Running Hot

to live.
    She took strength from his touch. “The inflatable was unmarked. There was nothing to link it to Martin or to me. I dumped it offshore. The next day I took a commercial flight back to Miami using a fake ID.”
    “You already had the new ID in place?”
    “Along with a small suitcase full of bare necessities. I’d carried both with me everywhere for days.” She swallowed hard. “I knew Martin better than he knew himself. It was a matter of when, not if, I’d need the ID and a change of clothes.”
    “You weren’t just Crocker’s butler, were you? What else did you do for him?”
    “I was his personal profiler,” she said. “I read the people with whom he did business, his mistresses and everyone else who came in contact with him.”
    “The ultimate bodyguard.”
    “I identified his opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. I told him who he could trust and warned him when someone was plotting against him.”
    “How long were the two of you a team?”
    “Twelve years.”
    “Were you lovers?” Luther asked tonelessly.
    “No. Neither of us was attracted to the other in that way. I wasn’t his type. In the end he told me he had always found my talent a little scary. For my part, I knew from the start that Martin wasn’t capable of anything remotely close to real love or commitment. But we were partners and friends of a sort. I trusted him because I knew he needed me and I knew he understood that.”
    “What happened?”
    “Everything changed after he started taking the drug.”
    “Why did he try to kill you?”
    “He decided that he didn’t need me any longer. But I knew all his secrets. As he explained, that made me a serious liability.” She shook her head, still amazed. “He actually believed all the lies that the Nightshade people told him, including the myth that the drug would lengthen his life span.”
    “Why did you create the corporate librarian history for yourself when you went into hiding? Why not fire up a whole new identity, one with no connection to Crocker World?”
    “I went with the old theory that the best lies contain a measure of truth. Also, I knew everything about Crocker World, including how to access the computerized personnel files and create an employment record that would stand up to close scrutiny. It worked, too. I made it through a J&J background check.”
    Luther smiled slightly. “If Fallon ever discovers that, he’ll have an attack of the vapors.”
    She turned her head quickly. “Are you going to tell him?”
    “No.”
    “I didn’t think so. Thank you.” She drank some more coffee.
    “What really happened that day that Martin Crocker and his butler disappeared?” Luther asked.
    She told him everything. When she was finished he was silent for a long time.
    “Do you believe me?” she asked when she could stand the suspense no longer.
    “Yes.”
    She peeked at his aura and knew that he was telling the truth.
    “One more question,” he said. “If you were worried that someone might someday find out that you killed Crocker, why in hell did you apply for a job within the Society? You had to know that you’d be surrounded by people endowed with various kinds of psychic talents. Your secret would be at risk every day.”
    “I wasn’t sure if the people who recruited Martin would get suspicious about his death and come looking for me. I also knew from what Martin told me that the organization you call Nightshade is a group of renegade psychics. I figured the one bunch they might want to steer clear of is the Arcane community.”
    “So you decided to hide in the heart of the Society.” Luther’s mouth curved faintly. “I like it. Talk about a gutsy move.”
    “There was another reason why I applied for the post in the Bureau of Genealogy,” she said quietly. “I’ve always heard that when you’re in real trouble, you run home.”
    “So?”
    “The Society is the closest thing I have to a family.”

TWENTY-FIVE
    It was intolerable.
    La Sirène paced the hotel suite, seething. The Queen of the Night’s desire for revenge against Sarastro was nothing, a mere whimper of protest, compared to this clawing need for vengeance against the bitch who had somehow managed to resist her singing. The stupid creature should have died the way all the others had died. Why hadn’t she?
    Time, she decided. There just hadn’t been enough time to finish the job. Another minute and it would have been over. If only the damned elevator hadn’t arrived