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struggles. She continued laughing even as she choked, and finally she stopped.
    He looked down. His hands were still bloodstained.
    He slowly parted the curtain of hair, expecting to deal with the usual ending. She would be dead and it would be his fault. But this time, it wasn’t his traitorous wife.
    Nikki Taylor opened her eyes and stared up at him. He drew back onto his haunches in shock, letting go the thick strands of dark hair. She lay there, with a half smile, those dark brown eyes calm and assessing. His heartbeat thudded into a regular rhythm as she raised her hands to him. And her touch was very warm. Tender. She put his bloody finger in her mouth and sucked.
    “The daiquiri tasted good,” she said, “but now I want to taste you.”
    Rick jerked up with a start, exhaling a long rush of air from his lungs. His heart was racing madly and he ran a hand across his forehead, wiping off the perspiration. He kicked away the bedsheets so the fan overhead could cool him down.
    Crossing his arms behind his head, he broodingly stared at the shadowy moving blades as they went round and round. He would never conquer his ghosts. How long had it been since he had this nightmare? It returned in spurts and fadedfor long stretches, until he was lulled into forgetting. Then, it would spring out of its dark prison, like a Jack-in-the-box.
    Only, this time, it wasn’t really a nightmare. It had a different ending. She was in it. He stared downward in the darkness. It wasn’t fear that had roused him from sleep. A nightmare wouldn’t give a man this kind of reaction; he was too old to deal with waking up like a teenager with raging hormones. He turned over onto his front abruptly.
    The fan was small relief to his heated body, and he knew he wouldn’t be falling back to sleep for a while. He turned to look at the alarm clock. Barely four in the morning. Muttering a sharp expletive, he buried his face in his pillow, trying to block out the image of Nikki Taylor sucking on his finger.
    “I want to taste you.”
    He cursed and turned over again. The semidarkness reminded him of her. The fan caressed like her hair did. The sheets tangled like her legs were around him. He needed relief.
    “Nikki Taylor,” he said her name out loud. He thought about the way she ate, and the release he sought and received was strangely more satisfying than the past weekend’s excess.

Chapter Three
    R ick didn’t go jogging that morning, and that put him in a bad mood. He didn’t like breaking his routine without a good reason. A nightmare and a stranger weren’t good enough reasons.
    Today he would get the results from that glass at the restaurant and he would have something concrete on Nikki Taylor. She might turn out to be exactly what she claimed, but he doubted it. Those questions she’d asked Erik yesterday were too clever. Besides, the replies she gave intrigued him even more. The vague description of her story, about saving a man in trouble, about disappearing files and political investigations—very general, and yet almost seemingly given to catch his interest. He would like to go a round of questions and answers with the mysterious woman.
    When he had one of those nightmares, he had one place to go lick his wounds. His study. He rebuilt Ricardo into Rick Harden there. When he felt the merest hint of a crack exposing any softness, all he needed to do was enter this room and be reminded of what was at stake.
    That woman had somehow slipped through and gotten inside his head because not only was he sure he was seeing her everywhere, now he was dreaming of her. He needed a dose of reality. And what he had in his study served as that reminder.
    So instead of breathing in fresh air and sunshine at a punishing pace, he spent the extra hours in the shadowy secrecyof his den, with the flickering computer screen the only light in the room. This was his private sanctuary. No one was allowed in here.
    This was his reality, what made him as he was