Too easy.
“You’ve got to tell me…just who is that gorgeous woman I saw on your arm a few moments ago?”
Cameron’s smile stretched even more. “Ah, you’ve got to be talking about Ivy…”
Ivy.
He liked that name.
“Ivy DuLane.” Cameron downed his whiskey in a quick gulp and motioned for another glass. The whiskey was poured into the ice sculpture—it slid around the tube inside and then fell into Cameron’s glass, coming right out of the Sphinx’s mouth. “I’ll be sure to introduce you later.”
Oh, I’d like that.
“But it looked as if you lost her…” He gave the other man a commiserating glance. “She ran off…?”
With the cop. He’d seen the badge and he’d realized that trouble had come his way.
Cameron laughed, not seeming even a little offended. The guy was talking way too freely. Maybe because of the drinks. Maybe because he was just an overconfident fool.
“Ivy’s just—” Cameron stopped. “She’s chatting with an old friend. No harm, no foul.”
An old friend who happened to be a cop.
He lifted his whiskey. Downed it fast. And kept his eyes on Ivy.
Hello, lovely. We’re going to have so much fun together.
Because she wasn’t like the others. He didn’t think there would be anything easy about her.
About time.
***
“It’s not like I’m a civilian, you know,” Ivy muttered as she pushed her way through the crush of bodies at the ball. Her gaze slid to the left and to the right. There were more men in white masks all around her. But that one was too thin…that one was too short… “Or did you forget that I obtained my PI’s license when I was twenty-one?” That whole Nancy Drew line of his had seriously grated. Her grandfather had run DuLane Investigations for over fifty years, and she’d been eager to take up her place at his side.
Then the whole world had come crashing down on her.
But she’d built that world back, piece by piece.
Without Bennett.
“I haven’t forgotten anything about you,” Bennett said softly.
His words pulled her gaze toward him. “And I didn’t forget you.” Despite her best efforts. She’d tried to move the hell on, but it was hard—especially when your heart was buried in the past.
“I have to know something.” His voice rumbled as he kept staring at her with that heated green stare of his. “It’s not the right time, not the right place…”
No, because they were supposed to be looking for a killer.
“But do you hate me, Ivy?”
Her lips parted in surprise, and she gave a hard, quick shake of her head. “Of course not! I could never hate you.”
Some of the tension seemed to ease from his shoulders.
“Why does it matter how I feel?” Ivy asked him, driven to know this.
“Because you matter. You always have. You always will.”
Shock rolled through her.
Bennett glanced away from her. “Let’s check the ballroom.”
Wait—that was it? No more personal sharing? Now they were on to the ballroom? She shook her head and followed after him. He’d better not try to play his mind games with her. She wasn’t the game playing type. He’d learn that fact, very soon.
They were in the area known as the “back hall”, a long stretch full of tables and makeshift bars. The drinks were free and flowing heavily in this section, and they had to dodge the bar lines in order to gain access to the darkened ballroom.
Once they got into the main ballroom, she saw a band performing on the stage—music blared out, echoing through the cavernous room. Disco lights swept the scene every few moments. As heavy as the crush had been in the back hall, attendance was pretty sparse in that ballroom.
There were several hundred tables set up in the area, and some caterers were preparing the food, but after being in the madness of the back hall, this place—and its relative peace—was almost a relief.
“When we find out the victim’s identity, then we’ll be closer to knowing our killer,” Bennett said.
She nodded, knowing his words were true. Her shoulder brushed against Bennett. “There,” she said, pointing to the man in the white mask who was standing to the side, no date in sight. “He’s the right height, the right weight…”
And he seemed to be looking right at her.
Actually, he was striding toward her as she watched him.
She felt Bennett tense against her.
The man in the mask was closing in fast. “Hello, there…” The guy’s voice hitched up, sounding a bit on the drunk side. “Want to dance?” He offered his hand to her.
Bennett moved in front of her. “No, she damn well doesn’t,” he said immediately. “Who the hell are you?”
The guy in the mask weaved. “No names…” His eyes crinkled a bit behind the holes in his mask. “That’s how it works.”
“The hell it does,” Bennett fired back.
Um, the plan had been for Cameron to identify potential suspects. Bennett didn’t need—
Bennett snatched the mask right off the guy.
