Dead By Morning by Beverly Barton Page A

your thinking of me, but I’m really not—”
    â€œYou’ve been skipping too many meals,” he reminded her. “You need to eat.”
    He closed and locked the door behind him, then waited for her to blast him for daring to tell her what she should do.
    But she surprised him again by taking the bag over to the desk, emptying the contents and saying, “You’re right. I need to eat. And actually, I am hungry.”
    He eyed her suspiciously. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her who she was and what she had done with the real Maleah Perdue.
    â€œSit,” he told her. “Eat.”
    She pulled out a chair and sat; then she removed the paper wrapping from her sandwich and took a bite.
    â€œI’ll put on a pot of decaf coffee,” Derek said. “Coffee will be good with our dessert.”
    She looked at the two small Styrofoam containers she had removed from the sack. “I usually don’t eat dessert.”
    â€œIt’s Italian Cream cake.”
    Maleah moaned. “My favorite.” She set aside the cake containers, tore the paper from the straw and inserted the straw through the hole in the lid of the iced tea cup.
    Derek had observed Maleah on a daily basis while they had worked as partners on the Midnight Killer case and knew she struggled to maintain control over every aspect of her life. Being short and curvy, maintaining an ideal weight was a challenge for her. Under ordinary circumstances, he would never tempt her with a fattening dessert, but in an odd sort of way, tonight’s meal paralleled the last meal served a person before they were executed the next day. In the morning, she would be walking into an arena to do battle against an opponent who would go for the jugular. He would do it subtly, hoping to take her unaware.
    Derek rinsed out the coffeepot, poured in fresh bottled water, filled the reserve tank, and added the decaf provided by housekeeping. Once he set the machine to brew, he glanced at Maleah, who had a mouthful of the turkey sandwich in her mouth. He grinned.
    â€œI spoke to Sanders this afternoon,” Derek told her. “He wanted us to know that, by sometime tomorrow, they should have the names of everyone who has visited Browning and the dates of the visits.”
    Maleah swallowed, wiped her mouth on a paper napkin and said, “It’s possible that our copycat killer and Browning exchanged letters and that Browning may have called him, but both the letters and the phone calls were probably monitored since he’s a high-risk prisoner. Browning would have had to be very careful about what he said over the phone.”
    â€œYes, he would have,” Derek agreed. “My guess would be that if there has been any contact between the copycat and Browning, it started with a visit.”
    â€œI understand that my meeting with Browning in the hopes of bargaining with him for information is my top priority, but I don’t want to be excluded from the investigation. I want to be part of every aspect of—”
    â€œNo one is going to exclude you.”
    â€œBut if I’m at the prison every day—”
    â€œWho said you’d be visiting Browning every day?”
    â€œI just assumed—”
    â€œYou assumed wrong.” Derek strode across the room, his gaze linked with hers as he approached. “You’ll see him tomorrow, but after that, we will take it slow and easy. We want him playing this game by our rules, not the other way around.”
    â€œI understand.” She nibbled on the sandwich.
    Derek reached over, grasped the back of a chair by the windows and dragged it over to the table. After he sat, he picked up the bag of chips, opened it and offered it to her. She shook her head. He pulled out several chips and popped them into his mouth.
    â€œWhen the time comes, I want to be the one who questions each of Browning’s recent visitors,” Maleah said.
    â€œIf we can