Maxine leaned back in the ergonomic chair and blinked her eyes several times. You didn't blink often enough when you stared at a computer screen all day. She'd read that somewhere. It wasn't good for your vision.

The front door opened, and Storm came in, a big white bag from the bakery in one hand and the morning mail in the other. "Time to take a break!" she called. "Carbs, calories and cream filling, just what the doctor ordered."

Max sighed, pushing the chair back. It rolled on its casters from the computer desk to the middle of the floor in what used to be the living room and was now an office. If you used the term loosely. It more closely resembled an explosion in a paper-and-file-folder factory. With computers. Lots of computers.

Storm dropped the bag on her own desk, sat down and peered inside. "Mmm, I got jelly and cream filled, and now I can't decide."

"How many are in there?" Maxine asked, lifting her brows.

"Half dozen." Storm didn't look up. The doughnuts had her mesmerized.

"Better go for one of each, then."

She looked up then, brows arched. "You think?"

"Oh, yeah. Far better than the risk of making the wrong choice."

"I like the way your mind works," Stormy said, smiling, as she reached into the bag to pluck out a doughnut.

Max got out of her chair and wandered into the kitchen, which was still a kitchen, where she poured two cups of fresh coffee. "Did you ever wonder just how screwed up I must be to be in the same town, in the same house, in the same rut, after all this time?"

"No."

Max smiled at the sound of the word, because it was doughnut muffled. She carried the two mugs back into the room in time to see Stormy taking another bite and closing her eyes in ecstasy.

Max set Storm's cup down in front of her and bent to help herself to a doughnut, knowing they would vanish if she didn't.

"You care to elaborate on that answer, or are you just gonna go with the one-syllable reply?"

Stormy swallowed, licked her lips, took a sip of her coffee. She still had a ring of powdered sugar around her mouth, but what the hell?

"Who wouldn't be in the same house? Shoot, girl, your mother gave it to you free and clear. You'd have been nuts not to take it. And I fail to see any rut. You're running not one, but two, businesses. Both turning a profit, I might add."

"Barely," Maxine muttered. She sighed, dunked her doughnut and took a big soggy bite. When she finished, she dropped the first of her two bombshells. "Web page design is getting boring, Stormy. To tell you the truth, I'm thinking about dropping it."

Stormy blinked. "Dropping it?"

"Closing it down."

Setting her coffee mug on her desk, Storm got to her feet. "Why would you do that? That's where you earn most of your income."

"Yeah, but it was never my life's work. I mean, it's okay. I'm good at it, but it's not my dream job. Never was."

"So what are you telling me? They're hiring over at Spies-R-Us?"

Max shot her a quick glance. "Don't even joke about that."

"Then what?" Storm threw her hands in the air, turning in a slow circle and searching the ceiling for an explanation. "I thought this side business of yours was enough to satisfy your inner snoop, Max. I mean, hasn't it been?"

"No, it hasn't. If anything, it's only whetted my appetite." Max had kind of stumbled into the realm of Internet crime investigations when one of her Web clients asked her advice in dealing with a cyber-stalker a year ago. Since men, she had helped track down a half-dozen others by tracing them through their super-anonymous, supposedly untraceable screennames. She had even helped to bust up several hoax rings revolving around so-called paranormal sciences. Scam artists who went online hawking everything from psychic readings to ghost-busting powders. Which was perfectly legal until you tied them to their partners, who harassed and sometimes frightened gullible people into believing they needed otherworldly help, then fed information to the scam artist, who used it to convince the client he was really in touch with "the other side."

All of this had given Max the opportunity to touch base with her favorite cop now and then. Not that that had any bearing on her decision to move into this line of work.

"So what would you say if I told you I was thinking about embarking on another little enterprise?" she asked.

Storm turned to face her, searched her face warily. "A third business?"

"I'm dropping the Web designing services. So it would only be a second business. And, in fact, it would be more like taking the existing one to a new, higher level."

"What do you have in mind?"

