfully. “I’m trying to find out more about the man. There are a lot of rumors, but if you go through public documents and legal records, you can get a feel for someone. He’s rich. He owns a casino. Whether he’s really played it rough and created a few financial corpses along the way, or gotten in with the wrong connections, who knows? He doesn’t trust anyone.”

“It doesn’t sound as if you like him much.”

“Do you?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “I don’t know him. I’ve seen him on the news, but I’ve never actually seen him in person. It’s unlikely I would have any cause to meet him, unless he suddenly decided to bring in a pack of little kids.”

He sipped his tea, not wanting her to see him smile at the thought of how well she dealt with children. It was nice. Although, admittedly, he found himself so entranced by her that she might have said that lap dances were her thing and he would have found a way to find that nice, too.

Mai returned to the table, and to Dillon’s pleased surprise, Jessy looked at him hesitantly and asked if it would be all right if she and Mai decided on their order. He grinned and told her to go right ahead.

Jessy seemed to be relaxing. She was at least sitting all the way back in the booth now.

“It must be difficult for you,” she mused, sipping her tea after Mai had left again. “Emil Landon certainly has a past, maybe a lot of enemies. And Tanner Green—from what I saw on the news, he had a past, as well. It does seem strange that a man as big as he was went down without a fight. You have to get close to use a knife.”

She looked thoughtful as she spoke. Dillon wondered if she was disturbed or just stating facts.

“It suggests that he was with someone he trusted,” Dillon said. “Also, in a place as densely populated as a casino, it’s easy to get close to someone without them noticing. But he might have been stabbed before he even got to the casino. Not enough evidence yet to be certain of much.”

She gave a little shudder and offered him a rueful smile. “I feel guilty saying this, but it’s reassuring to think that someone wanted Tanner Green dead. It’s better than thinking there’s a killer out there, seeking victims at random.”

“It’s more comforting, yes,” Dillon agreed.

The meal arrived, and Dillon thought he had passed muster, because Jessy introduced him to Mai as a friend. Jessy had ordered two dishes, one chicken and one beef dish, one Cantonese and one Mandarin, and both were delicious. There were a few precious moments when the food first arrived that felt almost like being on a regular date. But she hadn’t agreed to go on a date with him; she’d agreed—reluctantly—to see him because he needed to talk to her. She didn’t dislike him, he was pretty sure, but she seemed determined to create a wall between them, and she apparently hoped that he would stopped banging on the gate.

But they couldn’t talk about food forever, and finally he brought the subject back to Green’s death.

“I don’t know what you think I can tell you,” she said, staring at him while he chewed a piece of beef.

“I think that there’s something. Maybe in your subconscious. Something you don’t think is important or even realize you know, but it might just be the clue that changes everything.”

She set down her fork and leaned toward him. “I can’t help you. A man I had never seen before stumbled through the crowd, fell on me and died on top of a craps table. You know I didn’t know him, that it happened just the way I’ve described it, and just that quickly.”

“He spoke to you,” Dillon said quietly.

Her instant frown of surprise and confusion was definitely real. Had she forgotten? Was the information he needed actually buried in her subconscious? She sat back, thinking. “We didn’t carry on a conversation,” she told him.

“I saw the security tapes. His lips moved.”

“He might have whispered something,” she said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. He was dying. He could have said anything. I don’t remember. All I remember is the feeling of being trapped, the horror of realizing that he was bleeding to death on top of me. And those are images I would just as soon forget.”

He couldn’t let it go at that, even though he sensed that this wasn’t the time to push her. She knew what Tanner Green had said, either consciously or subconsciously, but for now, he had lost her. Time to change the subject.

“How was your grandfather last night? Everything okay?”

“Yes, thank you very much.” She stared at him. “Timothy is…slipping,” she said, as if she thought the idea might frighten him away.

“I’m sorry. Is it Alzheimer’s?”

“He’s just slipping…that’s all. He’s fine, he takes care of himself, he just…he just needs to be watched. He has his moments. He’s functioning. He knows me, and he knows the people who care for him.” She hesitated. “He actually lives in a home, but he loves it because he has a wonderful doctor, and the people there are terrific.” Once again she hesitated, as if saying more than she wanted, but spilling it out anyway. Maybe it was still an involuntary attempt to scare him away. “My folks died when I was young. Timothy raised me. I love him to death, but I can’t work and keep him at home. He forgets things on the stove, and he talks to friends in the walls and in the sky.”

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