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die?” Wythe asked.
    “Hush.” Annabelle glanced at her uncle, who seemed to be asleep, then glowered at Wythe. “He might hear you.”
    “He’s out cold,” Wythe told her.
    “All I’m saying is to prepare yourselves,” Dr. Martin said. “Louis could well survive this, but…Well, it will depend on his will to live, at least in part. I’ve seen it happen before, patients who give up the will to live and die in a few weeks or a few months.”
    “I’ll give him something to live for,” Annabelle said. “Once he accepts that Lulu is dead, he’ll want to see her killer punished. That alone will keep him going.”
    Dr. Martin shook his head. “Revenge can be a strong motivator.Just be careful that it doesn’t turn on him. And on you.”
    “I wasn’t referring to revenge. What I want—what Uncle Louis will want—is justice.”
    Quinn lay in the bed, the back of his head resting in his cupped hands, his fingers entwined. A cup of tea, a couple more aspirins and a sympathetic ear had partially eased his headache but hadn’t helped him fall asleep. In a few short hours, he would have to return to police headquarters and answer more questions. Be grilled about Lulu’s death.
    God, how he wanted to turn back the clock and—and do what? Decline Lulu’s offer to come to Memphis? Arrive at Lulu’s house in time to stop her killer?
    He flopped over and glanced at the digital bedside clock. Four forty-three.
    Lulu had loved life about as much as anybody he’d ever known. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t try, at least once. At twenty-seven, she’d had her whole life ahead of her. Marriage, kids, divorces and more marriages and divorces. Quinn laughed quietly to himself, remembering Lulu and the fun times they’d had. She’d been his female equivalent. Unkind people called her a whore. Those who knew her well thought of her as a free spirit. She enjoyed men in the same way he enjoyed women. Their rules of encounter were pretty much the same. No holds barred. Everyone was fair game. No commitments. No promises. Sex for the sake of sex. And love was never involved. Love was for fools. And Lulu had no more been a fool than Quinn. She knew the score.
    Had she gotten herself involved with someone who had refused to play the game by her rules? Had someone decided that if they couldn’t have Lulu exclusively, then no one could have her?
    If the police concentrated all their efforts on proving hekilled Lulu, then the real killer might escape. He couldn’t let that happen. He would not only find a way to prove his innocence, but he’d also move heaven and earth to bring Lulu’s murderer to justice.

Chapter 3
    Mary Lee Norton cried out with release when her climax exploded inside her. She was a screamer. Something he liked in a woman. He never wondered with Mary Lee whether or not he’d satisfied her. He’d heard that women in their mid to late-thirties were in their sexual prime and from his experience with older women, he’d found that to be true. It was certainly true of his partner’s ex-wife. The woman had an insatiable hunger for sex.
    Chad grasped her hips and tossed her off him and over onto her back, then delved deep and hard, seeking his own release. Within a couple of minutes, he came. Groaning with the headiness of satisfaction, he slid off her damp body and onto the bed. She cuddled against him and kissed his shoulder.
    “You’re good, sugar pie,” she whispered in a husky, Southern drawl that hinted she was a heavy smoker.
    Turning to her, he smiled as he noted the faint lines that edged her hazel eyes. At thirty-seven, she was still a looker, but give her a few more years and a couple of decades of smoking and sun worship would catch up with her. By the time she was forty-five, she’d need a face-lift. Of course,what she looked liked a few years down the road was no concern of his. Mary Lee was a temporary fixture in his life, a brief liaison that had to end before Jim Norton found out his