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“My sitter can tell you what time I got home. I didn’t see anybody at work, and everybody else here had gone to bed.”
“Does your little brother dress up on Halloween? Go trick or treating?”
“He’s fourteen,” I said. “So, no.”
“Did the security guard see you leave work? Or the cleaning crew?”
“No. No one.” Jace stirred restlessly. “Why? Did something happen last night? You still haven’t told me why you suspect something bad has happened to Dylan. Surely this can’t all be because he’s been gone since yesterday. He could have gone out of town or be visiting a friend. Or maybe he stayed over with some guy he met at a bar somewhere. It’s not that unusual, you know. Dylan isn’t always…a reliable person.”
That was the understatement of the century. I fixed my gaze on him again. “Mr. Malone arranged with a group of his friends to meet at a room he’d been staying in around nine o’clock last evening. When they arrived, they found his front door standing open, and the room showed signs of a violent struggle. There was a great deal of blood on his bed and on his carpet. Too much blood to be anything but a homicide, though there was no body. We’re still checking for a match, and we’re investigating his disappearance.”
“Oh, my God!”
He was already paler than I liked, but now he grew alarmingly white as all the blood seemed to drain from his face. He began trembling violently and looked like he might pass out. I asked him if he needed a glass of water. He shook his head but fell back on the sofa, putting an arm over his eyes.
“Why so strong a reaction, Jace? Were you in love with him? Even after all he did to you?”
He raised a tearstained face to me, and I felt like a bully. He was obviously in pain, and I was tormenting him when what I wanted to do was to take him in my arms and just hold him. Damn it, I needed to get a handle on this attraction I was feeling for him.
“Dylan is bad for me in every possible way and always has been since the day I met him,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “But yes, I love him. I’m notinlove with him anymore, I think, but I’ll always care about him. He’s a liar and a manipulator, but he’s also beautiful and passionate and fiercely talented. And Iusedto be in love with him, so much I thought it would kill me. There’s no way he’s dead. I can’t—Iwon’tbelieve it! All that intensity, that fire, couldn’t have been simply snuffed out like it never existed. There has to be some terrible mistake.”
Chapter Five
Jace
“Tell me how long it’s been since you met Dylan,” the good-looking detective was asking me. A few minutes had passed since he’d told me they were investigating Dylan’s disappearance as a homicide. He had started his questioning again after giving me some time to pull myself together. His partner had arrived by that time, the one who’d been to see Mrs. Anderson.
The detective was badgering me, really, when all I wanted to do was curl up on the floor and cry. Dylan couldn’t be gone. Hecouldn’tbe.
“Dylan’s friend Toby said you and Dylan went way back.”
“Well, Toby is crazy. I’d never liked that little asshole much and now I remember why.”
Ignoring my little outburst, he simply persisted. “That doesn’t answer my question,” he prompted. “How long ago did you and Dylan Malone meet?”
“Despite whatTobysays, we don’t go all that far back. I met Dylan about a year ago, not long after I arrived in New York City. We were at the same party. Actually, he told me later that he’d been visiting someone in the building where my friend lived, and he said he’d simply crashed it. He admitted that he’d seen me in the lobby and followed me in.”
“That seems a little stalkerish.”
“At the time, I thought it was the most romantic thing I ever heard.”
I could still see Dylan in my mind’s eye like it had been yesterday. He was tall, maybe six two, and athletic looking, but not like hespent all his time at a gym. His hair was as black as coal and wavy, falling casuallyacross his forehead. His eyes were deepest brown, nearly black, and he had a killer smile and strong white teeth. He was almost too handsome to be real. I’d never forget how we met, not just because of what he’d come to mean to me later, but because as he sidled up beside me at the party, he’d delivered the worst pickup line in the history of the world.
“You look so familiar. Didn't we take a class together? I could've sworn we had chemistry.”
I turned in amused disbelief and looked him up and down. He didn’t look as cheesy as that bad pickup line would seem to indicate—in fact, he looked damn near perfect. If I had asked God to design me the perfect man, this man would have been it. I cocked an eyebrow at him.“Really? That’s what you’re going with?”
His smile got wider. “No? Okay, I have more. Let me see…I was going to go with the one about heaven must be missing an angel, but with all that blond hair, I figured you might have heard that one before. Hey, I googled these. They’re supposed to be sure fire.”
“You know, making a good first impression is important, and you’re so not doing that.”
“He speaks! ‘O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art as glorious to this night…as is a wingèd messenger of heaven.’”
I folded my arms and glared at him. “You can quote Shakespeare and yet you decided to go with the chemistry line?”
He looked surprised. “You knew that was Shakespeare? I’m impressed.”
“My dad’s a Lit teacher and was the head of the school’s Drama Club. I saw Romeo and Juliet performed several times. I even played Romeo once. Just a high school production, but not too shabby, if I do say so myself.”
