The Renegade Hunter (Argeneau #12)

"That's a serious expression."

Nicholas glanced down at Jo. She lay half on his chest, her face questioning and raised to his. They were in the bed, finally. On the first attempt they'd made it only halfway up the hall before their passion had overwhelmed them both. He'd done his best to protect Jo as he'd lost consciousness, and supposed it had worked. She'd seemed fine when he woke up. Not that he'd gotten the chance to ask her. She'd awakened before him and immediately decided to finish what she'd tried to start in the living room. Nicholas had woken to find himself fully erect, her mouth working over him, and both of them halfway to exploding all over again.

Jo had woken up before him the next time as well, but they'd made it to the bedroom door that time. It had taken two more tries to get to the bed. The last time, they'd woken up at almost the same time and had made it to the bed before their mutual need had overwhelmed them. This time, Nicholas was the first to wake, which was a shame because it had given him a chance to think.

"What's the matter?" she asked, worry clouding her face.

Nicholas hesitated, but then said, "Nothing. I was just thinking."

Jo was silent for a minute, and then asked, "Nicholas?"

"Hmm?"

"Tell me about your wife," she said quietly.

Nicholas stilled briefly, his mind suddenly blank. He had no idea what he should say.

"You said you were married and she was a life mate too?" Jo prompted.

Nicholas let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding and nodded. "Yes."

"How long ago was it that you and she-?"

"We met, married, and she died all in 1959. It was the best and worst year of my life... until now," Nicholas added solemnly, and knew it was absolutely true. He had been fortunate enough to find another life mate, a very rare occurrence, and he was going to have to give her up. Definitely best and worst.

"Did you not turn her?" Jo asked, frowning.

Nicholas shook his head. "She was born immortal."

"But..." Confusion reigned on her face for a moment and then she shook her head. "But then how did she die? If she was immortal, she should have-"

"Immortal isn't truly the proper word for us,"

Nicholas said on a sigh. "We can die, it's just harder to kill us than a mortal. Illness won't do it, and being shot will only incapacitate us until the bullets are forced out, but decapitation or having our heart removed can kill us."

"And Annie had one of those things happen to her?" Jo asked with a frown.

"Annie was decapitated in a car accident," Nicholas said quietly. "She and the child she carried, our child, died."

"Oh," Jo murmured. "I'm sorry."

Nicholas remained silent, but bent and kissed the top of her head.

"Was it her you were thinking of when I woke up?" she asked quietly.

"No," he assured her, and then sighed and admitted, "I was just wondering how they found us at the hotel."

Jo closed her eyes briefly and sighed. She then shifted off him and moved to pull the sheets and blankets over them both before sitting up to lean against the pillows at the top of the bed. "That's my fault. Apparently they were able to track my bank activities and found out I'd made a withdrawal from the hotel store's ATM."

"You withdrew money from-" Nicholas began with horror, sitting up beside her, but she interrupted.

"I'm sorry. I had no idea they could track things like that," she said apologetically. "I mean, jeez, who would have thought that Mortimer and those guys could do something like that?"

He would have, Nicholas thought, but didn't say as much. She hadn't known and he hadn't told her so he could hardly blame her for the mistake. The good news was it meant they hadn't put some sort of tracker on her or anything and weren't going to burst in on them here.

"I am sorry, Nicholas. I won't use my debit card again. I just never thought-I mean, it never occurred to me they would or even could do something like that. Checking bank activity is like a cop trick or something."

Nicholas was silent for a minute, but then decided it was time they got the big talk out of the way. "Jo... Mortimer and those guys are cops. They're enforcers, rogue hunters, the equivalent of vampire cops. They have access to any technology the cops do, any technology out there if they want it. They hunt rogue immortals."

Jo was silent for a minute and then said, "Bricker said you were rogue."

"Yes," he said solemnly.

She remained still for a moment, not looking at him as she digested that and then asked carefully, "What is a rogue immortal, exactly?"

Jo hadn't moved, but Nicholas could feel her withdrawing from him, putting some emotional distance between them. He could feel the emotional tearing as she began to draw a protective wall around herself, and his heart ached. Forcing himself to breathe deeply, he waited for the pain of it to pass and then said, "A rogue is an immortal who has broken our laws."

