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smile. “What secrets? The fact that I’m an ex-con, who killed someone in a bar fight? That I did time in prison, and might very well have ended up back there, or dead in the next fight, if it hadn’t been for enlightenment? No, Rachel. Everyone knows about my past. We’re a trusting group here, but for some reason I wouldn’t put it past you to plant something incriminating in our computer.”
    “The thought hadn’t occurred to me,” she said with complete truthfulness. She had very little doubt about her own ability to ferret out the truth behind Luke Bardell’s idiot followers, and faking evidence seemed an unnecessary complication.
    There was proof here, proof of monstrous evil, she just knew it. If they’d really killed Stella, then they might have killed others as well. Other rich, foolish women who could be flattered and seduced out of their money. And Rachel wouldn’t rest until she found that proof that had been dangled in front of her nose by the anonymous letter, like a carrot in front of a stubborn mule.
    “You’ll need to learn to be more devious if you’re going to go into battle against the devil,” Luke murmured.
    “Is that what I’m doing? Is that what you are?”
    He looked down at her, his eyes dreamy and far away, his wide, disturbing mouth curved in a holy smile tinged with mockery. “God only knows, Rachel.”
    He told himself he should be disappointed. She was ridiculously easy to read most of the time, and he’d wanted a challenge. She wasn’t afraid to show her hatred, though, which was a refreshing change. He was getting mortally tired of people looking up at him with glazed adoration. Only Calvin dared contradict him, and he did it in private. Everyone else was willing to lay down their lives for the mere gift of his smile. Or at least they told themselves they were.
    Rachel Connery was probably willing to lay down her life for his head on a platter. She wasn’t going tohave to pay that price, and she wasn’t going to win that prize. He still wasn’t quite certain what he had in store for her in the long run. Maybe just the perverse delight of seducing her soul and then disillusioning her as he made his escape.
    She still refused to wear the Foundation clothes, but that wouldn’t last much longer. He might miss the sight of her long legs, her trim ass in jeans that were too loose for his taste. But he’d be able to console himself with the knowledge that the body beneath the soft cotton clothes would belong to him if and when he wanted it.
    He knew where he’d start her off, even though Catherine had voiced a protest and Calvin, when he’d heard, shook his head in grim disapproval. She wasn’t ready for the hospice center—it would remind her of Stella and strengthen her rage just when he wanted to demoralize her. He could send her to the meditation center to scrub toilets, but slave labor wasn’t how he wanted to bring her down.
    No, he had a much nicer place for Miss Rachel Connery with the broomstick up her ass. He’d send her to the psycho ward, and let her see what happened to those who doubted the power of the Foundation of Being.
    He glanced down at her as she stood outside the refectory. Not his kind of woman. Too angry, too upper-class, too lean, and too fierce. But she smelleddamned good. And even her skinny little body called to him, even as she glared at him, making little attempt at superficial courtesy. He wondered what she would do if he pushed her back against the wall and put his hand between her legs?
    She’d probably scream her patrician little head off, he thought with dark amusement. She was a far cry from her mother, with the hungry appetites and the taste for trash. Princess Rachel wouldn’t be interested in dallying with the devil. And he doubted she needed Stella’s money. People like her came equipped with generations’ worth of money—she didn’t need Stella’s, and he did. It was just that simple.
    She just wanted to screw him.