The hotel room door opened with the clank of silverware. She jumped up to help Karl with the breakfast tray, but he waved her back. He'd been to the breakfast buffet again. Though buffet-style eating didn't meet his culinary standards, he could fill two large plates and eat half of hers, which met his metabolic requirements. Taking buffet food back to your room was probably against hotel policy, but with a smile and a generous dose of charm, Karl usually got what he wanted.

Hope checked the clock. Nine o'clock. Any other day, she'd be late for work. Fridays, though, she usually spent at home writing. Or she did in L.A., where the True News office was the size of a boiler room, and twice as hot and noisy.

As Karl handed her a coffee, he said, "So, are you going to tell me what you saw last night?"

"Hmm?"

He stripped off his shirt and crawled back into bed. "At the club. You saw a vision or heard a thought that bothered you. And you conveniently distracted me when I asked."

"Ah. Right. Well, see, there was this jewel thief who stole a celebutante's diamond bracelet…"

"I put it back." He sipped his orange juice.

For Karl, Portia Kane's bracelet was a fat, lazy rabbit hopping in front of his nose, too tempting to ignore. Hope chased tabloid stories to satisfy her less civilized urges; he stole jewels to gratify his. They did what they had to and if when the phone rang late at night while he was out of town, Hope jumped awake with her heart in her throat, certain he was in jail, she wasn't ever going to tell him that.

"Something was bothering you last night," he said. "I'd like to know what it was."

"Just your typical niggling power blip. Everyone seems to be having such a great time at a place like that, but I'm picking up all the bad – jealousy, hurt, anger. Add alcohol and drugs and it's a chaos powder keg. I could feel my nerves twanging, waiting for the explosion."

"We could have taken Robyn and left. I'm sure she wouldn't have complained."

"But I have to get used to it, right? If my powers are getting stronger, I need to get stronger."

A low noise in his throat, a grumbling growl. Their major point of contention.

"It was only when Rob started withdrawing from the conversation that I couldn't help picking up other stuff," she said.

"And…?"

"There was another supernatural there. That's not unusual in a big crowd – especially in L.A., with the Nast Cabal based here. But this felt weird. Wrong."

"What race?"

"That was part of the problem. I got a vision, but it was just random flashes of faces."

"I'd guess necromancer, but you'd recognize that."

Hope put her plate aside, barely touched. "I have no idea what the supernatural type was, but I know he or she was thinking about Portia Kane. Something about pictures. I thought maybe they wanted to get a photo of her, but there was a definite negative vibe there."

Karl eyed her plate. As she passed it to him he said, "I presume someone like that generates a lot of ill will. Perhaps another woman wanted her picture in the papers and was preempted by Portia."

"Maybe. Anyway, for the next twelve hours, we're off duty. Work for me this morning. Then I'm having lunch with Robyn, and afterward you and I are going apartment hunting. I might invite her to help us look. Otherwise, she'll just go home and work." She paused, coffee cup at her lips. "Is that condescending? Trying to get her out and about?"

"That's why we're here."

"But she's got family. Other friends. Am I being arrogant?"

"You got the job offer, so you came. Robyn is a side project."

Project? That did sound arrogant. But at least he was supporting her decision, even if it wouldn't be his. The world had never done Karl any favors, and he saw no need to treat it any differently.

"I'll ask her to come apartment hunting then." She took the L.A. Times and passed him the Wall Street Journal. "Then, you and I can kick back, maybe take in – "

Hope stopped. There, beneath the fold, was the headline: "Portia Kane Shot Dead." She skimmed the short paragraph on the front page, then flipped to the rest inside.

"Portia's dead."

"Hmmm?"

"Portia Kane. She was murdered last night, after we left."

As Hope reached for the phone, her gaze snagged on Robyn's name in the last paragraph.

She stared at the words. Read. Reread. Then she dropped the paper and scrambled from bed. She pulled out her clothes. The paper rustled behind her as Karl retrieved it.

Robyn was missing. Last seen at the club. Now sought by the police. Hope had caught that vision, known someone in that club had Portia on his mind, and she'd brushed it off, leaving Portia to die and Robyn to be kidnapped. Or worse.

Pants half on, Hope stopped and turned to the nightstand, where her cell phone lay. Karl got to it first.

"I'll call her," he said. "You get ready."

Hope was in the bathroom, brushing her curls back into a ponytail, when she heard him speaking.

"Who is this?" he said, voice sharp.

She threw open the door.

"Where did you get this phone?" he demanded. A pause. "And where is that? What's the nearest intersection?"

Karl finished with a string of curses and punched redial, but his expression said he didn't expect anyone to answer. They didn't.

"Someone found her phone, didn't they? Where was it?"

"He wouldn't say. Hung up when I asked for a street."

"I mean where? In a bathroom? A coffee shop? On the side of a road?"

He said nothing. Just hit redial again.

"Karl?"

"Behind a trash bin," he said after a moment.

Hope was out the door before he could stop her.

One advantage to being a tabloid reporter was that Hope knew all the tricks for getting a cop to talk when the department was saying "no comment." It helped that she didn't look like an ambulance chaser… or a hard-hitting journalist. It also helped that she was under thirty, female and relatively easy on the eyes.

Hope wouldn't call herself a natural charmer, but growing up in high society – debutante season and all – gave her the basics, and Karl had taught her the rest. So after twenty minutes nursing a coffee in a shop near the police station, she managed to lure a young officer to her table.

She sized him up and debated her options. She considered the wide-eyed crime groupie routine, but this guy looked like a cop whose intelligence outweighed his ego, so she went for option two. She confessed she was a tabloid reporter. Even flashed her creds.

"But I'm new and I'm assigned to this Portia Kane murder and, well, it's just not like back home, you know? These guys totally play hardball, and they've buried me already. What I really need is a fresh angle."

A nod, not unsympathetic, but wary. "My best advice would be to attend the press conference. I can give you a few tips on how to get your question answered, but I don't have any inside information on Ms. Kane."

"Oh, I wasn't looking for that." Hope scooted forward in her seat. "I need a totally fresh angle, one they're all ignoring. The other woman. The missing PR rep. Are the police speculating on what happened to her? Kidnapped?"

"Kidnapped?"

"She's missing, right? And you're looking for her."

"Sure, but not as a victim. She's our prime suspect."