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  “Children!” Suzie exploded. “You’d want to have children read something like that?”

  “I read them as a child and I came out normal,” Fiona said, defending her father.

  “If this is going to turn into a catfight, let me know. For some reason, I have an extreme aversion to cats.”

  Fiona thought that was a very funny statement, but Suzie, who didn’t know him, didn’t understand and didn’t laugh.

  “So you have the stories on floppy?” Ace asked.

  “All of them. And The Five—well, I guess it’s The Four at the moment—are going to get into my apartment in New York tonight and get the disk. Jean will print it out and fax me the pages as soon as possible.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Suzie said, smiling.

  Ace reached across the table and took Fiona’s hand in his. “If your friends live all over the U.S., then that means they’ve stayed in New York since … since all this began. They’re staying until they know you’re safe.”

  With her head down, Fiona nodded. She didn’t want to look into his eyes or she might start crying, but she didn’t let go of his hand.

  “I think maybe friends like them are worth more than the reputation of a woman you never knew,” Ace said quietly.

  “Right,” Suzie said cheerfully. “And that they’re willing to risk their own necks to break into your apartment, which must be under police quarantine, and risk getting involved in two brutal murders—three if you count Rose—as well, is a real show of friendship.”

  At the end of that little assessment, both Ace and Fiona were looking at her with their mouths open.

  When she’d recovered enough to speak, Fiona stood. “I have to call Jean and tell her not to go. It’s too dangerous.”

  Ace pulled her down to the chair; then he went to get the cell phone. But when Fiona called her friend, she only got her answering machine. “Too late,” she said, looking at Ace. “They must have already gone. What is wrong with me that I didn’t think of this? If Jean gets caught, I’ll never forgive myself. I’ll—” Pulling her into his arms, Ace held her tightly. After a moment, Suzie stood up and went into the house.

  “Don’t think about this,” he whispered, “because tonight I’m going to make love to you. I have wanted you from the first moment I saw you, and I have waited long enough. For one whole night we’re going to put all this aside and we’re just going to enjoy each other. There’s cold champagne in the fridge and the water in the tub will be very hot. Are you listening to me?”

  She could only nod against his shoulder. Oh, yes, she was listening, listening with every cell in her body. “Tonight,” she whispered. “Tonight.”

  Eighteen

  Bad didn’t begin to describe the mood of Ace and Fiona the next morning as they got into the Jeep and headed for Kendrick Park. Fiona wanted to sit in the back with the bags they’d put in the car the night before, but Suzie insisted she sit back there, so the front seats were occupied by two people who weren’t speaking to each other.

  After last night when he’d made his declaration of intention to make love to her, Fiona had been nothing but a quivering mass. It was embarrassing to be her age and certainly no virgin and yet suddenly find herself thinking about sex as though it were her first time. When she thought about it, she didn’t know when she’d started lusting after him. But then if she were honest with herself, it was probably at the airport when he came at her with the double row of teeth attached to his arm. There’d been something truly primitive in that situation, something very Tarzan and Jane, that appealed to her.

  Of course since then, there had been the days spent in each other’s company. So, all in all, last night his hot words had done to her what no amount of touching had ever done. She could have ripped his clothes off and leaped on top of him right there beside the pool. Then in the pool. And in the kitchen. And in …

  But there had been Suzie. For days and days there had just been the two of them, but now suddenly there was another person: Suzie in her tiny shorts with her bouncing blonde ponytail, with her high firm breasts that didn’t jiggle when she moved. Whether or not parts of her were real, the fact that she was actually there was certainly real enough.

  “What’s your husband doing?” Ace had asked Suzie last night by the pool. “Won’t he be worried about you?”

  “He’s having an affair with his secretary, and this is their day together,” Suzie said without blinking. “Besides, you’re not going to get rid of me. I deserve a cut of this.”

  Before Fiona could explode, Ace put his hand on her arm. “If we did find these lions, we’d give them to a museum. No one is going to make a profit from this. All we want to do is clear our names.”

  Suzie gave him a little smile. “You cut me out and I’ll tell the police you’re here and that another body is in your house.”

  It was Fiona’s turn to calm Ace down. “In that case, we’d love to have you,” she said as sweetly as she could. “So maybe tonight you’d like to help us get rid of Rose’s body.” She hoped that this prospect would send Suzie running to the front door.

  “Sure,” Suzie said with a smile. “How about acid in the bathtub? Or should we dismember the corpse and stuff it in a trunk?”

  Ace gave Fiona a raised-eyebrow look as though to say, I told you so. “Speaking of trunks,” he said, “I think I’ll check the fax machine.”

  “Me too,” Fiona said quickly as she looked at Suzie. “He can’t do anything if I’m not there to help him.” With that she ran into the house after Ace, and once they were in the dining room, where he was sorting map pages, she opened her mouth to speak, but he put his finger to his lips in warning.

  What do we do to get rid of her? Fiona wrote on the back of one of the fax sheets that did not contain the correct map.

  Make her number four? Ace wrote back.

  “Very funny,” she said aloud as she took the pages from his hand and began to piece them together.

  But then her hand touched his and instantly, electricity flashed between them.

  “So how’re the maps coming?” Suzie said from the doorway. “Got everything pieced together yet?”

  “Just about,” Ace said through clenched teeth, then stood between Suzie and the sheet of maps spread on the table so she couldn’t see anything. But Suzie didn’t seem to want to see them and soon wandered into the living room, where she could see but not necessarily hear everything.

  We have to do something about Rose, Ace wrote. We can’t leave her here when we leave in the morning. Any ideas?

  This is out of my experience. What would you do if she were a bird?

  Put her back into the nest so her mother could find her.

  After Ace wrote that, he and Fiona looked at each other; then they smiled. “We’ll take her home,” Fiona whispered. “Let Lennie deal with her.”

  What followed after that, Fiona didn’t like to remember. She and Ace spent a couple of hours piecing together the maps that Ace’s little girl relatives kept sending through the fax machine. “Don’t they have regular bedtimes?” Fiona snapped at eleven-thirty when she was yawning. The events of the day had pretty much worn her out, and she wanted nothing more than to …

  She looked across the table at Ace. She wanted nothing more than to climb into bed with this delicious man and …

  As he often did, he seemed to be reading her thoughts as he reached across the table and took her hand; then his fingers began inching up her arm.

  But then Suzie sneezed and the spell was broken.

  At twelve-thirty P.M., Ace decided that it was dark enough and quiet enough to take Rose down the street and leave her in her own house. He tried to persuade Suzie that she should remain behind; in fact, he tried to get Fiona to stay behind too, but neither woman would listen to him. And Fiona was ready to murder Suzie when the blonde woman reached out and grabbed the front of Ace’s trousers.

  “Keys,” she said, turning to Fiona. “He has the car keys with him. He was going to le