Then Lazar and Novak had murdered his brother, and he had very suddenly forgotten that sex existed. He'd been sort of relieved by the frozen, floating feeling. Like being a disembodied brain. Not exactly peace, but close enough. It was good that his body had been cooperating in directing all of his energy into his investigation. Then Raine showed up, and all of a sudden his libido was making up for lost time.
The cell phone rang, and he jerked in his chair as if he'd received an electric shock. He checked the number on the display, disgusted to note that his hand was trembling.
Connor McCloud. Great. Just the guy to cheer him up. He enabled the digital speech spectrum inversion, punched in the code that decrypted Connor's transmission and hit “talk” with a grunt of resignation. “Yeah.”
“I just got word that the gun from the Corazon murder went missing yesterday” Connor said, without preamble.
Seth waited for more explanatory info, but none was form-coming. “Corazon?” he prompted.
Connor made an impatient sound. “You ever watch the news?”
“Uh...”
“Never mind,” Connor snapped. “Gorgeous supermodel got wasted in her waterfront penthouse last August. Does that ring a bell?”
“Oh. Her. Yeah.” Vaguely. He'd seen her beautiful face
splashed across every magazine in the supermarket checkout lines. Belinda Corazon, 1980-2002. Christ, she was young. Only a zombie could have missed the Corazon murder. He almost qualified, but not quite. “What does a dead supermodel have to do with us?”
“Pay attention, for God's sake. Remember when I told you that Jesse and I were following up on rumors that Lazar was brokering stolen murder weapons from famous trials?”
Seth grimaced. “I can't believe people really buy stuff like that.”
“Believe it. The world is full of sick bastards who have way too much money. The point is, I think there's a good chance that our boy commissioned that theft. And I can guess who he got it for, too.”
“Who?” Seth demanded, impatient.
But Connor was being coy and mysterious. “Where's Lazar?”
“Stone Island,” Seth responded without hesitation. He had personally planted a powerful, remote-controlled microwave transponder in every vehicle in Victor's fleet. Lazar's silver Mercedes had arrived at the marina at 6:59; the Colbit at the dock verified that he'd boarded the boat, and the transponder he had planted on the boat indicated that it had arrived at the island at 8:19.
“You kept track of him all day?”
“Yeah,” Seth replied. “In the office till 2:45, two-hour power lunch at the Hunt Club with the Laurent Group, a meeting with Embry and Crowe from 5:30 to 6:35, then straight to the marina.”
“Anybody else go to the island tonight?”
“I don't know,” Seth said.
“What do you mean, you don't know? You planted cameras there, didn't you? Oh, hold on, now I get it. You were checking out Barbie's dream house instead, huh?”
“Fuck you,” Seth said, through gritted teeth.
“Christ, Mackey. You sex-crazed bonehead. Are you with me on this or not?”
“I can't watch the island in real time,” Seth snarled “It’s eighty-five miles away. I don't have portable power sources that can transmit that distance for more than a couple of days at a time, and security out there is too tight to sucker-up off the local power. If I want to know who came to the fucking island I have to go out there in person, gather the data, bring it back and process it”
Connor clucked his tongue. “My, my, aren't we defensive.”
“Like I said before, McCloud—”
“Yeah, yeah. Fuck me. I heard you the first time. Get your ass out there and get that data. We need to know if Lazar had a visitor between nine and ten. That would square with what my source told me.”
“What else did your source tell you?” Seth demanded.
“Curious, curious,” Connor taunted.
“Don't be an asshole,” Seth snapped.
Connor made a snorting sound that could have been a laugh. “OK. Get this. Novak had a thing for her.”
“For Corazon?” Seth was incredulous. “No way. She was too famous for a sewer rat like him. He would never have risked it”
“He risked it, evidently. Very hush-hush, of course. He sent her the crown jewels of fallen empires, solid gold death masks of famous pharaohs, the Shroud of fucking Turin, you name it. He had it bad.”
“And Lazar was the guy who procured that shit for him?”
“Bingo,” Connor said in approving tones. “You're a smart boy, when you're not zoning out in Barbie-land.”
Seth was too intrigued to respond to the jibe. “So why weren't you guys using her as bait?”
“It was a secret affair. We didn't know, and now she's dead, so get off my case, OK?”
“I'm not on your case.” Seth drummed his fingers against the table, fascinated “So Novak was the one who really wasted her?”
“Here's another juicy detail to brighten up your night, Mackey. I'll do a recap for you, since you don't watch the news. Remember Corazon's boyfriend, the ice hockey star Ralph Kinnear? He was found at the scene, naked and covered with her blood, with his fingerprints all over the murder weapon. Didn't remember a goddamn thing.”
“Ouch ,” Seth murmured.
“Yeah. Looked really bad for the poor schmuck, but guess what? Somebody called Kinnear's defense team right away. Gave them an anonymous tip to check his face for microscopic flakes of glass from an exploding ampule of soporific gas.”
Seth digested that information for a moment. “That's weird.”
“Sure was. They found the glass flakes and they found traces of the drug in his stomach, too. Ralphie's off the hook, thanks to the mystery caller. And now fee gun's gone missing. Weirder and weirder.”
“So you're thinking that Lazar stole that gun to sell to Novak? As a memento of his lost love? Christ.”
“Yeah, it's romantic, huh? Get that data, Mackey, and let me know if Lazar had a visitor tonight/'
The click of the broken connection set Seth's teeth on edge. He almost called the bastard back, just to tell him not to issue any more orders. Problem was, McCloud would probably laugh in his face. He was going straight to the island anyway. No time for stupid stuff.
That, of course, caused his mind to veer back to the most stupid stuff of all. He looked back at the sleeping woman in the monitor. Maybe Lazar had ordered her to seduce him, and she was just getting into character. That would fit with what Lazar had said after the meeting this morning—how did the bastard put it? About the mixing of business and pleasure. How the charming Raine would be glad to help him find the perfect balance, if he liked. If he liked. A laugh jerked out of him, so rusty from disuse that it sounded more like a cough. Lazar had seen just exactly how much he “liked.” And that sucked.
It was well known that Lazar got off on providing sexual entertainment for friends and business associates. It bound them to him and gave him power over them. He had wondered what he would do if Lazar tried to tempt him that way.
Well, now he knew. Having his nose rubbed in the truth had put him in a savage, pissed-off mood all day. Raine Cameron was no innocent fairy-tale princess waiting to be rescued. His romantic fantasies were dashed.
It was better to face reality all in one bitter lump. He could no more refuse an offer to fuck Raine Cameron, no matter what she was, no matter what the terms, than he could stop breathing. Score one point for Lazar, he conceded grimly. And if he had to lose a point to that manipulative prick, he'd damn well better make it worth his while.
Now that he thought about it, the setup was liberating. He would pull her down off her pedestal and fuck her brains out. Clear the fog of lust from his brain. He was free to indulge himself without the slightest guilt. No obligations, no courtship rituals, none of that tedious man/woman stuff he didn't have the time or energy for. He could even expect a certain professional expertise on her part, given the circumstances. That was going to be interesting. In fact, he was getting hard again, just thinking about it. Hard and hot... and furious.