by Gayle Wilson
“Don’t tempt me, Kate,” he said. He didn’t smile, but she had already been aware of his desire. There was no doubt that she was doing exactly that.
“Why?” she asked, smiling at him.
“Because becoming…involved with me probably isn’t a good idea,” he said.
“Becoming involved?” she repeated, letting him hear the emphasis.
“Becoming intimate,” he said simply.
Old-fashioned, she thought. The wording was uniquely Barrington. Becoming intimate. She couldn’t think of a nicer way to express it, even if the phrase was archaic. Intimate. An intimate relationship.
“I think I like the sound of that,” she offered.
He made another small movement. Away from her again. His hands exerted a quick pressure, a small squeeze, against her shoulders, and then he released her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I had a lot of time to think last night. While I was waiting for you to return my call.”
“Look,” she said, knowing this was too important for misunderstanding. Such a stupid misunderstanding. “It was nothing. I was in shock from finding Lew. Kahler offered me his couch for the night, and I accepted. It didn’t mean anything.”
“It’s not that,” he said quickly. And then nothing else.
She shook her head, feeling some of last night’s anxiety resurface. If not the fact that she’d spent the night at Kahler’s apartment, then what? What was wrong? “Then what is it?” she asked.
“I realized you’d been right about a lot of things.”
“What kinds of things? I don’t understand.”
“The things you told me. About myself.”
“Thorne,” she said, her tone full of regret. She shook her head slowly, knowing how far she had come toward understanding. “When I said those things—” she began.
“You were far more objective than you are now,” he suggested. For the first time since he’d touched her, he smiled at her. “Far more apt to tell me the truth.”
“I thought you’d sent me a bomb. How objective is that?” she argued. “I wanted to hurt you. I had no idea of the reasons…”
When she hesitated, he turned back to face the marble fireplace. Unthinkingly he put his hands again over the edge of the mantel. The marred right one was nearer, and she found her eyes drawn again to the scars, the mutilation. Marked forever by what had happened.
Suddenly she remembered, against her will, what Kahler had suggested. Jealous, she thought, and striking out blindly. We all do it. Kahler wasn’t exempt from human emotion. He’d apologize the next time she saw him, and until then she certainly didn’t have to give any credence to his jealous speculations.
“I didn’t understand all that had happened to you,” she said.
He turned his head to look at her again, dark eyes examining her features, slowly, as if imprinting them on his memory.
“I realized last night that I have been hiding,” he said.
She felt her throat tighten, and she swallowed, fighting the emotion. Something constricted in her chest, hating his humiliation, hating that he felt compelled to make that confession to her. She wasn’t surprised, given what she knew about the caliber of the man standing before her. She had never heard anything derogatory said about Thorne Barrington by anyone in Atlanta. Only recognition of his abilities. His integrity. This was a manifestation of that same integrity. He was being brutally honest with her. Honest about himself.
“I think you had cause,” she said quietly.
“To be a coward?” he asked. There was derision in his voice. Mockery. All self-directed.
“You’re not a coward.”
He turned back to the fireplace. There was a long silence, and she didn’t break it. She had said the truth. What she felt. Even if he had hidden, that didn’t make him a coward.
“You have an image of yourself. Everyone does,” he went on. “A perception. And for most of us, that perception is who we are. What we think we are.” His voice stopped, but she knew from the tenseness of the muscles in those broad shoulders that this wasn’t all. Not complete. “I think that’s what I hate most about what happened. He destroyed my perception of who I am.”
“You’re not a coward,” she said again. “Sane people don’t put themselves into situations where they can be hurt or injured. If light causes pain, you avoid it. The burned child avoids the flame. That’s called self-preservation. It’s called sanity.”
He turned to look at her again. Once more assessing.
“You have headaches,” she said. “No one would choose to do anything that might trigger a migraine. Especially a severe one.”
“Are you quoting Kahler?” he asked.
“He told me about the migraines,” she admitted.
“Because they couldn’t pinpoint the physical cause of my headaches, couldn’t stop them, they suggested I see a psychiatrist.” There was no inflection she could read in the statement. No longer hiding.
“Did you?”
He laughed, the sound short and bitter.
“I knew the headaches were the result of the injuries. They just couldn’t find out what was wrong, so therefore I must be at fault. I was furious that they suggested it.”
“So you never went.”
“Maybe I was just afraid of what he might discover.”
“I’m not sure I blame you. I never had much desire to have all my neuroses exposed to the light of day.”
The silence stretched, expanded, became uncomfortable long before he broke it, his tone less emotional than it had been before. “I have migraines,” he said, speaking as if she didn’t know, finally explaining. “Triggered by light, especially a bright or unexpected light. A camera flash, even something as small as a refrigerator bulb in a darkened room.”
“The photographer,” she realized suddenly. “After the bombing. Is that…?”
“That was the first. Luckily, I was still in the hospital. I didn’t even understand what was happening. I thought something had exploded in my head, some damage from the bomb they hadn’t found.”
“But that wasn’t the only one?” she asked.
