“A woman after my own heart.”

“Just what I wanna hear,” she said, already taking off her coat and settling in for what was bound to be a long, but promising night.

Elizabeth rarely visited.

It was an unwritten rule: he would go to her. Always.

The last time she’d shown up in his private quarters was over a year earlier, but now she was pacing along the edge of the pool, light from the underwater fixture giving the water a bright aquamarine glow, the reflection casting shifting bluish shadows on her pale, flawless skin. Dressed in a long black coat and boots, she walked from one end of the room to the other.

Vlad finished doing his laps, refusing to interrupt his routine, even for her, then hoisted himself from the pool.

“Something’s wrong,” he said, naked and dripping, allowing the cool air to caress his skin. He’d hoped to spend some time in the freezer with Ariel and Karen Lee, aka Bodiluscious, after his workout, but obviously he would have to change his plans.

“We have to work faster,” Elizabeth said, glaring at him as if whatever was wrong was his fault. “We agreed to collect more and it has to be soon.”

“What happened?”

“Other than the arm being discovered?” she sneered. “I have sources in the police department. That was careless, Vlad. When you dispose of the…corpses, you need to take them far away. Out of the parish. Out of the state.” She whirled on him, her anger visible in the snap of her eyes, the flare of her nostrils. “For God’s sake, what’s wrong with the damned Gulf of Mexico? They could be used to feed the sharks…never found. People fall off boats and are never located again.”

As if it were that easy to dispose of a body.

“The gator incident was unfortunate.”

“And stupid! What’re the chances of the rest of the body showing up? Or the other ones?” She was shaking and it was all he could do not to put his hands on her and try to calm her, but he knew from past experience that touching her now, while she was dressed, not in her murky bath, would infuriate her further.

“They can’t link the arm to us.”