Ivy’s lips parted in surprise as she found herself staring at Laxton Crenshaw, a city councilman. And he was glaring at Bennett.
“You don’t touch me,” Laxton said, and he surged toward Bennett, fumbling for the mask. “No one touches me!”
Bennett side-stepped the guy’s lunge and Laxton fell to the floor.
The scent of booze drifted off the councilman, nearly burning the air around them. Laxton tried to get up, but he just fell right back down.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Bennett motion with his hand, and a uniformed cop rushed over.
One of his men.
“Councilman, I’m going to need to know where you were earlier tonight…” Bennett said.
The councilman flipped him off, then he fell back on the floor, laughing.
“That’s not a very good alibi,” Ivy pointed out.
Laxton’s laughter faded. He glanced toward her. His smile turned a little cruel.
He’s the right size.
And he’d sure zeroed in on her. Could he be the killer?
“We’re going to need to escort the councilman out,” Bennett told the uniformed cop. “I think he may have overindulged tonight.”
And she knew exactly what Bennett was doing. He was going to take the councilman away under the drinking-too-much ruse and grill the guy. Good technique, she had to give him that and—
The music died. The disco lights flashed off. The overhead lights that had been muted to a faint glow also suddenly disappeared.
The only illumination in the ballroom came from the sputtering candles that lined the tables.
“What the hell?” Bennett demanded.
A loud, shrieking alarm pierced the darkness.
Then people started running. Nearly stampeding as they rushed toward the ballroom’s exit doors—doors that just led to the overflowing back hall.
Shouts and cries filled the air.
What is happening?
Someone jostled into Ivy, hitting her hard, and she spun around.
“I’ve got you.” Warm, strong hands closed around her shoulders and pulled her up against a body. Not just any body—Bennett. His arms wrapped around her as he held her close. “Officer Abrams, get the others to help this crowd! We need to find out what’s happening.”
“Fire alarm,” Ivy said. That was what it sounded like to her. And everyone was seriously panicking as they fought for freedom.
Bennett swore. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”
“I’m okay.” She was. But she could hear people crying out in pain and fear as they trampled each other in their fear. “Go, do your job. Help them.”
His hold tightened on her.
“I can get out.” She knew this place. “Go.”
She didn’t even know where the councilman had fled to—the guy had vanished in that darkness. A big crowd was near the doors, people shoving and bottling up there as they fought to get out of the main ballroom.
She could see the outline of those bodies in the sputtering candlelight. The alarm kept shrieking from overhead.
“
Go,”
Ivy told Bennett again. He didn’t need to worry about her, but—
He started half-dragging, half-carrying her to the right. Away from the doors and toward the stage.
“Bennett? Stop!” Ivy ordered him. “You—”
He pushed her toward the stage. “Take the door behind it. There’s a flight of stairs to the right. Those stairs will take you down to the parking garage.”
So he knew the building well, too.
“Get outside and get to safety,” Bennett said. Then he—
He kissed her.
She didn’t expect the kiss, and she wasn’t sure he’d even planned that move. His mouth just locked down on hers, hard and fast and devastating. With the alarm shrieking around them. With people screaming.
He kissed her.
And the years fell away. She remembered what it was like to get lost in him. To feel the touch of his mouth on hers and to ignite. She’d always wanted him so wildly, so fiercely, and the years hadn’t changed that desire. If anything, now she seemed to want him more.
But he pulled back. “When you’re clear, wait for me in front of the convention center. I’ll find you there.”
Then he was gone. For an instant, Ivy just stood there.
She didn’t smell smoke. Didn’t hear the crackle of any flames. All she heard was the shriek of the alarm.
The door he’d pointed out waited just a few feet away. But was she really supposed to just take that exit and run? What about Cameron? What about her brother? What about Shelly? They were trapped in the crowd.
I can’t leave them.
She wouldn’t do it.
***
Chaos. It was all such beautiful, lovely chaos. Women were screaming. Drunk men were fighting each other as they tried to rush out of the building.
There was no fire. There was no danger. Well, none except for the danger that the fools were causing to each other.
He’d set off the alarm. He’d shut down the lights. He’d done it all—in just mere moments.
“Ivy!” Cameron was yelling her name. Cameron and another man—Hugh—were searching for her.
