Free Shadowlight by Lynn Viehl

bathrooms. The library held close to five thousand books on every subject and in every genre, and had a wood-burning fireplace and armchairs made to nap in, while the media room offered every form of electronic entertainment, from the latest CDs and DVDs to the newest video gaming systems. There was even a workout room where she could use free weights, Nautilus, or run on a high-tech treadmill toward a screen that could be preprogrammed to show the view of a jogger running through parks and nature areas in the world, or sweat out her troubles in the adjoining wet/dry sauna.
    None of that mattered to Sam in the slightest as she reread the report. “I can’t believe it. They’ve nailed Max Grodan, this con artist who always killed his partners after framing them for his crimes. After all these years, they caught him.”
    “Marvelous news.” Lucan’s hands shifted to turn her computer chair around one hundred and eighty degrees. “Surely that brings a happy end to your police work for this night.”
    She glanced up at the indecently handsome face framed by a mane of corn-silk hair, and the glittering of chrome around the edges of his ghost-gray eyes. Lucan, the former assassin turned benevolent dictator, didn’t like being ignored. He also remained mostly oblivious to the work she did, something that often annoyed her more than his looks. “You don’t understand.”
    “Someone has been nailed. You are pleased. Justice doubtless has been served.” He knelt before her and leaned in to nuzzle her throat. Against her ear he whispered, “Now, would you be so kind as to forget about being a cop until tomorrow night?”
    “I can’t.” She linked her hands behind his neck and kissed his cheek. “Here’s the thing: I have to fly up to Atlanta.”
    “Oh, no.” Lucan pulled her into his arms and stood. “You are coming to bed with me.”
    “It would be much easier to have a conversation with you,” she mentioned, “if you’d get your mind off hopping in the sack with me for, say, thirty seconds.”
    “Very well.” He set her down on her feet and regarded her through narrowed eyes. “Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.”
    “The feds in Atlanta busted a pair of grifters,” she said quickly. “One of them turned out to be Max Grodan. He was the primary suspect in an old open murder case of mine.”
    “Twenty,” he said, looking bored as he folded his arms. “Nineteen.”
    “He uses lonely young men and women to run his games,” she continued. “He seduces them, trains them, and sends them in under fake or farmed identities. They take all the risk; he gets all the money. Then he frames them, kills them, and walks away. I know there were at least three others besides my victim.”
    “Thirteen. Twelve.”
    “God damn it,” she said, suddenly furious with him. “You don’t own me. This is my job. This is what I do.”
    The scent of jasmine grew thick and hot, and the empty wineglasses they had left by the window shattered.
    “I don’t give a bloody damn about your job. You belong to me.” He backed her up against a wall. “I keep what is mine close. Here. Certainly not in another colony.”
    “We haven’t been colonies for over two hundred years, and I’m going to Georgia only to extradite a prisoner.” She threw out a hand. “You’re acting as if I’m running off to Aruba with one of the boys in the garrison.”
    “You would not be that foolish.” Popping sounds came from inside her computer, and the monitor screen went dark. “There is something you are not telling me about this. Why?”
    “Stop.” She pressed her hands against his chest, trying to push him away. She would have had better luck moving a brick wall. “Just stop. Have it your way. I’ll let someone else go in my place.”
    “Samantha.”
    “He was the first one I ever saw with my talent,” she shouted. “I put my hand down and accidentally touched the victim’s blood and the vision hit me. One minute I was there looking at