"You have laws?" she asked with surprise.

Nicholas smiled faintly. "Of course. No society exists without laws."

"Of course," Jo murmured, and then sighed and asked. "Tell me your laws."

Nicholas hesitated and then said, "We can turn only one in a life time."

She nodded.

"Couples are allowed to have only one child every hundred years."

"One?" Jo asked with surprise. "How do you manage that? I mean what do you do if one of your females finds herself pregnant sooner than a hundred years?"

Nicholas shrugged. "It's easily managed. Actually, getting pregnant and carrying to term have usually been the problem in the past."

"The nanos?" she asked.

Nicholas nodded and reminded her, "They are to keep the host healthy and at their peak. They see a baby as a parasite, using up the blood and nutrients the host needs. For one of our women to get pregnant, she has to double up on blood to keep the nanos busy and continue to double up on it until the baby is born. Otherwise the host's nanos will abort the fetus."

"I see," she murmured, frowning. "Is that what happened to Lucian's wife?"

"Lucian?" Nicholas asked with surprise.

"I heard Mortimer say that Lucian and Leigh had been traveling a lot since she lost her baby," Jo explained, and then added, "I assume they're both immortals too?"

"Yes," Nicholas said quietly. He hadn't realized that his uncle's life mate was with child. The man must have been over the moon about it, and had probably fallen just as far when she'd lost the child.

"So did she lose the baby because she didn't feed enough?" Jo asked.

Nicholas shook his head with certainty. "No. I'm sure that's not what happened. Lucian would have made sure she'd fed enough."

"Then how could she have lost the baby?" Jo asked with confusion. "The nanos should have-"

"The nanos repair illness and injuries, but they don't fix genetic problems, so I'd imagine there was a genetic flaw and she had a natural miscarriage," he said, and then thought that probably explained why the triple wedding with Lucian, Leigh, and two other couples had been delayed yet again. On the run and rogue though he might be, Nicholas had still managed to keep up with things in his family's life. While he'd had to avoid other immortals, there were mortals who worked for his cousin's company, Argeneau Enterprises, and he'd occasionally looked one or another up and read their minds and then blanked their memories of his presence.

It was in this way Nicholas had found out about the triple wedding. It had started out as a single wedding for his cousin Bastien and his life mate, Terri. But then Lucian had found Leigh and the two couples had decided to have a double ceremony. And then his uncle Victor and Elvi had been added to the roster and it was to be a triple wedding. However, the original date had been changed and the wedding delayed when his aunt Marguerite had gone missing, and then he'd recently learned it was to be delayed again, but the secretary he'd read hadn't known why. Nicholas suspected Leigh's losing the baby had been the cause of the last delay and wondered if the triple wedding would ever take place at this rate.

"So," Jo said, drawing him from his thoughts. "You can turn only one, can have only one child every hundred years..." She raised her eyebrows. "What else?"

"We aren't allowed to bite or kill mortals," Nicholas said.

"And?" she asked.

Nicholas shrugged. "That's about it, other than we just aren't supposed to do anything that would make our presence known to mortals."

Jo nodded, was silent for a moment, and then asked, "So did you bite or kill a mortal? Or did you do something that would make the presence of immortals known to mortals?"

Nicholas looked away, but reluctantly forced himself to say, "I guess I bit and killed a mortal."

There was a long silence this time, and Nicholas wanted to look at her and see her expression, but didn't have the courage to do so. When Jo spoke, he wasn't surprised to hear anger in her voice.

"You guess you did?" she asked, finally. "What do you mean you guess? Did you or didn't you?"

"Apparently I did," he admitted on a sigh and finally turned to look at her to see her blinking and shaking her head.

"Nicholas, this is one of those yes or no questions again. You seem to have a problem with those. Did you or did you not kill a mortal?"

Nicholas frowned and shook his head with irritation. "Yes, I guess I killed a mortal."

Jo blew her breath out with exasperation and flopped back against the bed frame. "No, you didn't."

"Yes, I apparently did," he said at once.

"Oh?" She snorted. "You can't even say it without a qualifier. I guess I did, apparently I did..." Jo shook her head. "You couldn't have done it. You can't even say it."

