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  “That left hook of yours could mess up some very expensive plastic surgery.”

  Greg’s eyes glittered. “I can tell that all you’re going to do is make jokes, so just go. I’ll see that you’re escorted out.” He began straightening papers on his desk.

  “You were always able to get to me, weren’t you?” Jack said softly. “As kids you used my who-cares attitude to get me to do whatever you were afraid to do.”

  “Which is why I’m now safely behind a desk and you’re on the streets. We’ve always made a perfect team.”

  Jack dabbed at the cut on his eye. “I take it that your psychic is to be here today and that’s why I was brought in.”

  “She—” When the phone on his desk rang, Greg picked it up, listened, then hung up. “She’s here now, just arriving.”

  “Get out the incense and the crystal balls.”

  Ignoring him, Greg went to the blinds and looked down at the lobby. “There she is.”

  Jack looked but he saw no one who he thought could be Greg’s so-called psychic. There were half a dozen female agents, all of them looking as though they were trying to solve some earth-shattering case—which they probably were—but no one who looked like a clairvoyant.

  Greg nodded toward a woman at the counter. When she turned as she pinned her visitor’s badge, Jack looked at her. She was small and curvy, with short strawberry-blonde hair. From where he was standing she looked to be a knockout. For a moment he thought that it might be rewarding, so to speak, to work with her.

  He watched her walk toward the grand staircase that many agents preferred over the elevator. As she walked, she lifted her hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear in a gesture he’d seen before.

  “I know her!” Jack said. “Or at least I’ve seen her before.” As he tried to remember, he glanced at Greg and saw that his face was red all the way to his ears, and his mouth was so tightly closed his lips were gone.

  Uh-oh, Jack thought as he looked back at the woman. Was she someone he had had an affair with? There were years of his life that were little more than a blur. After he’d run away from his father he’d spent years in a drug-induced haze. In the four years since he’d been sober he’d met many people he’d once known but now didn’t remember.

  “It was Houston, wasn’t it?” Jack said. “I met her in Houston and we…” Trailing off, he kept watching the woman and thinking that that wasn’t right. Had he ever been to bed with a psychic? Some woman who said she could read minds? Tell fortunes? Or, as Greg said, make people take off their clothes?

  Jack watched the woman reach the head of the stairs and turn toward them. When she did, newspaper headlines flashed across his mind. “The Hillbilly Honey Suspected of Murder,” he saw.

  Jack dropped the blind. “Is there a back way out of here?”

  “I’d like for you to stay and meet her,” Greg said firmly.

  Jack shot him a look. “You want me to stay and meet the Hillbilly Honey? She killed her husband for his money. And her sister-in-law.”

  “She didn’t. We have proof that she didn’t. She was—”

  Jack snorted. “She wasn’t there? Right, of course she wasn’t. Greg, I expected more of you. Just because she wasn’t there doesn’t mean she didn’t kill them. Look at the facts: Poor white trash marries into a rich family and a year later the rich husband dies.”

  “She’s spent years searching for them.” Greg took a deep breath. “She’s not what the public thinks she is, and she hasn’t done what they think she has.”

  Jack looked at Greg sharply. “You’re afraid of her, aren’t you?”

  “She’s done some things,” he said quietly. “I’ve not seen her do anything except, well, heal my shoulder, but I’ve read the reports. There’s a possibility that she can freeze people in place.”

  “Then she sticks a rock on them and heals them. A great party gag. Look, Greg, I’ll help find my father but I’m not working with a so-called psychic. You let her feel all the photos she wants and I’ll even listen to what you tell me she’s said, but I want nothing to do with the little gold digger.”

  There was a light knock on the door. “She’s here, so sit down and behave yourself or I swear I’ll call my mother.”

  Throwing up his hands in defeat, Jack took a seat as Greg opened the door. Right away he saw why Greg and this woman’s husband, and maybe the entire FBI, were taken in by her. She looked much younger than she probably was, and she had an air about her that made her seem innocent and vulnerable.

  Silently, he watched as Greg made chitchat about the beautiful spring weather. She glanced at Jack and Greg made a cursory introduction. Jack didn’t get up, just nodded in acknowledgment, and she looked away.

  Jack watched them as Greg poured her a glass of ginger ale. The Hillbilly Honey, Jack thought. There wasn’t much in life he hated more than a gold digger. He had sympathy for drug addicts and even some murderers, but for people like his relatives and everyone who’d sucked up to him when they’d learned he was rich, he had no sympathy.

  Wonder how she did it, he thought as he watched her and Greg sit down. She was across from the two men, and as Jack looked at her expensive clothes, he wondered what she’d done to get into the exclusive Montgomery family. In his father’s wealthy set, the Montgomerys were known to keep to themselves. They were often referred to as “the clan.”

  But somehow, this woman had used her curvy little bottom to worm her way into the Montgomery clan. Then she’d killed her husband. And her sister-in-law. Had the sister been an accident? Or had the woman been on to her?

  Jack looked at the “honey” as she chatted with Greg and smiled. It was a plane wreck, wasn’t it? Wonder what she did? Fuel line? A few gauges tampered with? Had she done it herself or paid someone? No, she probably did it herself. Women from her class knew how to use screwdrivers and wrenches.

  So what’s she done with all the money? he wondered. Men? Or did she like women? She probably had a father who beat her as a kid so she’d probably turned to women.

  Sociopath, he thought. Cares about no one or nothing. Her hard-knocks life had made her incapable of love.

  “Excuse me,” he heard the little honey say.

  Still smiling, feeling as though he’d seen through this charlatan, he watched her stand up and take a step toward him. Obviously, she couldn’t stand that there was a male in the room who wasn’t fawning over her.

  When she stood before him, he looked up at her pretty face, then down her body. She had on a conservative dark suit but it only accentuated her curves. She’s one hot little number, he thought as he looked back up at her face.

  Wham! In the next second she drew back her hand and struck him across the face hard.

  For your information I married my husband for love, she shouted at him so loud that his head rang. And I didn’t kill him or his sister. Putting her hands on the arms of his chair, she leaned into his face. But I have killed people. I made their heads explode. Would you like for me to do the same to you?

  Try it! Jack shouted back at her. In the next moment he felt a sharp pain in his head, but he looked at her and concentrated on her eyes, and he kept the pain from becoming unbearable.

  Seconds later, she stood up straight and looked down at him. Someone is protecting you, she said, then she turned on her heel and left the room before Greg could move to stop her.

  It took Jack a few moments to recover himself. She’d hit him on his sore mouth and it was bleeding again. “So much for your psychic,” he said as he went to the sink to wash his mouth.

  In the mirror he caught sight of Greg sitting absolutely still on the sofa. Why wasn’t he jumping up and running after the woman? Or at the very least telling Jack what he thought of him?

  “Greg?” Jack said, turning to look at his friend. When Greg didn’t so much as blink, Jack grabbed his shoulders, then instinctively drew back. Greg’s muscles were tightened into rigidity. Jack took his friend’s shoulders again and pushed him down ont