Living With the Dead (Otherworld 9)

"Right, I need to borrow a cell phone. Can I use yours? I swear it's not a

long-distance call."

Robyn stared at Adele as if she was a beggar asking for her last buck. Adele glanced down at Robyn's side. No purse to snatch. Damn, the phone must be in her pocket.

Adele stepped closer. "Please. I really need to call my dad."

She reached down and pulled her jacket open. Robyn inhaled sharply as she spotted the gun.

"Your cell phone?" Adele met her gaze.

Robyn's hand slammed into Adele's chest, knocking her into the boys. She smacked into one and he shoved her back. She stumbled, recovered and wheeled to see Robyn disappearing down the alley.

In that moment, as she tore after her, she saw Robyn's lips move again, heard that single word and knew what it had been.

Adele.

* * *

FINN

In twenty minutes, Finn would meet Robyn Peltier's elusive friend, and he wasn't looking forward to it.

At first, she'd seemed surprised by his call, but that quickly passed, as if he'd caught her off guard and once she considered it, wasn't so surprised after all. She'd agreed to come to the station right away and talk to him. And, yes, she'd bring her boyfriend - he was with her already.

So it wasn't the prospect of a hostile interview making his stomach sour. He could chalk it up to the coffee. He hadn't meant to drink all of it, but the more he sipped, the more disgusted Damon got, until the ghost finally went his way, leaving Finn alone to research his upcoming interview without his input.

It was the research that made him dread the interview. Hope Adams wasn't a celebrity-chasing tabloid reporter. He should have guessed that when he discovered she was on a transfer from True News's Philadelphia headquarters - a city not known for its glitterati.

Adams chased another kind of target, one just as entertaining and just as elusive - supernatural encounters. As a guy who could be one of her targets, the idea made him mildly uncomfortable. But only mildly... at first.

The more he dug into Adams's career, the more that feeling grew.

She'd been at her job since graduating from college. She couldn't expect to start out on the staff of the Philadelphia Inquirer, but to be in the same job now suggested there was a reason she'd been twenty-three before she graduated.

So Adams could be written off as a hack. Or, considering her background, more like that college druggie he'd interviewed - a rich kid slacking her way through life.

That had settled his worries... until he read a half-dozen of Adams's articles. Her writing was on par with big-paper journalists and, unlike most of them, she was entertaining. On the surface, her pieces were breezy and fun, the language uncomplicated and informal, yet beneath that, she'd obviously done her research.

She took her job seriously, but not earnestly. If readers didn't believe in the paranormal, they could interpret that light tone as "we both know there's no such thing as vampires, but sit back and let me tell you a good story." If they did believe, though, there was nothing condescending. She never talked down to her readers, and she treated her sources and witnesses with respect. If you knew, like Finn, that the paranormal wasn't pure fiction, then you could come away with the sense that, maybe, just maybe, she believed, too.

By the last article, Finn was as nervous as a corrupt politician about to meet a journalist specializing in exposes. He knew he was overreacting. Adams was here to be interviewed. He had nothing to worry about... unless she'd done her research on him as well, and learned of his reputation.

He was reading an article about a haunted inn in Vermont when he got a call. Someone had recovered Robyn Peltier's cell phone from a pawn shop earlier. It had now been processed for prints, and those prints matched a set on the gun.

Right now, Finn was more interested in getting a look at Robyn's cell phone, which the techs said came with a personal organizer. Contact names, schedule, notes... there had to be something of interest there.

He'd made it as far as the hall when Jane peeked from the front.

"Finn? That True News reporter is here to see you. Hope Adams?"

He waved for Jane to send her back.

"Hope Adams?" a detective said behind him, looking up from his work. "I talked to her a couple of years ago. I was investigating a kidnapping. She was investigating it, too... as a possible alien abduction."

A wave of laughter from the room.

"Hey," someone called. "What's she want with you, Finn? A feature?"