Nicholas scowled with irritation. He'd been loathing making this confession, afraid to see the fear and hatred cross Jo's face as she realized what he'd done. However, he'd never once imagined her reaction would be disbelief. Mouth compressing, he said firmly, "Jo, I killed a woman, a pregnant woman. I ripped her throat out and fed on her."

"Right," Jo said with disbelief, and then suggested, "So tell me about it."

"What?" he asked with amazement.

"Tell me what happened," she insisted.

"I'm not going to-"

"Because you didn't kill anyone," Jo interrupted with a certainty that was almost defiant.

Nicholas stared at her with amazement. Truly, she was something else; beautiful, funny, sweet, sexy, surprising... and frustrating as hell. Sighing, he said, "Jo, I wish it weren't true too, but-"

"It's simple, Nicholas. If you did it, tell me about it," she insisted. "Who was the woman?"

"I don't know," he admitted uncomfortably. Nicholas had fled the Toronto area, and Canada itself, that fateful day fifty years ago and not returned... At least, not until the start of this summer when he'd trailed a particularly nasty nest of rogues from the northern states and all the way up into Canada and Ontario's cottage country. That being the case, Nicholas had never had the chance to find out who the woman was. He suspected that was a good thing. Her face already haunted his nightmares. Knowing her name would only make it worse.

"You don't know?" Jo asked dryly. "Well, okay, so how did you meet this woman you didn't know but for some reason killed?"

Nicholas grimaced at her sarcasm, and then leaned his head back against the bed's headboard and closed his eyes. "It was after Annie died. I was... I didn't take it well. I shut out family and friends and basically wallowed in my grief," he admitted with self-disgust.

"I think that's probably natural," Jo said softly. . "Yes, well..." He licked his lips and opened his eyes to stare up at the ceiling overhead as the events played out in his mind. "That day I found a birthday gift Annie had got for a friend of hers at work. She'd bought and wrapped it ahead of time and it had been sitting on her craft table."

"Craft table," Jo murmured in a disbelieving voice, and when he glanced at her, she flushed and shrugged and muttered, "It just seems odd to think of a vampiress doing crafts. That's so... mundane," she finished finally.

"We're just people, Jo," he said quietly.

"Yeah, I suppose. People with fangs, who drink blood, live a long time, and apparently do crafts." She shook her head.

Nicholas smiled faintly, but tilted his head back again and continued. "I probably wouldn't have taken the gift to Carol if-"

"Carol?" Jo interrupted in question.

"Annie's friend at the hospital," he explained. "They worked the night shift together."

"What did Annie do at the hospital?" Jo asked curiously.

"She was a nurse in the critical care unit," he said, smiling faintly at the memory. "Annie was... She was special. She liked to help people and-" Nicholas paused abruptly as he realized it was probably bad form to go on about the wonders of a past life mate to a present life mate... even if he couldn't claim her.

"Anyway," he muttered, "as I was saying, I probably wouldn't have taken the gift to Carol, but I wanted to ask her if she knew what Annie..." Nicholas paused as he realized he'd left something out. "I should tell you that the night before Annie died, she called me in Detroit and said-"

"What were you doing in Detroit?" Jo interrupted.

"I was hunting a rogue," he explained. "It was going to be my last case. Annie was nearly due and I didn't like being away from her when she was so close to delivery."

"You were hunting a rogue?" Jo asked slowly, and then, "You were a rogue hunter too?"

"We're actually called enforcers. I mean they are," Nicholas corrected himself with a frown.

"But you were one?" she insisted.

"Yes," he admitted.

"Better and better," Jo muttered. "Go on. Annie called you in Detroit and said... ?"

"She said she had something to tell me when I got back. She was excited and I was curious, but she wouldn't tell me what it was over the phone. She said she wanted to see my face when she told me."

"But she died," Jo prompted.

"Yes. She died and I forgot all about it for a while."

"But then you saw the gift and you thought you'd deliver it as an excuse to ask this Carol if she knew what it was Annie was going to tell you when you got home."

Nicholas. nodded, releasing his breath on a slow sigh. Jo was making this as easy as she could for him. She was also very quick at putting things together.

