by Gayle Wilson
Whatever message Lew had intended to send her, he hadn’t made it easy. Maybe he hadn’t had time. Maybe—She’d probably never know, she realized. It was useless to speculate. Only Lew and the killer knew what the situation had been last night.
She picked up the stack of folders and carried them to her kitchen table. Because the terry robe was damp and becoming uncomfortable in the air-conditioning, she took a moment to go back into her bedroom to slip out of it and into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt before she sat down in one of the kitchen chairs. She ran her fingers again through her drying hair, securing the curling tendrils behind her ears, and then, opening the first folder, she began to read.
She jumped when the phone rang, sharp and unexpected in the hours-long silence. She lifted her head from where it rested, propped on her hand, and the ache in her stiffened neck was a reminder of how long she’d sat in this same position, carefully reading through her own material. She thought about letting the machine pick up, and then she realized the caller might be Kahler. She felt a moment of guilt because she knew she should have called him hours ago, when the package had first arrived. She stood up and moved across the room on legs that were also stiff, catching the phone on its fourth ring.
“Hello,” she said, anticipating the accented voice of the detective. After all, she’d been expecting him to call all afternoon to apologize for the things he’d said.
“Kate?” Barrington said.
It took a second to make the shift in her thinking. With the arrival of the package, she had forgotten the arrangement she and Thorne had made this afternoon. She glanced at the kitchen clock and realized with shock that it was almost eleven.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I forgot about you,” she said truthfully, an answer to the question he hadn’t asked, and it was not until the lack of response stretched that she realized how that would sound.
“I see,” he said finally, his tone carefully neutral.
“No,” she said. “No, you don’t. Something’s happened.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She was grateful for the immediate concern, as welcome as Kahler’s had always been.
“Kate?”
“I got a package from Lew.”
“Don’t touch it,” he ordered harshly.
He was certainly qualified to give that advice. Thorne would think she was as stupid for opening the envelope as Kahler would.
“I’ve already opened it. It wasn’t a bomb.”
“Thank God.” Barrington’s deep voice breathed the words. “What the hell, Kate—”
“It’s the files. That was the other thing Lew said he would do that afternoon. The last time I talked to him. I didn’t remember until today. He said we needed to read back through the files because that’s how Kahler had found Mays.”
“Did he read them?”
“I couldn’t be sure. I looked for them today at the paper, but everything was gone. Then tonight, when I got home, my neighbor brought over this package. It was the missing files. Lew had sent them to me “
“And you’ve read them?”
“Not all of them.”
“Have you called Kahler?”
“Not yet. I thought you might be…” She paused, remembering what he believed about her relationship with the detective. “When the phone rang, I thought it might be Kahler. I was going to tell him.”
“Come over here, Kate. Right now. Get the hell out of that apartment. I don’t want you there alone.”
“I know I told you I get the willies here, but I don’t—”
“Something in those files may have gotten Lew Garrison killed, Kate. Don’t be a fool.”
“I know, but when Kahler finds out I’ve got these, he’ll pick them up and give them to someone else to read. He wants me to back off, to play it safe. But no one else will be able to recognize what’s important. I know there’s something here. Why else would Lew have sent the files if he didn’t think they’d tell me something? I’ll be all right. No one knows I have them. I just need to finish reading them. I have to. This is my job.”
“The public’s right to know,” he said bitterly.
“The public’s right not to be dead.”
Again there was long silence across the line, and then she heard the depth of the breath he took before he spoke. “I can’t stand the thought that you might be in danger.”
She waited, knowing what was going through his mind, the horror of the memories he lived with. Make the offer, she urged him silently. Come over here and stay with me while I do my job, a job we both know I have to finish. There was only silence until she broke it.
“I could bring them with me,” she offered. “You could look at them. Maybe someone who hasn’t seen everything a dozen times might spot whatever it was Lew found. Maybe I’m too close to all this. And I haven’t changed my mind. I really don’t want to sleep here tonight. The invitation still open?”
“Of course,” he said. She could hear relief in his voice. “Bring everything with you. We’ll look at them together.”
“Could you…” she hesitated, hating to let him know that his reminder of the dangers posed by whatever was in these files had struck home. Too many people dead, she had acknowledged, and she really didn’t want to be next. “Would you meet me at the gate?”
“How long will it take you to get here?” Thorne asked, as if he didn’t even think it was a strange request.
“Ten minutes,” she guessed. Traffic certainly wouldn’t be a problem at this time of night.
“I’ll be at the gate,” he promised.
HE WASN’T. The gate was unlocked, standing slightly open when she arrived. She pulled her Mazda along the curb and sat a moment in the car, trying to decide what to do. Was it possible that something had happened to him in the short space of time since she’d listened to the comforting assurance of his promise?
