Rendezvous at Midnight (2 page)

“Hey, Michael.” Gareth’s quiet words brought him back to the matter at hand. He glanced around and saw a sofa in the corner of the area with a coffee table in front of it.

“Come and tell me what this is all about.”

His colleague raised a fair eyebrow, and Michael felt his mind stretch out and scan the area, looking for surveillance equipment and listening devices. The gesture was so natural, it was automatic, and if the other man hadn’t swept the area, he would have done so. Michael felt the quick surge of pure electricity as Gareth calmly put the only camera trained on the area including the sofa out of action.

“Neat,” he murmured.

Gareth smiled. “From a Talent like you, that’s a real compliment.” He led the way and they sat, Michael slinging his bag down by his side. He watched Lisa move away from Brant as he leaned over her to reach for something on the reception desk. The receptionist glanced over at them, but seemed in no hurry to leave the well-heeled guests currently checking out. The desk was under staffed. Probably most of the regular staff had left already.

“What’s going on?”

“No big operation, if that’s what you mean.”

“Good, because I’m here for my day job.”

Gareth grinned. “Michael Scott, the fearless ghost hunter,” he said, mimicking one of the trailers for Michael’s own program, part of the suite of offerings from the TV network he worked for.

“Hey, don’t knock it. It pays well.”

“So, how come you see ghosts? Or do you? It’s not something I’ve heard of in many psychics.”

Psychics are vampires, shape-shifters, sensitives. Not ghost hunters. Sensitives have awesome psi gifts, but they didn’t usually include the ability to communicate with the dead. Michael shrugged. “Mom’s a sensitive, Dad’s a vampire. It’s a volatile combination. You never know what you’re going to get. I started seeing ghosts when I was a kid, but when I came into my powers at puberty, it got really crazy.” That was the truth, not the abridged version the public got. “I saw them everywhere. Sometimes they weren’t the real thing, they were elementals or evil, but the real ones started to drive me nuts. Until Mom found somebody to help. Another sensitive. Now I control it better.”

Gareth shuddered. “Man, that would give me nightmares.”

Michael chuckled. “Turning into another kind of creature doesn’t scare you stupid?”

Gareth Fuller was a dragon shape-shifter. Once a month, during the new moon, he was compelled to change to his dragon form. Michael couldn’t imagine what that felt like, or how shifters coped. But they seemed to. “Hey, that’s natural. It is to my kind, anyway. You talk to ghosts.”

“And try to bring them peace.” He paused as he reflected on the part of his job that gave him the most satisfaction. “Sometimes they don’t know they’re dead. They passed too quickly for the fact to register. I can help them understand. Sometimes they’ve chosen to remain, to cause trouble, and sometimes they have unfinished business.”

“What kind of ghosts do you think we have here?”

“Have you sensed any?”

Gareth shook his head. “Nah, but I never do. Julie says she noticed something. But you’re welcome to it.”

“Where is Julie?”

“Probably sitting in the car by now. I’d better be quick, otherwise she’ll lean on the horn. She’s not a patient woman.” He flashed a grin. In his single days, he charmed women into bed with that grin. By all accounts, it was now reserved for one woman. “She knows I stayed behind to meet with you, but she won’t wait forever.”

“So tell me.”

“Okay, here it is. There’s been some disturbance around here. The anti-sensitives.”

“Shit.”

“Where is your network based?”

Michael frowned, not seeing the connection. “Seattle. We flew down here today, sent the equipment last week. Why?”

“Because someone on your team is probably an anti-sensitive. I have connections, you know? One of the antis was sending communications to someone in your company about this weekend investigation you’re planning.”

Michael rubbed his nose, thinking. “Bummer. How come I missed that?”

“Hey, they don’t go around announcing ‘Look at me! I’m a bigot and a terrorist’ any more than we announce what we are to the world.”

“I always thought I’d know one if I met one. They’re pretty radical, you know?” The anti-sensitives knew more than they should about Talents, but had decided the only good Talent was a dead Talent. They’d succeeded more than anyone liked. Unfortunately, the way they were organized, into small, discrete cells, meant they had to be taken out cell by cell. There didn’t seem to be any central organization the authorities could target. And Michael had one of the bastards working with him. It made him sick to think of it. “Well this gives me a chance to weed him out. Do I get to kill him?”