“No, but you’re right. The burned child learns very quickly to avoid the flame.”
“And there’s nothing they can do for them?”
“Injections. Something to knock me out. I’m still aware of the pain on some level. I lose a couple of days of my life. And even afterwards…there are residual effects. So I…avoid the cause. I live in the darkness.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that. I told you. Selfpreservation. Sanity.”
He said nothing, still leaning forward against his hands which gripped the mantel.
“I thought,” she said finally, “when I left work today, when I decided to come here…I thought about what you said. About being here where the darkness doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, Thorne. I want to be here.”
He turned to look at her. She remembered that he had made his confession last night. Braver then than she had been. It was only fair that she tell him now how she felt, how she had felt for so long. “I’ve wanted to be here far longer than you can possibly imagine.”
“Will you come back tonight?” he asked, still watching her face. “Stay here with me? If the darkness really doesn’t matter,” he added.
Seeing what was in his eyes, she smiled at him, and then she nodded.
SHE WENT BACK to her apartment. She still wanted the long soaking bath she had needed this morning when she had made do with a quick shower and shampoo. Before she went back to Thorne’s tonight, she intended to soak out some of the tension of the past few days. Not her grief over Lew and probably not her fear. That had become an almost constant anxiety. But maybe she could do something about her nervousness over her stalker, the confetti bandit. The tensions of her argument with Kahler. His accusations. She’d climb into the tub and try to banish all of those from her mind. Then she’d dress and go back to Thorne’s.
She
wasn’t sure if he had simply been offering a refuge or if he intended something different. A seduction, maybe, she found herself thinking as she undressed in her small bathroom. She thought she’d probably like whatever old-fashioned ideas about seduction Thorne Barrington had. Maybe even like pretending that he needed to seduce her, that she wasn’t coming to him already seduced—by his voice, his pictures, by his reputation even. By every expenence she had had with the man himself. At last, reality and not fantasy.
She had just been stepping out of the tub, unconscious of how long she had spent there, thinking about tonight, again anticipating, when she heard the doorbell. She picked up her watch that she’d placed on the tile counter and found that it was after seven.
Kahler, she thought. Coming to apologize. To back off the stupid things he’d said out of jealousy.
She pulled on her white terry robe and leaned over, letting her long hair fall forward. She wrapped a towel, turban-like, around her wet head. She thought briefly that Kahler had never seen her like this. No makeup. Wet hair wrapped in a towel. Then she acknowledged that she really didn’t care. Somewhere inside she was disappointed in Kahler, that he’d let his personal feelings enter into his investigation of a murder case.
“Who is it?” she asked automatically as she approached the door. She looked through the peephole and saw her neighbor from across the hall.
“It’s me. Carol Simmons.”
Kate released the chain and opened the door slightly.
“Sorry,” her neighbor said. “I got you out of the shower.”
“It’s okay.”
“I just wanted to give you this,” Carol said, holding a blueand-white Ty-Vek envelope toward the opening in the door. “It wouldn’t fit into the mad slot, and when I came out to get my mail, I told the postman I’d take it and give it to you when you got home. Only, with the noise the kids were making, I guess I missed hearing you come in.”
Kate opened the door wide enough to accept the bulky envelope, glancing automatically at the address block. Her name and address and the sender…The sender had been Lew Garrison.
The envelope wasn’t the folder thing the post office had—not the letter-size cardboard mailer. This one was big. Big enough to hold…Files, she realized suddenly. Big enough to hold all the Tripper files. She forced her eyes up from Lew’s careful lettering, just as neat and precise as it had been on the tabs she’d examined today, to meet her neighbor’s.
“The postman gave it to you?” she asked carefully.
“Uh-huh,” Carol said, a brief puzzlement in her green eyes.
“The regular postman?”
Carol shrugged. “Yeah. I mean I don’t know if he delivers our mail every day, but I’ve seen him before.”
“The real postman?” Kate said.
Carol laughed. “The honest-to-God, real-life postman,” she said, still smiling. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Paranoia, I guess,” Kate said, knowing she was making a fool of herself. “I’ve been working on the bomber thing. Jack the Tripper.”
“Oh, God, Kate, and you’re afraid this might be…” Instinctively, Carol stepped back a couple of feet and with that automatic reaction, Kate realized how silly she was being.
“That was just paranoia. It’s from my boss. I recognize his handwriting. My…hesitation was just a momentary insanity,” she explained.
“You better call the cops,” Carol said. “Don’t you open that thing without having the cops check it out. That guy blows people up.”
“I know,” Kate said, “but I promise this isn’t from Jack. It’s from Lew Garrison. He’s my editor.”
She held out the envelope to allow Carol to see the return address, but as the package approached her, Kate’s neighbor moved another step back, toward the safety of her own door.
“But I thought…” Carol began and then hesitated. “I thought he was dead.”
“He is. He must have sent this…” Before he was killed. A message or a warning. From beyond the grave. Kate shivered and then realized how melodramatic those words were. Lew Garrison would certainly have red-lined that phrase had she been dumb enough to use it in a story. Despite the fact that he was gone, she smiled. Lew’s not stupid, she had assured Kahler, and apparently she’d been right. If this was what she thought it might be…
“Thanks, Carol,” she said, in a hurry now to get back inside and open the envelope.