"Did this friend Carol know?" Jo asked curiously.

Nicholas shook his head. "I never found out. I put the gift in the car and drove to the hospital, but as I was crossing the parking lot to go inside a woman came out. She was petite and blond like my Annie. She even looked like her a little... and she was very pregnant."

"Like your Annie," Jo suggested.

"Yes," he said wearily, closing his eyes. "I remember being really angry, furious even that this mortal woman lived while my Annie, an immortal who should have lived for centuries, was..."

"That's normal too, Nicholas," Jo said softly, slipping her hand into his and squeezing gently. When he glanced at her with obvious disbelief, she nodded solemnly. "Shortly after my parents died, I met my friends at this restaurant for lunch where there was this older couple seated at a table across from us. They were ancient. White hair, wrinkled, they had to be in their eighties or nineties..." She paused and shook her head. "I don't know what it was about them. Perhaps it was how they smiled at each other, or the way she shared her food with him, but for some reason it made me think of my parents, and for one moment I was absolutely furious that these two old codgers were alive and happy while my parents, so much younger, were dead." Jo sighed unhappily at the memory and then shrugged. "I think it's probably a natural part of grieving."

"Did you take the old couple home and slaughter them?" Nicholas asked grimly.

Jo's eyes shifted to meet his, sharp and hard. "Is that what you did?"

Nicholas looked away and shrugged. "Apparently."

"There's that word again," she said dryly. "I don't want to hear apparently. Tell me what happened. You saw her and were angry and..."

Nicholas frowned as he sifted through his memories trying to find the ones that covered what happened next. Finally, he just said, "I ripped her throat out and fed on her."

"Right there in the parking lot?" Jo asked with shock.

"I-No..." He reached up to rub his forehead unhappily. "At my home. In my basement."

Jo was silent for a long time again, and when he finally glanced to her, she was peering at him as if sorting out a puzzle. Finally she shook her head and said, "How did you get her there? Did she say something to really piss you off? What happened?"

"I don't know," he snapped with frustration. "I just remember looking at her, and being really angry. The next thing I knew Decker was shouting my name and I opened my eyes to see that I was sitting on the floor of my basement with the pregnant woman, dead in my arms. There was blood everywhere, including in my mouth. I killed her, Jo."

Much to his amazement, Jo suddenly smiled and leaned back against the headboard. Her voice was satisfied as she said, "You didn't kill her."

For some reason her calm certainty infuriated him. "Goddammit, Jo, I did."

"Then why don't you remember it?" she asked calmly.

"I must have been in a blinding rage," he said at once. It was the only explanation he'd been able to come up with after all these years. Not that he'd thought about it often. He'd been so horrified by what he'd done that Nicholas had done his best not to think about it at all until the night he'd met Jo. Since then it was constantly in the back of his mind. What he'd done, why he'd done it, how he'd ruined his chances to be with her.

"Nope, you weren't in a blinding rage," Jo said with certainty, snapping his attention back to her with disbelief of his own.

"Well I sure as shit wouldn't have killed her if I hadn't been in a blinding rage," he snarled.

"Nicholas," she said patiently, shifting to kneel beside him on the bed. "Think about what you're saying. You saw her and were angry because she looked like your Annie, was pregnant like your Annie, but was alive when your Annie wasn't. Your anger was natural, and if you'd told me you'd struck out at her right there in the parking lot, one angry shot that had killed the woman, I might have believed you'd killed her in a blinding rage. But that's not what happened. Supposedly, in this blinding rage, you transported her to your car, got inside, drove her to your place, and took her down into your basement and killed her... without ever coming out of your blinding rage. Without remembering a thing about it until you opened your eyes and peered down to find her dead in your lap?" She shook her head. "Nope. Didn't happen that way."

Nicholas merely stared at Jo blankly as she suddenly sat back and looked thoughtful, and then she asked, "You say Decker was shouting your name? That's what woke you up?"

"I-Yes," he said on a sigh.

"He did it then," she decided calmly, and as Nicholas began to shake his head, she said, "Yes, he did. He took control of you and took you both back to your place and killed the woman, set her in your lap, and then released his control."