Max wiped the doughnut sugar from her fingers onto her jeans and went to her desk. She opened a drawer, took out a sheet of paper, slid it across the surface. "Take a look at this and tell me what you think."

Storm came closer, leaned over it, reading aloud. "Maxine Stuart, Licensed Private... " Then she looked up. "Licensed private investigator? Since when?"

"It just came today. I sent in the application months ago."

"Maxie... "

"Look, I know. It sounds way over the top, but if you think about it, it's what we've been doing anyway. Just in cyberspace instead of real time."

"They can't shoot you in cyberspace." Storm rolled her eyes. "Who else knows about this?"

Max shrugged.

"Maxine Stuart, who else knows?"

Max lowered her eyes. "Well, Lou knows."

"Lou. Lou Malone. I figured as much. He probably encouraged this, didn't he?"

"Well, he, uh, helped me with the application process. He was one of my references."

"Uh-huh."

"Look, I'm good at this. And Lou's already got a few cases ready to toss my way."

"Hell. I don't know why you don't just jump that man's bones and get it over with, Max."

"I intend to. Just as soon as I can get him cornered." Stormy's eyes widened, and Max smiled in sheer nasty delight "But one thing has nothing to do with the other. If I was doing this just to get closer to Lou, I'd have joined the force. It would have been easier."

"Yeah. Right. Isn't the old crock due to retire pretty soon?"

There was a throat clearing, and they both turned to see the old crock himself standing in the doorway. Max couldn't judge for sure how long he'd been standing there, how much he might have heard. She figured the man's bones would more easily succumb to any jumping she might attempt if she could sneak up on them. Take 'em by surprise, that sort of thing.

He was too thin, so his suit looked a little on the baggy side. "Am I interrupting anything?"

Stormy turned her back to him and made wide eyes at Max. Max ignored her. "Come on in, Lou. Did you smell the doughnuts or what?"

He didn't smile, didn't tease her in return the way he usually did. "It's, uh-kinda delicate."

Frowning, Maxine walked over to where he stood. He didn't wait. Instead he turned, stepped out onto the porch. When she joined him mere and closed the door behind her, he said, "I'll buy you a cup of coffee. We can talk there. All right?"

"Sounds serious."

"Yeah. I need your help with something. It's sorta right up your alley, Max, or I'd never ask."

"Why not?"

"Why not what?"

"Why would you never ask?"

He drew a breath, sighed heavily. '"Cause you're brand-new at this kind of thing, and I sort of had it in mind to start you out with something a little more milk toast. Background checks on suspects, shit like that."

"Got that much faith in me, do you?"

"You're a kid."

"I'm twenty-five."

"Like I said... "

"Shut up, Lou." She yanked open his car door and sat beside him. He didn't take her to the coffee shop, as she had expected. Instead he pulled around the drive-through window of a fast food joint and got two large coffees, one black, one with two creams and three sugars. She smiled as he rattled off the order without asking her. He knew exactly how she liked her coffee.

His bones, she mused, were practically jumped already.

He drove to the nearest parking area, shut the car off and turned in his seat to face her.

"Gee, Lou, if you want to take me parking, maybe we should aim for something just a little more secluded."

His face colored. "Yeah, right."

"There's this old gravel bed south of town where everyone used to go to make out back in high school. You know it?"

He avoided her eyes. "Of course I know it."

"Mmm. So you've been there?"

"Yeah. Shining lights on kids who ought to know better and sending 'em home to their mammas. Now, do you wanna talk business or do you wanna play, Maxie?"

She wanted to play. With him. Now. But she'd obviously pissed him off. He always got pissed off when she flirted with him, even a little bit. "Fine. Business. Go ahead." She sat back in her seat and sipped her coffee.

"Okay. There's this woman. She's a friend of mine. A good friend."

Fingernails raked across a chalkboard inside her head, and Maxine sat up straighter.

"Her name is Lydia Jordan. She runs Haven House."