That sudden fear propelled her into action. She opened the door and ran around the front of the Mazda and across the sidewalk that bordered the fence. She touched the gate, pushing the narrow opening wide enough to allow her to slip through and onto the grounds. “Thorne?” she called.
There was no answer from the surrounding darkness. She hesitated briefly before she pulled the gate shut behind her, feeling infinitely better when the iron lock slipped into its niche with a metallic clang. She was safely inside the urban fortress the Barringtons had built against the encroaching violence of the twentieth century. The only question was: Where was Thorne? She ran up the steps to the porch, but she hadn’t had time to cross its narrow expanse to the glass-paneled front door, when she heard her name from the shadows behind her.
“Kate.”
She looked back and saw Thorne standing outside his own security fence, a restraining hand on the collar of the retriever. The puppy stood beside him, panting, his tongue lolling out of his friendly dog-grin, looking up trustingly at his owner, whose tall frame was bent sideways in order to maintain his hold.
Running back down the steps, Kate hurried down the sidewalk and then spent a seemingly endless minute struggling with the gate’s release. “I thought something had happened to you,” she said breathlessly when it finally yielded.
Thorne laughed, the sound deep and warm, totally relaxed. The prosaic explanation for his absence was also comforting.
“I made the mistake of letting Charlie come out of the house with me. When I unlocked the gate, he thought we were going for a run. He pushed through before I could grab him. I couldn’t let him roam around loose. He hasn’t figured out that cars are dangerous. I thought we could get back before you arrived. I left the gate unlocked,” he explained, “in case we didn’t.”
By that time he was inside, pulling the gate inward again, and she listened once more to the satisfyingly secure clang of its mechanism engage. The dog’s greeting was cold-nosed and enthusiastic, and she found herself smiling, forgetting briefly what had sent her hurrying through the darkness to
this man.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Thorne said. He drew her against his side, his body big and solid and protective. He touched his hps to the top of her hair. “You smell good,” he said.
She remembered that she had washed her hair, allowing it to dry naturally, a process that she knew would have resulted in a mass of uncontrollable curls. “That’s good,” she said, “‘cause I probably look like hell.”
He laughed.
“Do you think we could go inside?” she suggested. “Despite your fence, I still feel a little exposed out here.”
“Of course,” he said. He put his arm around her shoulder, pulling her to him again, and they walked together to the porch where the dog was patiently waiting, his gaze fixed on the closed door, anticipating being allowed back into the familiar domain as much as she was now. The house seemed welcoming, in spite of its ever-present darkness.
Thorne slipped his long fingers into the front pocket of his jeans, his hand flattened to fit into the skin-tight material, and fished out the key.
“Where’s Elliot?” she asked. Maybe the old man was already asleep, and Thorne didn’t want to disturb him.
“I suggested he spend the night at his sister’s. She was released from the hospital today. I thought you might be more comfortable if…we were alone,” he offered.
He was right, she realized. For some reason, she would have been embarrassed for Elliot to know she had come here to spend the night with Thorne, and she was grateful again for his consideration of feelings she hadn’t even anticipated that she might have. But he had. Kindness or old-fashioned good manners? Either way, it was especially welcoming.
Thorne fitted the key he’d retrieved into the lock and then turned the handle. When the door swung inward, the soft cascade of glass notes shimmered into the silent hallway as the draft of night air touched the crystals of the chandelier.
The retriever padded like a golden shadow across the foyer, his nails ticking softly on the parquet, disappearing again into the darkness behind the staircase. Heading to the kitchen and his dishes, Kate thought, in need of a long dnnk of water after his unexpected midnight run.
Like the Southern gentleman he had been raised to be, Thorne allowed her to precede him into the dim foyer, and then he pulled the door closed behind them. “Have I told you how glad I am that you’re here?” he asked.
“Despite the fact that I’m about four hours late?”
“Apparently you had a good reason. Where are the files you wanted me to look at?”
“Damn. I left them in the car. When you weren’t at the gate…” She hesitated, again hating to admit how paranoid all this was making her. Thorne’s warning that even possessing the files was dangerous had somehow made the threat seem more real. What she was doing was not an exercise in intellect, but a search for a killer.
“Did you think I’d forgotten you?” he asked. There was a trace of self-directed amusement in the question, and she knew he was remembering the confession she’d made over the phone.
“I thought something had happened to you,” she admitted.
“To me? Why would you think that?”
If he hadn’t realized, as she had told Lew, that his was one name they knew was still on Jack’s list, she wouldn’t be the one to suggest it to him. Thorne Barrington had had enough to deal with during the last three years. Her idea that Jack would try again wasn’t something that would help in this situation.
“Just an indication of how shook up I am, I guess. You’d said you’d be there and when you weren’t…” She shrugged, letting him put his own interpretation on that fear. Fear for him. A very real fear, she believed, whether he had confronted it yet or not.
“I’ll go back out and get them,” he offered.