Nicholas closed his eyes wearily. "Decker didn't do it, Jo. Decker wouldn't kill a mortal. He's a rogue hunter, he protects mortals and immortals alike. He wouldn't kill anyone but rogues."

"Yet you would," she asked dryly, and pointed out, "You were an enforcer too."

"Yes, but I was grieving, my head wasn't on straight. I was-"

"Controlled," Jo said firmly.

Nicholas wished he could agree with her and say that was what had happened, but shook his head. "Immortals can't be controlled."

"You said you can read each other's thoughts just like you can mortals," Jo said at once. "Perhaps an older immortal can also control a younger one. Decker probably-"

"Decker is younger than me," he interrupted. "And yes immortals can read each other, but only a very new turn can be controlled. I was centuries old."

"You're sure about that?" she asked, eyes narrowing.

Nicholas ran a hand through his hair and nodded solemnly. "Yes. It would take a three-on-one to wipe my memories and control me-three older immortals working together to do it. The minute you try to erase or bury an immortal's memories, the nanos will be trying to bring them back to the surface. They have to be buried and reburied over and over again. It takes days, and it was still the same night when Decker got there. I wasn't controlled, and I didn't have my memory erased," he assured her regretfully.

"Then you were drugged," she decided promptly.

"Jo," he said wearily.

"Stop fighting me and help here," she snapped. "You're wallowing in your supposed guilt. Stop that and use your noggin. It just doesn't make sense, Nicholas. You apparently risked getting captured and killed earlier in the summer to help Dani and Stephanie, and then just the other night you did it again to save me. I was a complete stranger and I presume Dani and Stephanie probably were too, but you risked losing your own life to save us. That doesn't sound like a man who would kill a woman just because she looked like your life mate." She paused to suck in a breath and then said, "Honestly, you'd be more likely to control the woman and keep her to play house with and pretend your Annie was still alive."

Nicholas frowned at her words. "But she was in my lap."

"But you don't remember how she got there," Jo said at once. "Does that seem right to you? How did you get her there? What happened to the gift for Carol? Did she say anything to you to set you off? Did she cry and beg for her life? Did you take control of her and keep that control as you drove to your place? And why the basement?"

Nicholas peered at her blankly as her questions rained over him. When she put it that way, it didn't really seem right. Surely she was correct and if he'd lost it, he'd have killed the woman there in the parking lot or at least remember something about getting her home, but... "Drugs don't work on us."

Jo paused and tilted her head. "No drugs? Not at all?"

"Well..." He hesitated and then admitted, "Weaker drugs will be removed by the nanos before they can do anything, and stronger ones wouldn't have as strong an effect or work for more than twenty minutes to half an hour."

"How long a drive was it from the hospital to your house?" she asked at once.

"Ten minutes," he said quietly. "I didn't want Annie to have to drive far to get to work."

Jo raised an eyebrow. "So you could have been drugged, taken home, the woman killed and set in your lap before you woke."

"Her blood was in my mouth," he reminded her.

She rolled her eyes and suddenly bounded from the bed and hurried from the room. Nicholas stared after her with surprise, and then threw the sheets and blankets aside to follow. He found her in the living room, bent over, picking up something from the table. His eyes slid over her bare derriere with interest totally inappropriate to the conversation they'd been having and he grimaced to himself, and said, "What-?"

That was as far as he got. At the sound of his voice, Jo suddenly straightened, turned, and threw a glass of wine in his face.

Nicholas gasped in shock, eyes instinctively shutting as the liquid splashed over him, hitting his face and upper chest.

"Oh look, you have wine in your mouth. Did you drink it?" she asked sarcastically.

Nicholas opened his eyes slowly to stare at her.

"Wake up, Nicholas," Jo snapped, setting down the glass. "This is your future. Stop just accepting that you killed the woman and start considering other possibilities, because the story you told me makes no sense at all, but everyone believes it and that can get you killed."

Turning abruptly, she walked into the kitchen. Nicholas simply stood there, watching her ass as she walked away. Once she disappeared, he glanced down at himself, noting that the wine was running down his body and dripping onto the carpet. He was about to go find a towel or something to clean up when Jo reappeared from the kitchen with a dish towel in one hand and a slice of cold pizza in the other. She tossed the dish towel to him and then dropped onto the couch and took a bite of pizza, glaring at him the whole while.