“Only if you have to. We want him alive for questioning.”

Michael grinned. “I’m not even going to ask who ‘we’ are. I don’t want to know. But it would be my privilege to help. I’m qualified. As a sensitive, I mean.”

Gareth looked away. “I hate the thought of torturing anyone.”

“Hey, man, you know we don’t do that. We extract what information we need pretty carefully, and then we blank them.”

“Now that’s scary. You people can kill with a thought.”

Across the room, Lisa jerked away from Brant and Michael got to his feet. Quietly, Gareth murmured, “It could be her. It could be any of them and unless you want to destroy their minds one by one getting to the truth, you’ll have to be wary of them all. Don’t be too hasty.”

His mind rebelled against the thought. There was no way he could ever suspect Lisa of that. He couldn’t possibly feel such a strong attraction to her if she was a member of the murderous organization calling itself the Anti-Sensitives.

Could he?

Chapter Two

As she walked toward the two men so absorbed in their conversation, the contrast between them struck Lisa like a hammer blow. Michael, with his dark hair and glittering black eyes, slanted cheekbones revealing his Eastern European heritage, and Gareth Fuller, the beautiful blond soccer star, tanned golden from his recent visit to Miami and from a life spent mainly in the open air.

They had at least one thing in common. In their own way, they were both beautiful. Neither dressed to attract, but Gareth’s tight Levi’s and Michael’s wool slacks emphasized the ripple of thigh muscles underneath. She’d never seen Gareth play, but she’d make the effort to catch a game. It should be entertaining.

Not that her interests went much further than Michael Scott at the moment. He was the offspring of a Texas rancher and a Hungarian mother: exotic looks. He had slightly tilted dark eyes and the high cheekbones of the Slav, but he spoke like a true-blue American, his Texan accent blunted by years in college and travel, with an incredible gift for speaking with ghosts. Michael looked up and smiled, and she smiled back. The awareness of the kiss they’d shared in the elevator shimmered between them. It would always be there now, the kiss, the knowledge. She hadn’t expected passion and intensity in a glass elevator at ten in the morning. Had he? They stood as she approached them, a quaint, old-fashioned gesture that seemed oddly right. Lisa couldn’t remember the last time that had happened, a spontaneous, natural-seeming motion and despite her strong conviction of equality, it heated her. Not that she was about to let them know it. She smiled as though men stood for her every day.

“They’ve given us cabins in one corridor close to the staterooms, so we’re all close together. The cleaners will work around us until after the weekend.” Then, they’d flood the whole place with chemicals designed to fumigate and detox the ship. The place would be completely empty by then. Except for the ghosts.

A small whirlwind erupted from the elevator, heading straight for Gareth. His unguarded expression was worth watching. At first alarmed, and then warmth for this woman, openly showing love few men had the courage to express in public. He held out his hands in a placating gesture. “I thought you’d just lean on the horn.”

“I got tired of waiting. I wanted to see what was keeping you.”

This must be Gareth’s girlfriend, a mixed race woman of incredibly delicate features, but with a toughness about her that warned it wouldn’t be a good idea to cross her. It was obvious she could twist Gareth around her delicate pinkie if she wanted to. But her expression softened, too, and Lisa couldn’t decide which of them reached out for the other first. They laced their fingers together before Gareth turned to Michael and Lisa.

“Julie, this is Lisa Perez and Michael Scott. He hates Mike, so never call him that.” Some kind of understanding flashed between them and with his free hand, Gareth clapped Michael on the shoulder. “We really have to go, but we won’t be too far. Call on me if you need me.” He paused. “A few of our other friends are nearby.”

“Thanks, I’ll give them a call.”

Was she missing something here? It must be something to do with the intense conversation she’d interrupted. Gareth and Julie turned away and Michael turned to her. “Do we need to help with the equipment?”

“No, they’ve got it covered.” She glanced away. His deep gaze could be too intense sometimes. “We just have to settle in.”