Max blinked now as her mind filled in the blanks. "That's that girls' shelter downtown? For runaway teens in trouble?"

He nodded.

"But I thought that was run by a pair of former prostitutes."

Again he nodded.

She lifted her eyebrows and stared at him. "This friend of yours is a hooker?"

"Was a hooker."

"And how the hell is it that you know her so well?" she asked, and she really didn't care how bitchy it sounded.

He smiled at her. "Hell, Maxie, if I wasn't old enough to be your father, I'd almost think you were jealous."

"You're nowhere near old enough to be my father." He was, technically, but she wasn't about to admit it.

He sighed, shaking his head. "I met Lydia the first time I picked her up for soliciting. I was a rookie, and she couldn't have been more than eighteen. I must have brought her in a dozen times over the years before she finally got herself straightened out. I didn't know Kimbra as well. But the two of them met on the streets, became best friends and helped each other start over."

"That's the partner? The other half of the dynamic duo?"

He nodded. "They got legitimate jobs, took classes, and once they had themselves taken care of, they reached back down to help other girls like them. I think they'd both spent some time at Haven House before they took it over. Anyway, none of that matters right now."

"Of course it matters. Just how close are you to this Lydia person, Lou?"

He sent her a look she rarely saw on him. An angry one that told her very clearly that she was crossing some unseen, unspoken boundary line and that she'd damn well better back off.

She sighed and looked away.

"Kimbra Sykes is dead. Murdered. And Lydia has somehow got it into her head that some kind of supernatural forces were involved."

Maxine was unimpressed. "Did a lot of drugs while she was turning tricks, did she?"

"No. But she's always been incredibly superstitious."

She wanted to ask him why the hell he thought she should care how superstitious this ex-whore might be. She hated the woman. Instantly, automatically hated her. "So what makes you think I can do anything to help her?"

He put a hand on her shoulder. "Max, have I done something to make you mad at me?"

"No." She didn't even look at him as she spoke.

"Well then, how come you're sitting there puckered up like a prune?" He only sighed when she refused to answer. Then he shook his head. "I just thought that-hell, you know all about this kind of stuff. Remember that woman who thought her house was haunted, and how she hired that Internet ghost-buster to come clear it out for her?"

"And it turned out he was the one haunting it? Yeah, I remember."

"You knew. You knew right off the bat it was a hoax. And you were able to convince that woman, mostly because you knew so much about the subject. You went in there telling her that a real ghost would never behave the way hers was-remember? Had her eating out of your hand!"

She shrugged, warming just a little at his praise. "I'm pretty good when I know my subject."

"And you know this subject You and your skeptical mind, always having to dig into anything you come upon that doesn't seem quite right Learn all you can about it and then proceed to debunk it."

She shrugged. "It's not that I don't believe in the paranormal. I just know that ninety-nine percent of the ghosts, goblins, psychics and channelers out there are con artists. I believe what I can see with my own eyes, not what people tell me. And even when I see it with my own eyes, I don't believe much of what the government or any other authority figure tells me. If that makes me a skeptic, then I'm a skeptic."

"You're a skeptic."

She shrugged. "I still don't see what you want me to do for your... friend."

"I want you to convince her that her best friend was not murdered by a vampire."

Maxine's head came up very slowly. She met his eyes, looking for the hint of humor that would tell her he was joking. But it wasn't there.

"Vampire?"

"Yeah. Is that the craziest freaking thing you've ever heard or what?"

She nodded vaguely, but in her mind, she was back at that burned-out building, five years ago, with the soldiers, the lights. Hell. She had always known it would come back to haunt her. She knew things she shouldn't know. Things no one should know.

"When can I meet this Lydia person?"

"Then you'll do it?" he asked.

She met his eyes, swallowed hard. "For you? Sure, Lou. You know I can't say no to you. I just wish you'd get around to asking me for something a little more fun."

He laughed uneasily, patted her on the head and looked away. Then he started the car up again and drove her back home.