Flirting With Temptation

“Drink up,” Franco said, clinking his glass to hers. “There’s no need to be nervous. Lorenzo had incredible talent even when I first knew him back in the Big Apple. He took a couple of acting classes with me at New York University. Lorenzo and I were theater majors. Jack was taking writing and journalism classes, so I’m not sure he would even remember Lorenzo.”

“You’ve known Jack for a long time then?” Corie asked.

“Since our first year in college.”

“Were you and Jack…” She hesitated. It really wasn’t any of her business. “Were you involved even then?”

“Involved?”

Whatever else Franco might have said was cut off as a tall, golden god swept into the room. For a moment all Corie could think of was Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger. The man—Lorenzo, she assumed—looked as if he’d been literally dipped in a rich shade of coppery gold—from the tone of his skin to the flow of hair that he wore swept back from his wide forehead. Even his eyes were a deep shade of amber.

“Lorenzo!” Franco rose and within seconds he all but disappeared into the folds of the large man’s flowing caftan.

“And you.” Lorenzo released Franco and swept down on her, grasping her hand and drawing her to her feet in one smooth motion. Then, tipping her chin up, he studied her. “You must be the little librarian.”

Corie would have nodded, but his grip on her chin was firm.

“Nadia?” He snapped the fingers of his free hand, and the pencil-thin woman whipped out a notebook. “The bones are good.” He paused to trace a finger down Corie’s cheek. “The skin is flawless. But the hair.” He lifted a strand and shuddered, sending a rippling wave through his caftan. “It will have to go.”

Corie felt the arrow of panic shoot right through her. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

“How much time do I have, Franco?”

“I’ve pushed back the appointment at Macy’s until five.”

“I have only three hours?” Lorenzo drew in a deep breath. Out of the corner of her eye, Corie saw Franco and Nadia both take a quick step back. She might have herself, but Lorenzo had never released her chin.

“Well! It’s a good thing I’m a genius. Prep her, Nadia.” Dropping his hand, Lorenzo whirled and sailed from the room.

“If you’ll follow me, Ms. Benjamin?”

Corie raised a hand to her hair. She didn’t think she could move.

Franco grabbed her arm and urged her toward the door that Lorenzo had disappeared through. “He likes you.”

“He likes me?” Corie asked. “He wants to scalp me.”

“No, no, no,” Franco patted her arm as he pulled her past a long row of curtained booths. “He’s talking about a color and styling, and he’s the best.”

“Franco, I don’t think—”

He pushed her into a chair. “And you shouldn’t think. Just relax and put yourself in the hands of a master. Nadia, we need more wine.” The moment the girl disappeared, he continued, “You have that party Friday night. You do want to look your best when you meet your family.”

Corie faced herself in the mirror and barely kept herself from wincing. Even scalped, she had to look better than the way she looked now. The boring librarian look had to go. But even as Nadia reentered and pressed another glass of wine into her hand, her mother’s words echoed in her ears.

Be careful what you wish for.

4

JACK PUSHED THROUGH the doors and strode into the large room that housed San Francisco’s homicide detective division. Past the collection of desks in the bullpen area and down the corridor to his left, he found the door with D. C. Parker’s name on it. He knocked once before he entered, then trained his best smile on the small but stout dragon who guarded the entrance to Captain Parker’s lair.

“Ms. Abernathy.” He whipped out the bunch of daffodils he held behind his back. “I saw these and thought of you.”

Lydia Abernathy sniffed audibly, but she took the flowers. “Softening me up will get you nowhere, Mr. Kincaid. Captain Parker won’t see you unless he wants to.”

“I don’t want to,” growled a voice from the adjacent room. “Protect me, Ms. Abernathy. Throw the man out.”

Lydia rolled her eyes, and Jack winked at her as he moved smoothly around her desk and through the half-open door. “He’s a little grumpy because I won fifty bucks from him at poker last night,” Jack told her. “It’s a good thing for you he’s better at police work than he is at cards.”

“You were just lucky,” D.C. complained.

“Yeah.” Jack grinned at him as he turned a straight-backed chair around and straddled it. “I was.”

“I hear you were lucky again at the airport,” D.C. said.

“Yeah.”

D.C.’s office was small and ruthlessly organized. File drawers were closed, and not even a stray pencil lay out of place on the gleaming mahogany desk. He’d known D.C. since their days in high school and he hadn’t changed one bit. Jack thought briefly of his own office, cluttered with files and old notebooks filled with interview notes, and decided he hadn’t changed much either.

“If you came to pump me for information about the blind shooter, everything I know is either in the papers or on CNN, thanks to you damn reporters.”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t think we’ve got everything. I’ll bet what you lost at poker last night that you know the breed of the dog by now.”

“Shit.”

Jack grinned at him. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

D.C. sighed in disgust. “This is not for publication.”

“Agreed.”

“We just identified the breed from a sketch one of our artists made. It’s a shih tzu, and we’re trying to trace local owners through breeders. We’d like to keep it out of the press coverage for now.”

“No problem. You got anything else?”

“Shih tzus are not bred as Seeing Eye dogs.”

“So the cane and the glasses were likely a disguise.” Leaning back in his chair, Jack studied his old friend. There was something else. He could tell it by the expression on D.C.’s face. “What else?”

“One witness swears that she saw a tall man, maybe in his late thirties, and he wasn’t wearing a fedora or a trench coat. Nor did she see a dog. She says he pocketed a gun and ducked into a car right after the shot was fired.”

“Two shooters?” He didn’t like the sound of that at all.

“That’s the million-dollar question, and the answer is up for grabs. Eyewitnesses are never reliable, and there’s always the witness who’ll embroider a story just for the extra attention. But I’ve got some calls into informants. Nobody likes guns anywhere near airports. If there were two shooters, the two-million-dollar question is who were they shooting at? You got any idea?”

“Maybe. But I need two favors.”

“Yeah, like I didn’t know that when you walked through that door.”

“First, I’d like to know who owns that dog as soon as you get it.”

D.C. studied his friend. “You know something, don’t you?”

“Maybe.”

D.C. pulled out a notebook. “Fill me in.”

Jack did, beginning with the first e-mail message he’d gotten from his anonymous informant and ending with the shot at the airport and his gut feeling that the Lewis family was involved.

D.C. was frowning when Jack finished. “You’re big on theory and short on evidence.” He raised a hand to ward off Jack’s comments. “First of all, there’s nothing that links either gunman to the Lewis family.”

“Yet,” Jack said. “I’m hoping the dog will.”

For a moment, D.C. said nothing. He was a man who made a point of not wasting words, and he’d said it all before, beginning when they were eighteen and D.C. had stood at Jack’s side during the memorial service for his aunt. D.C. had never been as convinced as Jack that the Lewis family had had something to do with his aunt’s disappearance.

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