Staring at a picture of himself on Ivy’s screen, his heart screeched to a dead stop before revving up again. Well, not exactly him as he appeared in real life. His Magic Battledome avatar, Zephyr, stood seven feet high, holding a monstrous scythe with a four-foot-long curved blade. Scarlett stood next to him, pulling back her bow’s string and aiming the fire arrow at an unseen enemy. The new information did not compute with the leggy redhead next to him. She’d dated rock stars and posed half naked in fashion magazines. Not the kind of woman who kicked ass in online role-playing games with the efficiency of Scarlett.
“You’re not going to give me crap for playing Magic Battledome, are you?” Ivy’s tough tone didn’t quite cover the quiver underneath.
He shot out of his chair. It couldn’t be. His brain blanked out as surely as the blue screen of death. “Scarlett?”
She froze.
They stared at each other while his brain rebooted with the speed of a cheap computer.
“Oh my God, Zephyr?” Her brain obviously had a better microprocessor, because he could only nod. “Zephyr!” She jumped up from her chair and flung her arms around him.
As the air whooshed out of him, reality filled the vacuum: Scarlett was a former supermodel and current stalker suspect. Though someone had used a proxy server to control her computer, she wasn’t in the clear yet. She still could be the crazy hot on Sylvie’s trail.
Who just happened to be Scarlett, his constant companion and object of online desire.
Who, most days, was the last person he spoke with at night and the first he wanted to tell when something happened.
Who happened to have a picture of the two of them as her screen saver.
He tried to talk, but his mind worked at half capacity and his tongue had given up the ghost.
“I can’t believe it.” Excitement punched her pitch higher and she ended her iron-armed hug. Her hands slid up his arms, over his shoulders, and to his face, her palms cool against his overheated c
heeks. “It’s you.”
On the next breath, she lowered her mouth to his. The world didn’t just tilt on its axis, it tumbled off and rolled across the universe like a marble gone rogue. Her supple lips moved against his, warm honey sweetening the moment. Before the shock of it all could dissipate, Ivy released him.
Her long fingers traced a path across her now-fuller bottom lip. “Sorry. I know I shouldn’t have done that, but I’d always promised myself that if we ever met for real that I would.” She collapsed into her chair, a bemused smile crinkling the corner of her eyes. “Zephyr in the flesh. Wow.”
Carlos’s phone vibrated and the Star Wars theme sounded. Mind reeling, he yanked it out of his pocket. Tony’s number came up on caller ID. “What’s up, boss?”
“Are you still at Ivy’s place?”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’s just moved up to the front of the suspect line.”
The phone slipped in Carlos’s suddenly clammy hand as he paced. “I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
He couldn’t tell his boss, the man who controlled who became partner, that it couldn’t be Ivy because she was Scarlett. “Gut feeling.”
“I need more than that.”
Normally so would he, but Carlos couldn’t ignore the intangible this time.
Tony sighed into the phone. “How much time do you need to prove it?”
Carlos fist-pumped the air. “Forty-eight hours.”
“You have twenty-four. And ’Los?”
“Yeah?” A sudden uncertainty formed a concrete brick in his intestines.
“There’s a lot riding on this case. Don’t fuck it up.”
Carlos popped his knuckles as he paced Mika’s design studio. He had fucked up the case. He’d fucked it up royally. All he wanted was to forget, but he couldn’t. Not with Magic Battledome reminders taunting him every time he turned around. Especially not with Mika. Being with her cracked open the closet door he’d shut on everything Ivy-related, and now it was all rushing out. He closed his eyes and was back in Ivy’s apartment.