Not wanting to wait, Julia found her keys and headed for the address Sonja had given her for the salon. Julia drove to a small residential area by Putnam Elementary School. The address Sonja had given was for a tiny house on a busy corner. Julia pulled up along the side of the house where the salon entrance stood. A sign over the side door read Sonja's in a fancy script. Rather than going around to the house's front door, Julia went to the salon entrance on the side. The smell of hair spray and shampoo greeted her when she opened the door.

"Julia!" Sonja exclaimed, clearly surprised. She held a curling iron in her hand away from the head of a

woman whose hair was done up in a 1950s beehive. Sonja had just finished curling tendrils that now hung down the woman's neck.

Julia stared and wondered what kind of woman wore beehives in the twenty-first century.

"What brings you here?" Sonja asked, setting the curling iron aside and taking out a can of Aqua Net

hair spray.

The whole thing had a definite 1950s feel to it.

"Well," Julia began, "I actually came by because I wanted you to ... come to dinner."

"Me?"

The woman in the chair pulled off her smock, paid, then left.

"Yes, you. And Ben."

"Ben?"

Sonja was breathless with anticipation. Which reassured Julia that she was doing the right thing-even

if her mind flashed green with an emotion that she refused to say was jealousy. It was clear Sonja liked Ben, and that was all that mattered.

"Yes, Ben. It'll be fun," Julia answered. "I was thinking tonight at six-thirty."

"I'll be there!"

It wasn't until Julia was driving away, the reality of her plan on the verge of coming to fruition, that she finally wondered if this date thing was such a good idea.

Ben drove along Paisano Drive in south El Paso. Determination beat through him-determination and the need to find answers.

Two blood types.

Who had been in the alleyway with Henry?

Ben intended to find out if someone else had been hurt badly enough that they had left blood in the alley. He would check hospitals, clinics, and the morgue, while Taggart checked missing persons.

Trolling El Paso hospitals took him until noon. But he found no information on patients with suspicious lacerations or gunshots, no dead bodies with bloody wounds. There were plenty of drownings, not to mention indigent and homeless deaths. But none of those had bled before dying. Standard hospitals proved to be a dead end.

The city morgue provided no help either. By two-thirty, an exhaustion that had nothing to do with lack of sleep ticked through him. But he ignored it. He started on the list of small-time clinics in bad parts of town that might not be as inclined to report mysteriously wounded people as a traditional hospital that wanted to protect its funding. But by six he had to concede that he wasn't going to find a trace of the second person-at least not this way. Either the second person had helped themselves, was dead and not yet found, or someone was covering for them.

At six-twenty, Ben headed back to Julia's place frustrated, his temples pounding, his leg throbbing like a bitch. When he walked through the back door and she let out a relieved "Finally!" he wasn't in the mood.

"Where have you been?" she demanded.

"You sound like a wife."

"I do not! But the least you could have done was leave a note. Something, anything. For all I knew you were lying dead in an alleyway somewhere."

He held out his arms. "I'm not dead. Happy?"

He saw the tension drain out of her, and those lush lips of hers turned down in a pout. Julia, pouting. It was a sight to see, and one that eased his own tension.

He stood there for a second, pulling a deep breath at the same time he dragged his hands through his hair. Again he felt an ease try to push through him, push out the insanity that had dogged him for almost two months now. All she had to do was look at him and somehow this new nightmare world of his

seemed manageable.

He could tell she expected him to say something, but right then he didn't trust words. He wasn't sure if he would curse or drag her close and never let go. Both of which were crazy, not to mention weak.

"Happy that you're not dead?" she asked with a teasing scoff. "That depends on my mood. Right now I'm just glad you're back."

As usual, she made him laugh.

"Really?" he said. "You're glad that I'm back?"

He took a step toward her and her eyes went wide.

"Yes," she blurted out. "Because I have a ... surprise. Yes, a surprise!" She ran over to him, turned him around, and pushed him toward the door. "Go take a shower and clean up. But you've got to hurry."

"Why?"

He allowed her to push him out of the kitchen, but the minute he was in the long hall, he caught sight of the dining room.

"What's all that for?" he asked carefully.

Julia froze, but only for a second, before she renewed her efforts to keep him going-this time with little

success. "Dinner?" she said with a sigh when she gave up.

"You say it like a question. Dinner for who?"

"You?"

"Enough with the tentative tone. What's going on, Julia?"

The doorbell rang, and she squeaked.

"She's here! And you haven't even showered."

"Who's here?" His tone was ominous.

So much for any improvement in his mood.

"Your date."

"What?"

The word kind of exploded out of him, and Julia knew it wasn't a good sign. "Well, I was thinking about

how you clearly are in need of a woman."

If she had thought he was arrogantly predatory before, all he was now was predatory and dangerous.

Ben looked mad as Hades.

"What have you done, Julia?"

"I set you up on a date!"

The look on his face was priceless. A stunned mix of incredulity and the need to murder someone.

Namely her. She took a step back and smiled.

"I saw the way Sonja looks at you-"

"Sonja!"

"And you can't deny that you gave her a pretty serious once-over."

The doorbell rang again.

"Ben, really, I can't leave her outside. It's rude."

"I'll show you rude."

"You already are."

He glowered at her. She started pushing him toward the bedrooms once again. "You have to hurry."

"I'm going to hurry, all right. Hurry out of here and not come back down until she's gone."

"You can't do that!"

"Try me."

"Ben, please. She likes you."

Ben rolled his eyes, so she went at it from a different direction. "If you aren't here, it will hurt her

feelings badly. Are you really so callous that you'd knowingly hurt a woman's feelings?"

"Yes."

"Yes?" Not the answer she had hoped for. "I can't believe you even try to deny being a primal guy!"

"Believe it, babe. I'm outta here."

He marched down the hall like a furious general. Julia groaned.

"Chicken!" she called after him.

He only grunted.

"I knew you were a Neanderthal, but I didn't know you were .. . were . . . mean!"

He only grunted again.

But fifteen minutes later, while she and Sonja were talking in the kitchen-Julia trying to find a nice way to tell Sonja that her date hadn't been willing to participate- she was surprised when Ben reappeared. He came through the door like some knight in shining armor, ready to save the day. Even wearing jeans, or maybe because he was wearing jeans, he looked like everything she loved in a man. Deeply sensual and bad to the bone.

Sonja whistled-really whistled-and he laugh and bowed.

Julia was charmed, and after a quick glance at Sonja, she was sure she was, too.