Nicholas grimaced and began to dry himself off under her glare, but then his lips began to twitch. The woman had thrown a glass of wine at him and was now glaring at him as if he was the one who'd done something wrong. Annie would have never done that. Annie had been like a soothing balm, a gentle angel. Jo was the opposite, a firecracker. Yet they'd both been his life mate and he could have lived happily with either, but he suspected life wouldn't be anywhere near restful with Jo. Or it wouldn't have been if he could have claimed her... and if what she was suggesting was true, he might be able to claim her someday.

"Right," he said suddenly. Finishing with the towel, Nicholas tossed it on the coffee table and dropped onto the couch beside her. "Let's do this."

Jo's glare immediately disappeared. Placing the nasty cold pizza on one of their used plates on the table, she turned to face him on the couch and said, "You saw the pregnant woman who looked like Annie in the parking lot... and then what?"

Nicholas sought his memories, but there just weren't any, which really was rather odd. Finally he said, "And then we were in my basement and she was dead."

"How did you get her there?" Jo shot the question at him like a bullet.

"I must have driven," he said uncertainly.

"In a blinding rage?" she asked dryly, and then snapped, "What happened to the gift for Carol?"

"I... don't know," Nicholas admitted with a frown.

"Okay, go back to what you do remember. You got out of the car and started across the parking lot. You saw the woman, she reminded you of Annie... Did she say or do anything ? Hello, or good evening?"

"I don't recall her saying anything," he muttered, searching his memory. "I think she smiled and..." Nicholas frowned.

"What?" Jo asked eagerly. "You're remembering something. What is it?"

"It's not much," he said wearily. "I just... She was walking toward me, she glanced up, met my gaze and smiled, and then her eyes traveled past me to something else."

"Probably to whoever it was who drugged you," Jo said with certainty and in that moment, Nicholas knew he loved her. She was so certain of his innocence, believing in it even when he didn't. Decker, his cousin and best friend, hadn't doubted his guilt when he'd seen him there in the basement. All of his family had accepted his guilt without hesitation. Even he himself hadn't doubted it these fifty years, but Jo, who had known him for only a matter of a couple of days, hadn't believed he was guilty for even a heartbeat... and he loved her for it... for that, and her spirit of adventure, courage, and intelligence and perky nature. He loved this woman.

"Do you remember feeling any kind of jab or anything?" Jo asked, completely oblivious of his thoughts. "Maybe a sudden sharp pain in the neck or arm that might have been a needle? Or-Oh!" she interrupted herself suddenly, eyes widening. "It could have been a tranq gun. I bet an elephant tranquilizer would have taken you out for half an hour."

"It could have been," Nicholas agreed quietly.

Standing suddenly, Jo moved around the coffee table and began to pace the carpet, arms crossed under her breasts and pushing them up. The woman was completely and utterly nude and apparently totally unselfconscious about it as she murmured, "How it was done doesn't really matter. I mean we can supposition on that all we want. You were probably drugged, the woman was probably controlled. You were taken home, she was killed, placed in your lap, blood splashed on you and in your mouth, and all just in time for Decker to show up and witness it. But none of that really helps. We can't prove it now. We need to figure out why it was done."

Nicholas nodded, his eyes drifting from her breasts to her behind as she turned to pace back again. Damn, she had a killer figure. He doubted the nanos would have much work to do body wise when he turned her. The thought drew him up short, and Nicholas swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. For the first time in fifty years, he had hopes for a future. But it was a false hope if they couldn't work this out.

"Did you have any enemies?" Jo asked suddenly, spinning to peer at him.

Nicholas shook his head. "No, not that I know of."

She clucked at that with disgust. "You were a rogue hunter, Nicholas. You probably had loads of rogues who weren't happy with your capturing them."

He winced, but then sighed and explained, "Most rogues don't live to be unhappy about it. Mostly they're staked and baked shortly after we bring them in."

"Staked and baked?" she asked.

