Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

looking for someone and afraid to see him at the same time. “Something happened to her, there’s no question. And I don’t like the bruises on her face. Slipped on the pool deck, my ass.”
    “So you agree that she needs our support right now, not a bunch of questions that imply we don’t believe her?” Tessa asked.
    “You have to stop making excuses for the child, Tessie. Try to understand what she’s lying about and why she’s doing it, and I bet you’ll uncover the truth about what happened to her.”
    “I know. I was thinking that we could have her take a polygraph test. That way we’ll know what to focus on and be able to weed out the unimportant stuff. And you’ll know for a fact that she’s nothing more than a scared teenager who needs our help.”
    “Hell, I can see that right now. But I worry about how to figure out the rest of it,” Ed said.
    “I know. But can we do it my way?” Tessa reached out and laid her hand on Ed’s forearm. “Please. It’s important to me that we do this right—and slowly. I think it’s even more important to Kelly.”
    Ed looked down into hopeful blue-gray eyes and felt it happening—felt himself being sucked in against his better judgment.
    What the hell.
    At least he’d be there to watch over Tessa if things started spinning out of control. He wouldn’t let her throw away her career on this case.
    “I’ll call and set up a polygraph for this afternoon, off the record. Then we should talk to Sledge Aiken,” he said, checking his watch.
    “I’d love to,” Tessa replied. “He’s been traveling with his team for off-season appearances, according to his agent.”
    “Ah, but I checked the official web page of the Waves before leaving this morning. The team returned to LA last night.”
    “So while you are monitoring the polygraph with Kelly, I’ll find a place for her to stay. Then we can go see Aiken,” Tessa said.
    “Where are you going to put her?” Ed asked.
    “Well, she can’t stay with me. I don’t want any accusations of conflict of interest or malicious prosecution. I think I’ll talk to TSS—Three Sisters Shelter. They take in battered women and children, and they have a residency program for at-risk patients who have graduated from their drug rehabilitation programs. The security there is decent, and they have good supervision. Kelly might even meet some girls her age.”
    “Okay. But first, we’d better get that girl some breakfast before she starts eating the place mats,” Ed said as he steered Tessa back to the table. “Poor kid probably hasn’t eaten in days.”

About the Author
    Elizabeth Lowell has over thirty million books in print, including the Rareties Unlimited ROMANCE-SUSPENSE series (each featuring a different set of characters): Moving Target, Running Scared, Die in Plain Sight and The Color of Death. Her other novels published by HarperCollins e-books are: CONTEMPORARY ROMANCES: This Time Love; Desert Rain; To the Ends of the Earth; Remember Summer; Where the Heart Is; Forget Me Not; Lover in the Rough; A Woman without Lies; Beautiful Dreamer; Eden Burning. The DONOVAN novels— Amber Beach, Jade Island, Pearl Cove, and Midnight in Ruby Bayou —were instant New York Times bestsellers. Elizabeth Lowell’s HISTORICAL ROMANCES of the American West are Only His; Only Mine; Only You; Only Love. Please visit www.elizabethlowell.com.
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By Elizabeth Lowell
    Amber Beach
    Jade Island
    Pearl Cove
    Midnight in Ruby Bayou
    Moving Target
    Running Scared
    Die in Plain Sight
    The Color of Death

Credits
    Jacket design by Richard Aquan
    Jacket photograph © by Jack Hollingsworth/CORBIS

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
    THE COLOR OF DEATH. Copyright © 2004 by Two of a Kind, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic