Nightwalker by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online Page A

Ringo, you and Adam got me into this mess with Emil Landon, so let’s deal with that first, huh?” He put aside the fact that Jessy Sparhawk had affected him more deeply than he could possibly have expected, but there had just been something about her. She wasn’t some hustler hanging on to the money men, wasn’t a wild-eyed party child out to prove the truth of the slogan “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” She was different. She lived here, worked here. She knew the city. Knew the pitfalls to be found in a place where every business in town was out to separate you from your money.
    So it was interesting that she had been playing high-stakes craps.
    “Are you paying any attention to me?” Ringo demanded.
    He felt himself flushing, because the fact was, he was completely intrigued by the woman. So why was he embarrassed around Ringo? Maybe precisely because he was so fascinated by her. But his life didn’t allow for emotional intimacy, at least right now, and business had to come first. “Ringo, I’m looking for a killer. Don’t you think I ought to find out what the hell is going on before I drag someone else into my life?”
    Ringo didn’t have an answer for that. He followed Dillon to his car, seeping through the passenger door, though he could have opened it. He sat silently throughout the ride to Dillon’s house, just on the outskirts of the Strip.
    Clancy, Dillon’s huge Belgian shepherd, was wagging her tail at the door. She knew Ringo was there. At first she had hated him. She had barked upa storm whenever he was around, and it had all but driven Dillon crazy. But then, to his huge relief, she hadn’t just accepted Ringo’s ghostly presence, she had decided that she liked him. And when Dillon could get Ringo to stay home, rather than trailing after him, he was great, letting the dog in and out, and playing with her.
    “So what now?” Ringo asked. “Shouldn’t we be off somewhere, doing something?”
    “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m getting some sleep.”
    Ringo cursed as Dillon headed for his room. Feeling completely worn-out, he stripped down and slipped between the sheets. They were into the wee hours of the morning, and he wanted a nap, at least, before heading to the police station.
    But instead he lay awake. And when he closed his eyes, he could hear the drums of his childhood. He could hear the chants, see the warriors in the circle at the dance. A Paiute chief had been the one to develop the Ghost Dance, which had been picked up by many western tribes. The chief had envisioned casting the white men from the land, leading to a return of tribal power.
    It hadn’t happened. Not by a long shot.
    He’d been to dozens of Ghost Dances as a child, but he’d never seen a single ghost at any of them. It had been at his parents’ funeral, when he’d been a bitter young idiot, that he’d first seen the maiden in white.
    It was rumored among the Indian nations that she was the guardian of the white buffalo, a mythical heroine who knew the hearts and minds of both theliving and the dead. She was beautiful and wise, and she could read a man’s soul.
    She had never been anything but a myth to him, a beautiful story told by his people.
    Until that day at the funeral, when he looked up and she was just…there. She couldn’t be real, he had told himself. She was a figment of his imagination, dredged up by the pain in his heart, and the fury against God and fate that burned so savagely inside him.
    She had stared at him across the open graves. Then, later, when he’d been about to get involved in an idiotic fight at the bar, she had stepped in between him and the man he had intentionally insulted. Apparently he’d wanted to get his face smashed in, had wanted to feel the physical pain to ease the deeper pain that tore at his soul.
    But she had stopped him. He had felt her hand on his shoulder, and when he’d turned to face her, her eyes had locked with his and she had