Page 39 of Killer Body

I nod. I even try to smile as he unlocks the car door and looks down into my eyes. “Tell me what I can do. How can I help?”

“You know.”

He touches my arm, and I want to fall against him, the way I did that crazy night at the stupid holiday party, with too much champagne and too much Dennis. Just enough of both to make me want more.

“How, Rikki?”

“Killer Body.” I feel as if I’m spitting the words in his face. This rage will kill me—or someone else—if I’m not careful. “Find out everything you can for me. Please.”

“Use my connections through the newspaper, you mean, to acquire information about something that isn’t a newspaper story?”

“It could be a newspaper story. Depends on what we find.”

“But that’s not what you’re asking, is it?”

His car looks less dusty than usual. I realize he must have actually taken the time to wash it recently, then realize why; he drove it to a funeral last week.

Now, here I am, asking one of the most ethical reporters I’ve ever known—my supervisor—to compromise his ethics so that I can feel I’m avenging Lisa’s death. I know it’s not right, but I can’t help it.

“I guess that’s what I’m asking,” I say.

“For me to spy for you?”

“For you to help me dig up background.”

“That you hope will reveal something dirty about Killer Body?”

I meet his gaze. “Yes.” Shame dilutes but doesn’t destroy my resolve. “I can’t help it, Den.”

“Of course, any background I dig up for you on Killer Body, Inc. might help us learn more about what happened to Julie Larimore.”

“That’s true.” We both know that’s not why I’m asking. He opens the car door, and I wish I could apologize to him or to at least explain. “Den—”

“Yeah?” Those lie-detector eyes again, so pale in the harsh light that they’re barely any color at all.

“It’s a secondary emotion.”

“Let’s hope so.” His scowl registers impatience. “Get in.”

I do as he directs me, picking up a folder from the leather seat. The Volvo holds one of those medicinal vanilla scents indigenous to the car-wash business. He didn’t just hose off the outside; he paid for an inside-and-out wash, complete with this well-meaning, horrible scent. Thank God he’s going to the otherside of the car. I don’t want him to see me right now. I need time to rearrange myself.

To keep from thinking, I look down at the folder. I start to stick it in the back seat, but then I see the words he’s scrawled on the outside.Killer Body.

I hear a soft moan, realize it is mine. It doesn’t matter, not with this gift I hold in my hands. I open it up, and, damn, what a collection of research it is. Biographies of Bobby Warren; photos of him in his weightlifter days. Pages on Julie Larimore. Yellow sticky notes, in Hamilton’s bold scrawl, many of them quotes. He did more than research; he talked to people. It hits me now that he’s gotten in and is sitting here, beside me in the car, watching my reaction.

I turn to him, feeling incredulous, confused and so damned grateful.

“How did you justify doing all of this?” I ask in a voice so shaky I barely recognize it as my own.

“I haven’t.”

“Haven’t justified it?”

“Not yet, but I’m hoping it’ll happen. Otherwise, I’ll have to jump off the fourth floor of theVoice.”

I fight tears. I fight throwing my arms around him and thanking him for me, for my family, for my cousin and my aunt. No, forget that—for me, me, me.

Instead, I say, “You’re a good man.”