Suddenly, she didn’t want him out there, out in the darkness. “We could leave it until tomorrow,” she surprised herself by suggesting. “There’s not much left to read. I had read all the victim profiles.”
“Everything?” he prodded softly. “Every word?”
“Except yours,” she admitted. She had laid the thick folder to the side when she’d come to it. She already knew everything it contained. There were no secrets there. It had seemed far more important to examine the others. “I’d already read it a dozen times before, and I knew you weren’t involved.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” he said. There was a hint of amusement in his tone, and she knew he had recognized the significance of that confession. She had read his file a dozen times before because of her fascination with him.
“I had read a couple of the files on the investigators, and then you called. I swear I didn’t see anything I hadn’t read a hundred times before. I can’t imagine what Lew found.”
“It’s always possible that it wasn’t something in those files. It’s possible that Garrison uncovered something else.”
That was a possibility, of course. Lew had promised yesterday to pursue other things. Mays’s connections with the current hate groups. Thorne’s injuries. She had been the one who had asked for that, a long time ago, before she had come to know the man standing beside her. But of course, those scenarios wouldn’t explain why Lew had mailed her the files.
“We could start fresh in the morning,” Thorne’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Maybe when you’re less tired…” He let the suggestion trail.
“I just want it over. I just want to find whoever killed Lew. Whoever—” Whoever had sent the bombs. Like the one that had arrived here three years ago and had forever changed Thorne Barrington’s life. “Just over,” she finished.
“I know, but I think you’ve probably dealt with enough during the last couple of days. You don’t have to figure it all out tonight.”
“You have another suggestion?” she asked, smiling at him.
“Let it go,” he said. “Don’t think about it. About what’s happened. About the files. Don’t think about anything. Not tonight. Just let me hold you while you sleep.”
Don’t tempt me, he’d said, and now he was tempting her. A very tempting offer. To forget about it all. Finally to feel safe again.
“I’d like that,” she said simply, the absolute truth. “I’d really like that.”
THEY CLIMBED the dark stairs together, Thorne’s arm still comfortingly around her shoulder. The bedroom he led her to was huge, with furniture massive enough to fill its soaring dimensions. The draperies had been pushed back from the expanse of windows, so that the moonlight filtered into the room through the leaves of the trees that lined the street outside. Even in the moon-touched dimness it was obvious that the room’s decor was masculine.
“This is your room?” she asked.
“The phone’s here. I thought—”
“That wasn’t a complaint. Only a question.”
She took a breath, acknowledging the inherent awkwardness in their situation. Like the first kiss, neither of them could be sure what the other was feeling.
“It’s all right,” Thorne said. “I meant what I said. You need to sleep tonight—far more than you need anything else.”
“What about the other?” she asked, smiling at him. She was relieved that he seemed able to read her so well.
The dark head tilted, questioning, and a faint crease formed between the winged brows. “The other?” he repeated.
“To hold me while I sleep. Is that offer still good?”
“I can’t think of anything that would give me more pleasure than to hold you,” he said softly.
She couldn’t resist, despite the quiet romanticism of that. “Not…anything?” she teased, lips tilting.
“I’m trying to be a gentleman, Kate, but I have to warn you that you’re pushing your luck.”
She laughed. Despite everything that had happened in the last few days, despite the horror and fear, something relaxed inside.
“Come to bed,” he invited.
He held out his hand, like a courtier from another age, and she laid hers in it. He led her to t
he wide bed and sat down on the edge, still holding her fingers. He looked up from them, his gaze moving over her features, and then he smiled.
“I like your hair like that, soft and loose, as fine as a child’s.”
In spite of what he had promised, the deep voice was seductive. Suddenly, she knew that she wanted his fingers entangled in her hair, touching it. Touching her. Finally, touching her.
Drawn by that image, she moved closer to him. He opened his legs, creating a space between them for her to stand in, welcoming her body between the strength of his thighs. Freeing her fingers from his, she laid her palms on the wide expanse of his shoulders. His hands found her waist, and with their movement against her body, she could feel the play of muscle under her palms.
She looked down into his face, the features masculine and strong, yet perfectly aligned, perfectly formed. She had thought about Thorne Barrington for months, but being with him was different from anything she had imagined. Because he was different from the man he should have been. Despite the fact that he must have grown up accustomed to the adoration of the opposite sex, there was none of the sexual arrogance often found in men who were this attractive.
His hands had slipped under her T-shirt, their slight roughness pleasant against her skin The big fingers skimmed slowly upward, over the small, regular protrusions of her ribs. He wasn’t smiling now, and again she could see the starkness of desire etched in the spare planes of his face.
He wanted her, and she was fascinated that he did. Fascinated by the idea that someone like Thorne Barrington could be attracted to her. Fascinated by him. By his touch. There was no resistance in her mind to what he was doing. She wanted him to touch her, had wanted it for a long time, far longer than she had ever admitted, even to herself.