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asked.
    Jazz had paused before answering, “To be stalked.” But that was just the kind answer, the answer G. William could accept. And of course he accepted it because it came fromJazz and Jazz was the most convincing person in the world when he needed to be.
    The truth—the
real
answer—was what he wanted to say but didn’t: This is what it feels like to be one of
you
. This is what it feels like to be vulnerable. And weak. And merely human.
    This is what it feels like to be a prospect.
    Now Jazz tossed and turned in bed. On his wall were photographs of the one hundred and twenty-three people Billy Dent had admitted to murdering. Plus a photo of his mother.
    His own mother had been a prospect.
    He drifted into that twilight space between wakefulness and sleep, that place where the world is plastic and malleable and unsure.
    His own mother…
    He groaned as sleep fled from him, and stretched to grab up his jeans from the floor where he’d left them. Pawed around until he found the pocket and the card within.
    There was a gold embossed shield to the left, with the words CITY OF NEW YORK POLICE DETECTIVE . The name LOUIS L. HUGHES , with DETECTIVE beneath it, along with two phone numbers, a fax number, and an e-mail address.
    Oh, hell. Jazz reached for the phone. If he was gonna do this, he might as well enjoy waking Hughes up in the middle of the night.

CHAPTER 7
    “Well,” Connie told Jazz, doing her best to sound both forceful and casual at the same time, “obviously I’m going with you.”
    Jazz’s expression didn’t change. Connie cursed inwardly. It was so difficult to tell whether she’d gotten to him or not. He could conceal his reactions or fake them so well that even for her—even for the person who had gotten closer to him than anyone else in the world—it was impossible more often than not to tell what was going on behind those sexy and enigmatic eyes. Better luck reading a reaction from a portrait of him than the real deal.
    “You’re not going with me,” he said very calmly, with the slightest hint of a smile. That smile… was it to catch her off guard? Was it a slip on his part? Did he want her to think it was a slip? Or was it—
    “You’re such a pain sometimes,” she announced. “Would it kill you just to tell me what you’re thinking and maybe not try to manipulate me?”
    “I’m not trying to manipulate you. But you can’t come to New York with me. For one thing, your dad would go ballistic, and I don’t need that noise in my life.”
    Connie’s father made no secret of his deep and abiding loathing for Jazz. Between Jazz’s racist grandmother and Connie’s dad, she figured they had the makings of a modern-day Romeo and Juliet on their hands. Only with more blood and death than even Shakespeare’s fertile imagination could conjure.
    “I can handle my dad,” she said confidently. They were at the Hideout, Jazz’s secret sanctum in the woods outside Lobo’s Nod. It was an old moonshining shack that he’d repaired and outfitted with the bare essentials as a getaway from the rest of the world. Connie was pretty sure she was the only person he’d shared it with. She tried not to let him know how much that meant to her—he was constitutionally leery of opening himself to other people, and she didn’t want to frighten him away. Snuggled together on a beanbag chair, they were as entwined as two clothed people could be, warmed by a space heater he’d rescued from his grandmother’s basement.
    “No one can handle your dad. Besides, I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, and you shouldn’t miss school. And
besides
besides, what are you going to do while I’m off with the cops?”
    “Golly,” she chirped in her very best sorority girl impression, “maybe I’ll go shopping and buy shoes and kicky skirts and makeup! Dumbass,” she said, punching him in the shoulder and dropping her voice. “I’ll be
helping
you. You think I’m going to see the sights?”
    “I hear