“He’s Ukrainian.”

The brush slammed on the vanity. Ben felt the clatter in his bones.

“You never have time for family!”

“I’m alwaysthinking of Rachel, and don’t you dare take that from me.”

Linda stared at him in the mirror. Rarely did he garner such focused attention from her. Not that he looked for it, because it always ended like this—in an argument.

She could never comprehend that he simply needed attention. Appreciation. He worked long hours to support his family and pay the medical bills. Did she not understand he had a heart, too, and it broke into more pieces every time he looked at Rachel?

“What are you involved in, Ben?”

He gaped. Then assumed calm. Always, she talked around the subject of their daughter. “I’ve been building a successful business, if you haven’t noticed.”

Ben clutched his things and strode toward the door. It was easier to avoid an argument. And he didn’t want Rachel overhearing.

Pausing in the doorway, he said, “I see you got the roses.”

“Your secretary has almost got your signature perfected.”

“A simple thank-you would have sufficed. Good night, Linda.”

Five minutes later, Ben was able to shuck off the chill of Linda and remembered his conversation with Rachel about the skull. He settled onto the couch.

The show was just ending. The woman detailed her findings and, though they hadn’t located vampires in the Carpathian mountains, implied that anything was possible.

He could sense the sarcasm in her voice as she spoke of vampires, but also sensed she knew what bolstered the ratings.

Rachel was right. She was pretty. And familiar.He’d never seen this show before. It was rare for him to watch anything other than CNN. Where had he seen her?

He plucked the picture Harris had given him earlier from his pocket.

Leaning forward, he compared it to the face on the screen. The sniper photo was grainy but the jawline and nose were similar.

It was the same woman, he was sure of it.

But really? Some television hostess had met with Cooke about the skull? Had she been meeting him in the capacity of an archaeologist or a buyer? Or with intent to feature the skull on her show?

Had the thief been thinking of handing the skull over to her? Or had he merely wanted details on it only an archaeologist could provide? What interest did Cooke have in the skull? He’d been employed simply to obtain it, and deliver it directly to Ben.

And now the one man who could give Ben hope was dead because the shooter he’d hired had an itchy trigger finger.

And the Creed woman?

“The sniper couldn’t have killed them both,” Ben muttered as he tapped the photo against his lower lip. “Maybe.”

If Annja Creed was dead wouldn’t the show feature some kind of memorial? The producers wouldn’t run the episode with a dead star. Or would they?

13

Annja! I never knew. Great assets.

Annja clicked the Internet link in the e-mail from a fan. It landed on a page titled “Celebrity Skin.” And there was her head, capped by the boonie hat she wore for her biography picture. From shoulders down she was naked.

“Oh, no. Really?”

She clicked the picture and it opened a page devoted exclusively to her, listing all the episodes of Chasing History’s Monstersshe’d hosted, the books she’d penned and her various guest spots on Lettermanand Conan.Her picture took up half the screen.

Annja cringed and looked away from the screen, but like an accident scene, she couldn’t make herself look away from the carnage. “Those are not my breasts. Those just look so uncomfortable. This is not for real. Seriously. I’ve never posed nude in my life. And who would think I could do something like this? For that matter, who would do this to me?” Annja couldn’t keep her thoughts to herself.

Her first guess was the most obvious culprit. Doug? Her producer was prone to practical jokes, but he’d never do anything to damage her reputation. Of that, Annja was confident.

So who else?

She searched the site for a contact e-mail. That wouldn’t help. Annja felt sure the site would merely brush off her claims to false photographs, even if they knew the truth. Sites like this were rampant online. They likely knew the photos they featured were fakes.

Whose assets were those?

“Argh!”

She checked her watch. There was no time for tracking this down. It was an hour before Serge made good on his promise to kill her. He did know where to find her.

She wasn’t going to run scared. Serge was the only one who knew anything about the skull.

“Looks like this girl has another date.”

A GRAVEYARD WAS the last place Annja wanted to meet anyone. Even a friend. And Serge was no friend. But at the moment he was her only link to the skull’s origins, so she wouldn’t miss this meeting for the world.

Rather, she was assuming he knew about the skull. Why attempt to steal it if he didn’t?

And what about that sniper? Serge had mentioned a name. “Benjamin,” she muttered. “Ben who?”

Annja shivered. The temperature was a blistering fifteen degrees. The wind was whipping and she was walking into its teeth. The windchill must be chasing zero, she thought.

She should have dug out her long johns. It was prematurely cold for late November, but this was New York, after all. Six feet of snow could fall any minute now and it wouldn’t be odd. It wasn’t the Arctic, but New York could chill ’em with the best of them.

Before stumbling onto the “Celebrity Skin” site, she’d found a view of the Linden Hills Cemetery, and spent an inordinate amount of time playing with the street view function. It was so cool what a person could do online and with a mouse. Now if only they could get a live feed to do things like track down a sidewalk and walk into an area and look about in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view and she’d—well, she’d spend far too much time drooling before a computer monitor.

Clad in dark jeans and turtleneck, she tugged up the furry collar of her jacket and the hood around her head.

Perhaps she should have told Bart about where she was going today. But their dinner had been too cozy to spoil with business. And he’d left her feeling at odds about being a rebound girl. Not that he’d mentioned it, or had even been thinking about it. But she had. And much as she wanted to, she couldn’t tell him about her sword or the kind of danger it seemed to draw to her.

She had fled her place quickly this morning. Though straightened and clean, Serge’s intrusion had changed the feel of it. It was no longer her private retreat from the world, not while his threat was hanging over her.

Sure, she’d once had ninjas drop through the skylight and try to kidnap her. She’d returned later to find the sultan behind the scare had sent in a cleanup crew and he’d then later tried to seduce her. Weird stuff like that happened to her all the time.

But Serge was beyond weird. Disturbingly calm before the maniacal storm kind of weird. She had an aching wrist to confirm that. Had the guy purposefully wanted a piece of her? That treaded in stalker or serial killer territory. What would he do with a sample of her flesh and bone?

She didn’t want to imagine.

By seeing him this morning, she could confront him in the daylight, see that he was just a man, and know he couldn’t do her any more harm than he had already done. In a manner, she could take back the sanctity of her home and psyche all at once. Kill two birds, so to speak.