“Then what? It’s hours to sundown.”

“The passengers should be out of here after lunchtime. So we’re having lunch and then a tour of the rooms.”

“With cameras.”

“Never doubt it.”

They would shoot almost everything they did this weekend and edit it later. Completely different from the way it used to be, when film stock was precious and hard to edit. “I guess we’ll be using those damned night vision cameras again,” he growled. “There’s no need. The spirits don’t much care how they’re lit.”

“It looks good,” she said patiently, although this particular point was one Michael brought up at every production meeting. The eerie green tones in the video, and especially the way their eyes seemed to be illuminated from within, like beams of sunshine, added to the creepiness of the finished footage, so even when the phenomena were scarce, which was most of the time, they could make the best of it.

He stopped by the corridor leading to the suites and touched her arm. “Will you be okay this weekend? If it gets too much for you, just let me know.”

“Sure, I’ll be fine. I hardly remember her, you know?” But she was nervous. Who wouldn’t be when one of the ghosts could be your own mother?

Not that she remembered her. Her mother was on the final voyage of the ship, her last job, but she’d never come home. Lisa didn’t even remember the journalistic circus that surrounded her mother’s death. Her mother’s murder. A baby of barely eighteen months rarely has any memories.

But she couldn’t deny a lifelong fascination with the case. Who wouldn’t?

***

Their suites were on the first class deck, close to the suites they had decided to concentrate on for shooting. They were comfortable, decorated in a deliberately old-fashioned style designed to add to the “liner experience.” Guests could treat this place as an ordinary hotel, except for several events every year, when they acted as if the ship were in its 1950s heyday, sailing majestically across the ocean, elegantly plying the passage between Southampton and New York—costumes provided.

As they were provided now. Lisa opened the wardrobe in her bedroom to find a selection of gowns and outfits suitable for a lady of the 1950s, from smart suits to lush evening gowns. She sighed. They were beautiful, but they didn’t look very comfortable. Neither did the underwear provided. She pulled a long, tight garment out the drawers next to the hanging shelves. It looked more like an instrument of torture.

“Can I see you in that?”

She didn’t need to turn around to know who was standing in the open door of her room. “No way in hell am I wearing that thing.” She pulled at one of the garters dangling from the garment. It twanged back as strong as a catapult. “I’d never get out of it.”

“Oh, you would, if I saw you in it.”

She chuckled and stuffed the thing back in the drawer before he could get any more ideas. “Let me touch up my makeup and I’ll be with you.”

Michael raised a brow. “I didn’t realize you were wearing any.”

She smiled. “A touch. You’d run screaming if you saw me without my face on.”

“Now that I doubt.” He gazed at her before stepping back. “Okay, call me when you’re ready. They want us to start ASAP.”

“Sure.”

She was out of her room in five minutes, after layering on the heavier makeup she needed for the cameras. Her plain white shirt and black pants were perfect for the first shoot, which she’d kept in mind when she’d dressed that morning. She wondered if Brant would shoot her as lovingly as he used to, but found she didn’t care too much. She didn’t kid herself. Attractive, not stunning, a good figure, and the camera loved her. God knew why. So Brant would have to work hard to ruin her appearance.

Besides, he’d finished with her. Said he wanted more than she was giving him, but it had been the kind of finish where he’d given her an ultimatum—either she moved in with him, or he didn’t want to know her any more. She’d called his bluff, and he’d didn’t back down.

He still wanted her. The way he looked at her creeped her out sometimes, as though he was just waiting for his chance, so since the break last month she’d been careful not to find herself anywhere alone with him. But he’d wanted everything from her, and she didn’t feel right giving it.

As promised, Michael waited for her outside. He’d applied no makeup and he looked fabulous. Life wasn’t fair sometimes. His smile seemed warm and genuine and melted her through to her bones. Something Brant’s had never done, now that she thought of it.

Their kiss made her wonder if it wasn’t worth accelerating this affair. He was interested, that was for sure, and now, so was she. She liked him and their two previous dates had shown he was more than a pretty face. And
day-um
it was a pretty face!

“You still look pretty,” he said, as though he could read her thoughts.