Sizzle and Burn

had all day.”
    There was no point fighting this. Now that he had dropped the first shoe she would not be able to rest until she heard the second. Besides, she was hungry.
    “Think of going out to dinner with me as a medical decision,” Zack said.
    “How does it get to be medicinal?”
    “You really need a glass of red wine, don’t you?”
    She thought about that. “You know, you’re right. This is very close to being a medical emergency.”
    “Let’s go.”
    With a deceptively easy movement he uncoiled from the chair, scooped the envelope off the low table, and went toward the door. He didn’t glance back at her. He knew she couldn’t resist going with him, knew she had to get the answers that only he could give her.
    For some bizarre reason she was almost overcome by the urge to laugh.
    “Damn,” she said instead. She pushed herself to her feet. “You’re good.”
    He took her long black raincoat off the hook beside the door and held it for her.
    “I know,” he said. “It’s a gift.”

    They went out into the hall and downstairs to the lobby. At the front desk Burton Rosser looked up from a magazine. Burton was about as nondescript as a man could get, Raine thought. Even his age was hard to pin down. She guessed him to be in his late thirties but he could have been much younger or older. He was a fidgety, slightly built man with dirty blond hair and eyes that never stayed still. She got the feeling that he spent a lot of time looking over his shoulder. She wondered who or what was pursuing him.
    “Lucky you called ahead and reserved a room before you got here,” he grumbled to Zack. “Place filled up all of a sudden.”
    Zack looked out at the small parking lot. Raine followed his gaze and saw a small herd of news vans.
    “Didn’t take long for the media to show up,” Zack said.
    “Yeah, they got the rest of the rooms,” Burton muttered. “By the time the cops from Seattle and Portland rolled in, we were full.” He appeared relieved by that turn of events. “Had to send ’em down the road to the motel.”
    Zack nodded, took Raine’s arm and steered her toward the door.
    Burton stared hard at Raine. “Heard you and Doug Spicer were the ones who found that girl in the basement of the witch’s house today.”
    Raine stopped suddenly and swung around to face him. The long folds of the black raincoat flared out around her boots.
    She said nothing, just looked straight at Burton.
    Burton flushed a dark red. He blinked several times very rapidly.
    “I–I meant in the basement of y–your aunt’s house,” he stammered.
    She did not respond. When she turned back around on her heel she saw that Zack had the door open. Amusement and sincere admiration gleamed in his eyes.
    “You’re good, too,” he said in a low voice as she swept past him. “Damn. I don’t think I’m going to be able to resist a woman who can level a guy with one look.”

Nine
    S he held the umbrella high enough to shelter both of them from the steady rain. The damp, cold night air stimulated all her senses. She felt gloriously alive, energized and hungry in ways she could not explain. She knew the cause of the exhilarating sensation was the man walking beside her. It was as though he had somehow drawn her into an invisible force field.
    By unspoken agreement they turned toward the neon-lit windows of a nearby restaurant. A pickup truck and an SUV went past on the narrow, two-lane street that was the town’s main thoroughfare.
    Shelbyville was an old lumber town, typical of the many that were scattered around the heavily forested Cascades. The mill had closed years before, destroying the economic base of the community. In a desperate attempt to survive, the residents had attempted a makeover, hoping to attract tourists, skiers and city folk looking for a quiet weekend getaway. The effort had been only partially successful. There was a sprinkling of shops and galleries along the three-block walk that separated the B and B and the restaurant. But underneath the thin veneer of updated storefronts you could still see the worn-out bones of the doomed logging town.
    “How did you know that I like red wine?” she asked after a moment.
    “The J&J analysts pulled up your credit card purchases for the past few months when they put the file together.”
    “I hesitate to point this out, but isn’t that sort of illegal?”
    “Probably. I leave that to Fallon Jones. I’m a strong believer in delegating when it comes