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one large hand came up and cupped the very definite swell of breast through the silk. "Unless, of course, you prefer other women. You look as if you might." And his mouth moved down toward hers.
    Without hesitation she brought her knee up, but he was too fast for her. Before she knew what was happening she was released, a safe two feet away from him, her mouth untouched as her breast still tingled from his casual caress.
    "What are you doing here?" he questioned evenly enough, not moving any closer.
    For the first time Jessica spoke, her voice tight with tension in the still night kitchen. "Visiting," she snapped. "Not that it's any of your damned business."
    He smiled then, a slow, wicked smile that on another man, at another time, might have penetrated her icy resolve. "Now I've placed you. You're Elyssa's friend Jessica, aren't you?" He cocked his head to one side. "You're not at all the way she described you."
    Jessica knew exactly what she looked like. Pulling the thin silk closer around her narrow body, she could imagine how her small, pale face looked, the short hair standing in spikes all around. "Neither are you," she shot back. "Would you mind moving away from the door? I'd like to go to bed."
    With a great show of insolent grace he moved, exaggeratedly careful not to touch her. "My visit might end up being more interesting than I thought."
    "Don't expect me to provide entertainment," Jessica said in her cold, clipped voice. "I'm leaving first thing tomorrow morning to spend the weekend with my fiancS." There, that ought to slow him down.
    The smile stayed damnably fixed. "Fiance?" he said softly. "Bully for you. Anyone I know?"
    "I doubt it. He's the head of the corporation I work for." Now why was she trying to impress him?
    "Peter or Jasper Kinsey? Must be Jasper—you don't strike me as a woman who'd settle for second place on your climb to the top."
    That was quite enough for one night. She withdrew even more, pulling the robe more tightly around her body. "Good night," she said coldly. 'I don't expect you'll be awake when I leave tomorrow, so I'll say good-bye, too." She moved past him, down the darkened hallway, without a backward glance. The overhead light silhouetted her slender body for a moment.
    "I wouldn't count on it," he said softly. She was far too skinny, far too angry, far too ambitious for him to expend any energy on. Still, there was something about her that called to him. Maybe it was those blue eyes, cold and lost and angry. Or the stubborn set to her chin as she stared up at him. Or the vulnerable, unsmiling mouth that had first tipped him off to her sex. Not to mention that undeniable swell of breast that remained despite her skinniness. "No, Jessica, I wouldn't count on it at all."
    Chapter Four
    The Slaughterer, voL 72: The Wrath of Decker
    Matt Decker surveyed the carnage around him. He always forgot how much damage a machine gun could inflict in such a short period of time. The streets ofMiami were spattered with blood, the blood of the enemy, and he saw it with satisfaction. If only he'd managed to find that amazon.
    Her large blue eyes haunted him. Ilse, someone had called her. Probably part of the Baader-Meinhof gang. She'd taste his vengeance before long. No one was safe from the mighty justice of the Slaughterer for long. But how those wide blue eyes of hers haunted him.
    "You don't look any more rested, Jessica," Ham said sternly. "And that's your third cup of coffee this morning. I'll have you know my coffee is very strong. You'd better cut it with some food or you'll be climbing the walls."
    Jessica kept to her perch on the wooden stool in the big old kitchen, the same kitchen that had witnessed her disturbing, unlikely confrontation with Hamilton MacDowell's son. "If I have any food I'll fall asleep at the wheel halfway out to Long Island. I didn't get much sleep." That was an understatement. She had spent the hours from three to somewhere after seven staring into the darkness,