He’d seen Ivy go into the main ballroom. She hadn’t come out. Not yet.
Cameron and Hugh would never get to her, not in that mad crush. At least, they wouldn’t get to her—not if they kept trying to fight through the crowd.
They need to go another way.
A way that he knew…
He opened a door, one that had been carefully hidden behind a black curtain. The door took him into a narrow corridor. A service area. The corridor would lead him right to the main ballroom. Right to Ivy.
But he had to hurry. The beautiful chaos would only last so long…
I want to see her. I want to touch her.
He closed the door behind him. The corridor was pitch black, but he had a light. He was prepared.
Always.
He took a few steps. And then he heard someone running toward him. Someone running too fast. His light hit on the man just as the guy barreled toward him.
She didn’t run for the exit that Bennett had showed her. Ivy just couldn’t leave her brother and her friends. Instead, she raced for the service corridor. She knew exactly where that corridor was—after all, she’d come to enough parties at that convention center to more than know her way around the place. Besides, her friend Sarah was a caterer who often had her staff working in the service corridor, and Ivy had seen them in action plenty of times. Other people might not know about that secret hallway, but Ivy was just grateful right then that she knew of its location.
A long, black curtain hid the entrance to the service corridor. She shoved the curtain aside and yanked open the door. Darkness waited inside, but Ivy knew that narrow hallway would take her past the thick throng and allow her to exit near the escalators.
Then I’ll find Hugh. I’ll get him and Cameron and Shelly and we’ll all get out.
She ran forward, hating that dark, and she pulled out her phone. She had a flashlight app, too, and she swiped her phone over the screen, turning it on so that she could see—
A man in a tux. A man in a white Mardi Gras mask.
Her breath left her lungs in a startled
whoosh.
She stepped back.
Her light still hit his mask.
“Hello…” His voice was deep, seeming to surround her.
She shook her head. In the middle of a fire—in the middle of mad panic—you didn’t just stop to tell someone “Hello”.
“You saw me,” he continued in that deep voice.
Ivy backed up a step.
Oh, hell, oh, hell…
“And I saw you.”
It’s the killer!
He had been watching her when she’d been on the float, screaming to get that poor woman help.
She forced her body to relax. If he was about to attack her, he’d find that she wasn’t the prey he’d thought. He was bigger than she was, stronger, but that didn’t mean he was a better fighter.
“I also saw your brother,” he told her. “Such a shame…”
Icy tendrils of fear wrapped around her heart.
He knows about my brother?
“What did you do?”
He turned away from her and began walking back down the hallway. Her light hit the back of his head. He had dark hair, hair that contrasted sharply with the white elastic of his mask’s straps.
“What did you do?” Ivy yelled. She raced after him. She grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. When she did, he hit her, hard, slamming her against the wall. Her phone fell from her fingers and crashed into the floor.
His fingers locked around her throat. She felt the slide of gloved fingers tightening around her neck.
Oh, hell, no.
She drove her knee into his groin, hitting him as hard as she could. He swore and his hold eased.
That’s right.
Then Ivy whacked him with her elbow, slamming it into his stomach. When he bowled over, she zipped around him. She took a few frantic steps down that hallway—
And then she tripped. Ivy fell over something—something warm and soft.
Not something…someone.
“No,” Ivy whispered even as the masked man’s words rang in her head. “
Such a shame…”
Her hands touched something sticky and wet and she shuddered.
Blood.
She knew exactly what blood felt like in the dark.
She was touching a man’s body. A man who was wearing a tux and who’d been attacked.
Laughter floated around her. “You’re going to be far more fun that I realized.”
The hell she was. “This isn’t a game!” She backed away from the body. She needed to get away and get help.
Don’t be Hugh on the floor. Please, not Hugh.
“The cops are here! They’re going to get you—”
“I know they’re here.” He didn’t sound worried. “I saw them and you, sweet Ivy.”
He knows my name.
“I can be good to you,” he said.
She was on her feet now. Her hands pressed to the wall. Did he brush by her? It was pitch black in there, but she thought she’d felt him. He’d been heading toward the body.
So I need to move the other way.
She needed to head back out the way she’d come.