"Staked out to bake in the sun all day," he explained. "After centuries of avoiding the sun we're pretty sensitive to it. It does a lot of damage. The nanos repair as much as they can but run out of blood to work with and start attacking the organs in search of more. It's pretty painful," Nicholas admitted with an almost embarrassed grimace.

"It's pretty Draconian," Jo said dryly.

"Yes," he acknowledged. "It's supposed to be a deterrent to others to convince them they don't want to go rogue and risk having that happen." Nicholas cleared his throat and added, "I think they may have stopped that practice the last couple of years, though, I'm not sure."

"Hmm," Jo murmured. "But they did that when you were still an enforcer?"

Nicholas nodded uncomfortably. "But not by me. Enforcers just bring them in. We aren't supposed to kill them. They get a trial just like a mortal would, and then the Council has them staked and baked and beheaded."

"Nice," she said on a sigh. "So no one you brought in could be behind this."

Nicholas was nodding in agreement when she added, "But family members could be, someone who had a rogue relative and blames you for bringing them in."

He shook his head again and peered down at his hands as he said, "Relatives tend to shun rogues. They're upset and embarrassed by them and often even deny their existence or relationship to them."

"Is that what happened to you?" Jo asked quietly.

Nicholas simply shrugged, but it was what had happened. From his checks on his family through mortal employees he knew that his brother and sister never spoke of him anymore and that Jeanne Louise, his little sister, who had adored him and made a pest of herself visiting all the time, often catching him and Annie in inopportune moments, even denied his existence now. As far as she was concerned, he had never been born.

"I'm sorry," Jo said quietly, and he glanced up to see she'd moved around the coffee table and now stood before him in all her nude glory. Just the sight of her perky breasts peering him in the face was enough to cheer him somewhat, but when Nicholas reached for her, she skipped out from between his legs and the coffee table to move back to the open area of carpet, out of his reach. "Right, so it probably isn't about being an enforcer. We have to think about this."

Nicholas sank back against the sofa with a sigh as she continued her pacing.

"So..." she murmured. "Annie called you and said she had something to tell you, but died before she could tell you what it was... in a car accident that decapitated her." Jo grimaced and paused in her pacing to turn and ask, "How did the accident happen? I mean decapitation in a car accident is pretty rare, I would think. Did she crash under a semi or something?"

"No," he said quietly. "She drove off the road on her way home from work. She must have been tired or maybe she was avoiding an animal in the lane. She went off the road, and slammed into a tree. Seat belts weren't mandatory at that time and she went through the windshield."

Jo stared at him with confusion. "How did that decapitate her?"

"The windshield did it," Nicholas said on a sigh. "The steering wheel caught her body and kept her in the car, but her head slammed out the window. It didn't shatter like it should have. The bottom stayed intact and her head went out and down and-" He shrugged unhappily. "It was a freak accident. One in a million they said."

Jo started to pace again, murmuring, "A freak accident, one in a million."

Nicholas nodded, recalling his horror as they'd broken the news to him, and then Jo said, "That must be it."

He raised his head to peer at her. "What?"

"Don't you see?" she asked, turning to look at him, eyes sparkling. "Annie was going to tell you something when you got back, but died in a totally freak car accident that decapitated her... one of the very few ways to kill an immortal. And then you were heading to see her friend Carol to give her a gift Annie had bought for her before her death and ask her about what Annie had been going to tell you, but you wind up in your basement with a dead woman in your arms and on the run for fifty some years, completely forgetting all about the question you'd wanted to ask."

Jo paused to peer at him. "What would have happened had you not run?"

"I probably would have been executed right away," he said slowly.

"No trial?" she asked.

"Well, maybe a ghost of a trial. I doubt they would have put much effort into it. Decker saw me, I thought I'd done it..." He shrugged.

"It doesn't matter," Jo assured him. "Either way you wouldn't have been around to ask about what Annie wanted to tell you."

Nicholas's eyes widened incredulously at her words. She was simply stating what had happened, things he'd already known, but they had an entirely different connotation when she said it like that. He'd never really connected the two events, never even considered they might be connected. But then he'd just assumed, as everyone else had, that he'd killed the woman found dead in his arms. Everyone had... but Jo.

"I think we need to find this friend Carol and see if she knows what Annie wanted to tell you," Jo said solemnly.