Keeper of the Moon - By Harley Jane Kozak Page 0,24
and his club and his wealth and his status, Sailor told herself. I’ve got a job to do, and he’s going to help me.
She straightened her collar, made sure her bandage was in place and went out to face him.
* * *
Declan was on his laptop but looked up at her approach.
“Is this a good time?” she asked.
He held up an index finger and continued to focus on his computer screen, watching what looked to Sailor like the sizzle reel of a very young jazz band. The song ended, and he shut the computer with a snap. He turned to face Sailor, flipping his chair around so that he was straddling it.
“So you made it. Good,” he said, and gave her his full attention. “What have you got?” he said with a beckoning motion.
She studied him. He was friendlier than he’d been two hours earlier. Not so scary. Okay, he was a little scary. Mostly because he had the most astonishing face. High cheekbones. Piercing eyes. Blue. Cool blue in a hot face. Good grief, he was handsome. “What have you got?” she asked.
“Information on Gina Santoro and Charlotte Messenger. That’s why you’re here, right?”
“Yes,” she said, giving herself a mental shake. “But how exclusive is your information? Because mine is quite exclusive, and I’m not trading it for something I can see on Entertainment Tonight.”
“I can do better than that. But let’s start with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you approached me.”
“Oh. Yes, of course.” She felt as if she were burning up. “By the way, is it hot in here? Do you have the heat on?”
He was looking at her intently. Barrie’s annoying contact lenses made his blue eyes loom large. Very nice eyes they were, too. “The heat?” he asked. “It’s summer, and this is a nightclub. Hot, sweaty bodies and so forth. So, no. Are you feeling all right?”
“Yes, never mind. Here’s the story. I was attacked.” She told him, in a few words, what had happened. Surprisingly, he expressed no surprise. And maybe she was getting better at telling the story, because he asked no questions except “Who else have you told?”
“Charles Highsmith.”
That did surprise him. His eyebrows shot up. “In person?”
“No, I texted him,” she said, deadpan. No good Keeper communicated Other business by phone, and certainly not by email or text.
“Cheeky.” Declan smiled. “So you’ve been busy. And how did Charles Highsmith respond?”
“He told me to go home, get some sleep and keep my mouth shut.”
“I see you follow orders well,” he said drily.
“Yes, it’s a talent of mine. So now Highsmith’s called a Council meeting for tomorrow. A closed one, not the usual social gathering they invite everyone and their dog to. So he’s taking this seriously. Okay, that’s quite a bit that I’ve told you. So, your turn. What do the cops know?”
“You’ve got a cop in the family,” he said. “Brodie McKay. Why don’t you ask him?”
“Because for one thing, Brodie’s not the kind to blab about police business. Possibly my cousin Rhiannon could get it out of him, because she’s sleeping with him, but I’m not. For another thing, he’s Elven, so it would take him about four minutes in my company to psychically download everything that’s in my head and in return give me only what he thinks I should know. Not that he’s not a great guy,” she added. “But he thinks of me as a little sister.”
I won’t have that problem, he was thinking. She read the thought in his eyes and nearly gasped. What did he mean by that?
Aloud, he said, “You’ve told no one else?”
She flashed on her cousins but decided to dodge the question. “Secrets carry energy. Stories told too often lose their energy. You can tell a shopworn one when you hear it, can’t you?”
“I can.”
“So,” she repeated, “your turn. What do the cops know?”
“DNA tests showed that Gina Santoro and Charlotte Messenger shared a sexual partner.”
“Wow. Who’s your informant?” she asked.
“A shifter at LAPD,” Declan said.
“Name?”
He smiled. “Let’s leave that out for now.”
So he would share news but not a news source, Sailor thought. Interesting. “What about the other two victims?”
“They’re testing them,” he said, “but the results haven’t come back.”
“Okay, so this guy Gina and Charlotte hooked up with—it was a guy?”
“Yes.”
“Was the sex consensual?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “The crime scenes were apparently messy, but whether it was rape or highly energetic foreplay, they’re not saying.”
Energetic foreplay? Did he have to be talking like this? With his accent? Coming out of his mouth, the