If she couldn’t see, then neither could he. Maybe he thought she was down there next to the body. She inched away. She’d get out. She’d go back the way she came and escape. Everything would be okay.
I touched blood…that means he has a knife. Or some kind of weapon.
“I’m going to learn your secrets,” he told her. “Your desires. I’m going to give you everything that you ever wanted.”
You’ll give me nothing.
She didn’t say those words. Talking would give away her location. She wasn’t going to do that. His voice told her that he wasn’t close to her. She just needed to keep going. She had to move silently.
“I can be good to you,” the killer said. “Or, Ivy, my dear…I can be very, very bad…”
All you can be is crazy.
She crept down the corridor. Surely she was close to the ballroom again. She would get away, find the cops—find Bennett—and then this guy would be done.
Only…she stilled. He’d stopped talking, so she didn’t know where he was.
He could be right behind me now.
There was no time to waste. She ran for the ballroom. Forget being quiet—she raced forward.
And the lights flashed on. So bright and glaring after the darkness. She blinked, trying to adjust to that glare, and then she spun around, frantically searching behind her.
He wasn’t close to her. He was on the other side of that corridor, near the exit that led to the escalators.
He shoved open the door—
“No!” Ivy screamed.
But he was gone.
And he’d left her…left her with…
Her gaze fell to the floor of that corridor.
A white mask lay near the fallen man’s hand.
He left me with a dead man.
***
The convention center’s alarm had finally stopped shrieking. The lights were back on and the people in the crowd weren’t crushing each other any longer. Bennett saw the men and women blearily staring at each other. They moved slowly now, as if trying to figure out what in the hell was happening.
I’m trying to figure out that one, too.
His men had fanned out into the crowd. There were injured people there—people who’d been trampled near the door. People who’d fallen and would need medical assistance.
Masks were on the floor. Broken Mardi Gras necklaces littered the area.
“It must have been some prank, Detective,” one of his team members told him, a detective named Drew Trout. “The building supervisor said someone got into the control room and messed with all the switches there.”
And caused panic.
Fear.
A man in a white mask?
He glanced back toward the ballroom. Ivy should be clear by now. The fear eating at him should’ve eased, but it hadn’t.
He needed to see her.
More emergency personnel flooded into the area. Security guards were on scene. And EMTs were already moving into the crowd. He knew that—at events like this one—emergency personnel were always close so that they could respond in an instant.
Like they’re doing right now.
He turned and headed back to the ballroom. Chairs were overturned in there, tables tipped onto their sides. Food had been stomped into the flooring.
The ballroom was nearly empty, though.
No sign of Ivy. He headed over to the stage, then he went to that back door. A door that should have given Ivy an easy way out. He grabbed for the handle.
Locked.
His heart slammed into his chest. He yanked harder on that handle.
Locked.
Maybe Ivy had locked the door when she fled. Maybe it had closed and sealed up behind her or—
Maybe she never got out that door because it was locked the whole damn time.
He spun around. “Ivy!” Her name came from him as a roar. “Ivy!”
***
He’s not dead, not yet.
She could see the faint rise and fall of the man’s chest—not just any man, but a guy she knew.
Councilman Laxton Crenshaw was on the floor of that corridor, bleeding out. Ivy rushed back to his side, and she fell to her knees as she tried to inspect his wounds. He’d been stabbed—multiple times—and the blood was covering his white cummerbund. She put her hands on his chest, trying to stop the blood flow from the worst wound.
His hand flew out and locked around her wrist. “You—”
“He’s gone,” Ivy told him. “Just stay calm, okay?” He was bleeding so much. Gushing out. “It’s going to be all right.” Her words could be a total lie, but she didn’t care. Weren’t you supposed to reassure the victim in situations like this one?
His fingers fell away.
She tried to staunch the blood flow, but the wounds were so deep.
“Help!” Ivy screamed. She was afraid to leave him—if she didn’t keep applying pressure, would he bleed out right there? “Help!” And if she didn’t go…was he just going to die anyway?
***
Ivy wasn’t in the ballroom. He didn’t see her in the back hall. Bennett didn’t see—
“Ivy!” Hugh DuLane bellowed, running around frantically near the escalators. “Ivy, where are you?”
Bennett’s gaze jerked toward the other man. Hugh was a lot of things—not all of them good—but the man had always been fiercely protective of Ivy.
