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nearly overtook me. But you learn to keep a poker face when you’re a cop, especially when playing a joke on a fellow officer. And the longer you can keep it up, the greater the reward. I kept a straight face and dismissed it like it meant nothing. “You know what, Carlos?” I waved my hand in a flutter. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to talk to her some other time.”
    I probably shouldn’t have done it to him. Carlos worried so much about Natalie getting his note, that he barely touched his extra meatballs. All during lunch I caught him looking over his shoulder at the lunch counter to see if she would notice him. Each time he saw her eyes drifting toward our booth, he would try nodding or waving to get her attention. Despite his efforts, or in spite of them, she failed to acknowledge his existence.
    We were about to ask for our tab and leave, when I heard the little bell chiming up over the door. At once, nearly every head in the place turned, including Carlos’. In all my years, I only knew one individual who could command that kind of presence when entering a room. I turned to the door, and her name spilled from my lips like a song.
    “ Lilith Adams.”
    She appeared more stunning than I remembered. Perhaps because the last time we met, I was actively engaged in an investigation to nail her for murder. You tend to see through a person’s beauty when you factor a homicide into the equation. With the fog of nadir lifted, I could now fully appreciate the utter brilliance of her beauty. Her skin, the color of cappuccino even in the perpetual gloom of New England’s April rains, seemed to radiate a luminescence unequaled in nature. Her long black hair flowed in silky threads like smoke on glass. She stood against the open door, one hand on her hip, one knee bent, her blue jeans tighter than cellophane, her buttoned shirt half-opened down the front but tucked in along the back. It’s not to say that I had forgotten Lilith Adams altogether, though hard I tried. Visions of her all but consumed me the first few weeks I was away from New Castle. Shades of Lilith filled my sleepless nights. I could not shake the insult of her sassy attitude, snide remarks and daring laugh. Her cocky posture burned in silhouette deep within the crevices of my mind. A man my age can only hope to forget such things in a woman, especially one so much younger and vivacious. But there is one thing a man can never forget, something I will never forget: her eyes, her wildly captivating, hopelessly hypnotic, fathomless, flirtatious, blazing and beguiling ebony eyes. They shall haunt me in my dreams for as long as I live. I have looked into those eyes and seen the fervency of hell, yet I hold that somewhere in her soul she knows of it only from a distance.
    Lilith patrolled the diner with sweeping glances, starting at the front by the lunch counter and working back. Those who recognized her scooted their chairs away from the door. Those that didn’t, followed suit just the same. When the mine sweep crossed our booth, our eyes locked. I heard Carlos swallow back the lump in his throat. I reached across the table without looking and patted his hand to hush him.
    “ Easy, boy,” I said. “She’s not going to bite.”
    His whispered reply I could hardly hear, but I believe he said, “Are you sure?”
    She let the door go, and as it hit her ass, she started walking. She headed straight for our booth with a whip in her strut. I saw Carlos’ hand slip behind his jacket on his holster side. He could have pulled his gun and shot her, and I suppose it would have all been worth it, except for some paperwork. But I slapped the hand that he still had on the table and I made him stop reaching. Lilith clicked her heels at the foot of our table and folded her arms tightly below her breasts.
    “ Detective Marcella,” she said, and it didn’t sound very cordial. “I heard you were in town.”
    I smiled up at her, pleasantly as I could. “Well, what