Living With the Dead (Otherworld 9)

"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?"