“She’s not in the ballroom,” Bennett shouted back. “We need to check outside and see if—”
A black curtain parted a few feet away and he saw the door that had been hidden behind it, a door that had just been opened by…Ivy?
She stood there, wearing her gorgeous green dress, and he saw the blood on her. Blood on her stomach. On her hands. Even on her leg.
For an instant, the whole world seemed to stop for Bennett.
“Help,” Ivy said, her voice sounding hoarse.
The bastard found her. He hurt her.
Bennett was already bounding toward her.
“
Help!”
Ivy screamed.
Heads whipped toward her, but she was already running back through that doorway and racing into the corridor there. He rushed after her, yelling her name, but she didn’t stop.
Then he saw why.
Ivy fell to her knees beside the prone figure of Laxton Crenshaw.
The blood was his. It was his!
“Help me!” Ivy demanded. She was putting pressure on the councilman’s wounds.
Bennett dropped right beside her. Others were rushing into the corridor. “Get an ambulance!” Bennett bellowed when he saw Detective Trout following him. Then he helped Ivy.
Thank Christ…the blood isn’t hers.
But the killer had been there, and he’d left another victim in his wake.
***
He didn’t usually like to attack men. It wasn’t as much fun with them. Their skin didn’t cut as easily, the blade didn’t slide right in for them.
The thrill wasn’t the same. The release was different, less fulfilling.
He liked his ladies. His dark, fragile…beautiful ladies. He’d learned to appreciate them.
The councilman had just run into him in that darkness. The guy had been in his way, prey that he couldn’t tolerate. A few thrusts of his knife, and Laxton Crenshaw hadn’t been a problem, not any longer.
That just left me…and Ivy.
Such a wonderful surprise, to have her searching for him in the dark.
And she’d fought. He’d liked that. He never wanted his victims to just submit. Where was the fun there? He couldn’t prove his dominance if they just waited for his knife.
I gave Ivy a choice.
Because he always gave his ladies a choice. That was
his
rule. He could be good or he could be bad.
Ivy would determine her own fate.
So for now, he’d watch. He’d wait. And when the time was right…
Ivy, you will be mine.
This time, he would get to keep the woman he wanted.
She would be his perfect prey.
Until death.
***
The ambulance’s siren screeched in the night as it flew away from the scene. Ivy stood on the steps of the convention center, her gaze on that fleeing vehicle. Laxton had still been alive when he was loaded into the back of the ambulance. Would he survive until he reached the nearest hospital? She didn’t know.
“What in the hell…” Bennett murmured beside her, “happened in that corridor?”
She shivered. Her arms were bare, the only covering they had was blood. Laxton’s blood. Her dress was sleeveless and made for a ballroom, not the night. Wind blew against her, an icy touch that made her chill bumps all the worse.
“He was there,” Ivy said. Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears. She wasn’t supposed to sound that way. She wasn’t supposed to be so afraid. Her grandfather wouldn’t have been afraid.
He
never would have let the killer get away.
“I ran into the killer in that hallway.” Literally. “He’d…he’d already stabbed the councilman by then.”
His hands closed around her shoulders and Bennett turned her to face him. “Describe him. Every detail.”
“He still had on his mask and his tux. It was dark in there, and when he grabbed me, I dropped my phone so I couldn’t even use that light.” She’d have to go back for her phone. Later. When the area wasn’t a crime scene.
“He…grabbed you?” There was a barely banked fury in his voice.
Ivy swallowed the lump in her throat. “He was wearing gloves,” she recalled. Probably those fancy white gloves that so many guys wore to the balls. “I can remember what those gloves felt like when he wrapped his hands around my throat.”
“He is a fucking dead man.”
No, he wasn’t. He was a man who’d gotten away. She struggled to recall more from that terrible scene and said, “His hair was dark. I saw it, before my phone broke. So dark it was almost black.” Her chill was getting worse.
I’m going to learn your secrets
.
Your desires. I’m going to give you everything that you ever wanted.
“Ivy!”
Her head snapped up at the call and she saw her brother. Hugh was rushing toward her, pulling Shelly in his wake. Cameron was right at his side. Cameron had lost his mask and she could read the worry on his face.