“You call the police, Kate. You hear me? You call the cops. Don’t you open that thing. Anybody could have sent that. Just because it’s got somebody’s name on the front—”
“Thanks,” Kate said, closing the door on the last part of that warning. She turned and walked across the room and laid the package on the coffee table, on top of the magazines Kahler had been reading that day as he’d waited for her to come home.
She briefly considered doing exactly what Carol had suggested: picking up the phone and putting in a call for Kahler. Only…Too much had happened between them. Too many things had been said. She felt as if she’d forfeited her right to ask for Kahler’s help.
Besides, she thought, sitting down on the couch in front of the blue and white envelope, this was Lew’s handwriting. She’d certainly seen enough of that today that there was no doubt. She didn’t want to wait for the cops. She wanted to know what was in the package Lew had mailed, apparently shortly before he’d been killed. Truly a message from beyond the grave, and at that thought she shivered again, even as she reached for the opening of the envelope.
Chapter Twelve
Despite Kate’s surety that Lew’s hand had addressed the package, she examined by touch what it held as fully as she could through the thin, tough skin of the envelope. She could feel the thicker manila of the folders and even the sheaf of papers each held. She briefly considered whether there could be explosives concealed in the center of one of the files, but in handling the package when she’d taken it from Carol, it had been obvious that it contained only flexible materials.
She looked again at the address. Everything was correct. It wasn’t marked Private or Personal. If it had been, that would have been a clue that it might contain a bomb, intended exclusively for the hands of one person. There was nothing suspicious—no lumps or bulges, no wires, no stains on the outside—none of the signs you were supposed to look for in a mail bomb. And without a doubt, the handwriting was Lew’s, by far the strongest argument for its safety.
She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she had carefully peeled the last section of the adhesive flap away from the envelope. She knew better than to try to pull the contents out, so she got up and walked around to the end of the coffee table.
She stood as far away from the opening of the envelope as she could and stretched out her right hand to lift one corner of the bottom. The image of Thorne Barrington’s right hand was suddenly in her head, and she hesitated again. Coward, she mocked herself, trying to gather her faltering courage, you know this is from Lew. Just do it!
She turned her face away, closing her eyes, and dumped whatever the package contained onto the table. The mass of material slid out without resistance. When she opened her eyes, only a stack of manila folders lay on the surface of her coffee table, looking totally innocent. She took a deep breath, feeling foolish and relieved and very lucky all at the same time.
What the hell did you think you were doing, August? Kahler would say. You got a death wish? She didn’t, of course, especially after seeing the room in Austin, after finding Lew.
She remembered to take another breath, finally feeling her heart rate begin to steady. This had probably been the dumbest thing she’d ever done, but she had known the package was from Lew. Thankfully, she’d been right. Stupid risk, her subconscious screamed, no matter who you thought it was from.
She laid the empty envelope on the table beside the folders and realized only then that she had handled it without gloves, maybe destroying whatever evidence it contained. But, of course, so had Carol and t
he postman and the dozens of people who had processed the package on its way to her. Her fingerprints were already all over the files—as were Lew’s. Especially if he had really done what he’d said they should do, if he had really again examined everything they contained.
If he had, it was obvious he’d found something—something that had gotten him killed—but not before he’d sent the files on to her. Maybe on his way to meet his killer? She didn’t know, and it didn’t make much sense to speculate on what had happened that night. What was important was that Lew had sent these to her, and whatever he’d found that had gotten him killed, almost certainly lay within these files.
Unconsciously, she pulled the damp towel off her head, letting her the hair fall around her face and shoulders. Impatiently she pushed it back, finger-combing the damp strands out of her eyes and away from her face with both hands.
There was enough material here that it would take her hours to go through it all. Unless, she thought suddenly, Lew had stuck a note in one of the folders, or marked something in one of the files, something that would direct her search.
She sat down on the couch and opened the first folder in the stack. A file for a victim profile. She quickly fanned through the pages, but there seemed to be nothing there. No note, nothing that didn’t belong. She opened the second folder in the stack, doing the same thing. She continued the process through all of them, carefully restacking the folders she’d searched upside down in the order they’d been in when they’d arrived.
There appeared to be nothing in any of the folders except what she had put into them originally. In her cursory search, she hadn’t seen any notations, no circles or stars. Only her files and the ones Lew had begun collecting from the stringers in the scattered cities where the bombings had taken place. She supposed she had looked at those at some time in the past, maybe when they’d come in, but she couldn’t really remember too much about them because she hadn’t written that article yet.
Interviews with the hunters, Lew had called these files. Profiles of the men who were desperately looking for Jack because he’d killed someone in their jurisdiction, someone who was supposed to be under their protection. Murder had been done on their watch, and they were still looking for the murderer. She laid the final folder on top and then lifted the entire stack, turning it over so that the files were again in the order in which they’d arrived.