He stood beside the window. He had uncovered it, and the sheet lay across the chair.
Viktor wore a pair of jeans and nothing else. The moonlight suffused his pale torso and shone in his dark hair, so that he looked like a fallen angel.
Even his expression was mournful.
“Viktor,” she murmured.
“My love,” he replied, turning to her, his eyes caressing her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I was just watching the flashlights moving in the woods,” he said. “The police are looking for answers.”
“I’m curious too,” Dru admitted.
“But you already know who killed the man,” Viktor said, a crease appearing in his forehead.
“Something’s bothering me though,” Dru said. “Why was Costello here? Why was Sullivan here? They weren’t comet-watching, or looking for a quiet getaway. What was the big payday?”
“Does it matter?” he asked.
“What if there’s still something else going on?” she replied. “What if we’re still not safe?”
There was a blur and a breeze, and then he was holding her again.
The clean, masculine scent of him was intoxicating.
“You will always be safe,” he told her. “You are mine now. I will protect you.”
But who will protect me from you?
“I’m still curious,” she said instead.
“Ah, now that’s different,” he said, sitting up. “Should we investigate?”
She smiled at his enthusiasm. “Yeah, let’s investigate.”
“Where do we start?” he asked.
She thought back to everything that had happened since killer and victim had arrived.
“Someone deciphered my grandmother’s journal,” she said, watching closely for his reaction. “They slid the pages under my door.”
A fleeting emotion slid across his face and echoed in her own chest - flashing bright like a penny falling into a pool and then disappearing in the depths.
“And neither one of those guys seemed like they were big readers,” Dru continued. “So it must have been one of the other guests. Who do you think it could be?”
“I don’t know,” he said, getting back out of bed and grabbing his shirt off the bedside table.
She watched him put it on and button it up.
Whatever she had felt, or thought she’d felt just now, he was trying to hide it from her.
Was there something in the journal that he didn’t want her to know?
Was he Michael?
She thought back.
When the journal was lost, Viktor was the one who had found it behind her desk.
What if that had just been sleight of hand?
He was capable of inhuman speed. It would have been easy for him to take the journal and return it…
“Did you decipher the journal?” she asked him directly.
“No, Drucilla,” he told her, his face snapping to hers, his eyes slightly widened in surprise. “Why would you think that?”
“No reason,” she said, shrugging. “You were afraid for me to read it. I thought maybe you swiped it, deciphered it to be sure there was nothing in it that would upset me, and put it back.”
“To protect you?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Interesting,” he said. “Would that have been okay with you?”
“It would have been understandable,” she said.
“Well, it didn’t happen,” he said.
He was telling the truth, she was sure of it.
“I think I’d like to read the whole thing,” she said. “I never had a chance in all the excitement. Maybe there’s some reason it was taken.”
“Sure,” he said lightly and bent to pull on his socks.
Was he indifferent? Or was he avoiding her eyes?
“I’m just going to clean up and get dressed,” she told him. “And then we can go check some stuff out.”
She got up, grabbed her clothing, and headed for his bathroom.
She was amazed to find that her clothes were entirely intact. He had removed them from her so swiftly that she had assumed they would be damaged. But there wasn’t so much as a missing button.
Well, it’s obviously not the first time he’s done that.
She tamped down that thought and readied herself as quickly as she could. When she came out Viktor was leaned against the wall, waiting.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey, yourself,” he replied, pulling her close for a kiss.
The world around her disappeared for the second time in a single night. Dru felt her whole body fill with warmth.
But Viktor pulled back slightly. “You want to do some sleuthing before your shift begins, right?”
“Y-yes,” she said, trying to remember what it was that had seemed so important a minute ago.
“Why don’t you go grab the journal pages?” Viktor asked. “I’ll clear off my desk and we can spread out here.”
“Sounds good,” she said, still gazing into his eyes.
He chuckled and stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb.
“Go on, Dru,” he said. “I can’t have you resenting me later for seducing you when you could have been crime solving.”
“I know you’re teasing me, but I really do want to read the journal,” she said, pulling herself together and taking a step back.
“Pity,” he said, arching an eyebrow.
She laughed and headed for the corridor, while her resolve still held.
The bond between them was strange and new. It felt good to remove herself from him just for a moment, to confirm that she still existed in his absence.
At the same time, she felt the lack of him yawning open inside her, like her heart was being stretched around an iceberg.
Never let a man own you, Dru. Always hold something back.
Her mother’s advice was useless here. She wasn’t sure she could hold anything back if she tried.
She had just reached the door of her own room when Channing came huffing and puffing up the back stairs.
“What’s going on?” she asked him.
He pulled her into the stairwell and looked around feverishly, as if someone might be listening.
“They’re coming for Viktor,” he hissed. “I couldn’t hold them off any longer. They want to question him. They want to check his medical condition.”
“Shit,” Dru said.
“We have to warn him,” Channing said.
They stumbled up the staircase and into the hall toward Viktor’s suites. But Officer Wagner and his partner, Officer Clemens had come up the main staircase and were already knocking on the door to the Sapphire room.
Dru held her breath.
Viktor would think it was her. He would come to the door unprepared.
She had no idea what would happen if he had to submit to a medical examination, but she was pretty sure that the lack of a bullet wound would be the least of his worries.
She closed her eyes and tried to speak to him through their bond, to warn him, unsure if that was even something she could do, but too desperate not to try.
It’s the police, Viktor…
But she felt nothing. It was as if the thread between them had been pulled too taut with the physical distance.
She watched helplessly as the door swung open.