Heart of the Night

by Barbara Delinsky

  “I’ll live.”

  “I may not. I feel dizzy, Sammy. I want to lie down.”

  “Soon.” He mopped her forehead and eyes, then he did what he could with her hair. All the while he bent over her, he kept her propped against his hip.

  “Do you know,” she breathed weakly, “that the cloth you’re using was hand-monogrammed in Milan?”

  “You don’t say,” he said, and couldn’t have cared less. He eyed the front of her robe. It needed a washing, too. “I have to hand it to you,” he sighed gently, “when you do things, you do them big.” Slipping an arm around her back, he helped her stand. “We’re going upstairs now. Stomach steady?”

  Susan nodded. She felt as limp as her hand-monogrammed towel and had to lean heavily against his side. He wasn’t much taller than she, perhaps three or four inches, but he was far stronger. Just then, she was grateful.

  Once upstairs, he led her through the bedroom to the bathroom and immediately turned on the shower.

  “I want to lie down,” she protested weakly.

  “Once you’re clean.”

  “I can’t stand up in there.”

  “I’ll hold you.”

  “You’ll get wet.”

  “I could use a shower.” Steam was rising in the stall; he adjusted the heat of the water so that neither of them would get burned. “It’s been a long night for me, too.”

  “You can’t come in my shower.”

  “Are you gonna stop me?” he asked. Setting her against the glass shower door with a knee between her legs, he whipped his sweatshirt over his head. He stepped away from her only long enough to kick off first his sneakers, then his jeans.

  She made a strangled sound. “Sammy?”

  “I’ll leave my briefs on, okay?”

  “Just let me go to bed.”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  “No!” She closed her eyes and murmured, “No-o-o—”

  But he was already untying her robe and letting it fall to the floor. She was wearing a pair of panties that were briefer than his. Swearing softly, he stripped them off. Then, without allowing himself the luxury of looking at her, he helped her into the shower.

  Susan had never been so humiliated in her life. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of her body, but having Sam Craig see it like this was not quite the way her fantasy went. If she had the strength, she would never be letting him do this to her, but she didn’t have the strength. Her limbs felt like rubber, her eyes wouldn’t focus, and her head hurt, all of which conspired to keep her leaning on him for support.

  He concentrated on washing her face, her hands and her hair, and assumed that the run-off would take care of the rest. When he was satisfied, he turned off the water, ushered her out, and wrapped first her, then himself in towels that he grabbed from the floor. Sitting her on the commode, he scrubbed the moisture from her hair with a third towel. Then, rather proud of his self-discipline, he stood back and rubbed his hands together. “A fresh nightgown. Where would I find one?”

  “I have to lie down, Sam.”

  “Nightgown?”

  “In the closet. The drawers on the far right.”

  He was in the midst of looking when she stumbled her way from the bathroom and collapsed into bed. He figured the nightgown would wait. By the time he reached her, she’d curled into a ball on her side and buried her face in the pillow.

  “Better now?” he asked, covering her up.

  She grunted.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He worked one damp auburn curl, then another, back from her cheek. “You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

  Her voice came from a distance. “I’ll have a splitting headache.”

  “So you’ll take aspirin. You’ll be able to hold it down by then. But don’t take another drink, Susan. That’ll only make things worse.” He glanced toward the armoire. “That’s quite an arsenal you’ve got.”

  “Don’t tell Savannah. Please?”

  “Why would I tell Savannah? She doesn’t know I’m here, and even if she did, I’m not her spy.”

  “What are you to her?”

  “A friend, co-worker.”

  “And to me?”

  “I’m trying to figure that out.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because I like you.”

  “I’m not your type.”

  “How do you know what my type is? Christ, you’re amazing. You’re half-zonked and still you think you know it all.”

  “I don’t know it all. I don’t know much of anything.”

  He sighed. “Why don’t you go to sleep now?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to get dressed and go home.”

  She was quiet for a minute. Then she murmured, “Better do your hair first. There’s a blow dryer in the bathroom.”

  Had it not been for her weary tone, he’d have had a comeback. But she was exhausted. She needed sleep far more than she needed his barbs. So he said, “I’ll give you a call later to see how you feel.”

  “The way I feel now, I may be dead by then.”

  “I doubt that.” He looked around the room and considered that if he were truly a Good Samaritan, he’d clean up. He guessed he wasn’t that good. Leaving the bedside, he took the towel from his hips and worked it over his hair. He was nearly at the bathroom door when Susan called his name.

  “Sam?”

  He turned back. “Mmm?”

  Her face was still buried, her voice muffled, but he heard every word. “Right now I’m not feeling real great—”

  “I know.”

  “But some other time, when I’m feeling better, will you show me what’s in your briefs?”

  Sam was no novice with women. He had had come-ons from respectable ladies and come-ons from hookers. But it was the first time that he had reacted to a come-on quite the way he did to Susan Gardner’s. In seconds, he was rock hard.

  “Name the day,” he growled. “Name the day, honey, and it’s yours.” Not trusting himself further, he went into the bathroom to retrieve his clothes.

  CHAPTER 10

  Savannah closed the door to Paul DeBarr’s office. “Sorry I’m late. That was the Journal on the phone. Before that, it was the Call, and before that, the Globe. Word’s out.”

  Paul rocked back in his chair. “We’ve had calls up here, too. It was inevitable.”

  Perched against the credenza, Anthony Alt tapped his foot and stared at Savannah. “The issue is how we handle it. We could deny the whole thing, but there are too many people involved. It’ll come out, and then we’ll look worse than we already do. We could try to palm the press off on someone else, but the police department has already palmed it back on us.” His eyes hardened. “I can understand why. This case is a mess. The wife of a prominent citizen was kidnapped, three million in ransom was paid, the woman was returned brutalized, and we haven’t the foggiest notion about who did it or where the money is.” He shot a glance at Paul. “Not much to campaign on.”

  Paul had the good grace to ignore the comment and, instead, ask Savannah, “How’s Megan?”

  “I just came from the hospital. She’s resting.”

  “Will she be all right?”

  “Physically, yes.”

  “And emotionally?”

  She shrugged. “Time will tell. She’s not saying much of anything to anyone.”

  “Translated, that means she’s not cooperating,” Anthony said.

  “No,” Savannah corrected slowly and clearly, as though she were talking with a child. “It means she’s focusing inward, trying to come to terms with what’s happened before she can share it with us.”

  “Doesn’t she know time is important? The longer she waits to tell us what she knows, the farther away her kidnappers get and the dimmer their tracks.”

  “It’s possible that she doesn’t have much to tell.”

  Anthony wasn’t buying that. “She he
ard, she smelled, she saw—unless she was blindfolded the whole time.” He tapped a forefinger on the credenza. “Was she?”

  “They stuffed her in a large laundry bag coming and going. She wasn’t blindfolded while she was in the room where they kept her, but she said it was dark.”

  “The human eye adjusts to the dark. She had to see something.”

  “If she did, she’s either blocking it out because it’s so reprehensible to her that she can’t cope with it, or she’s frightened. It’s not uncommon for victims of rape to want to distance themselves from their rapists. They don’t want to think about them or talk about them. They’re terrified that if they breathe a word, they’ll be sought out and attacked again as a punishment.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Anthony scoffed. “Megan Vandermeer is safe now. Her husband will probably hire a bodyguard. She doesn’t have anything to fear by telling the police what she knows. And what about anger? Rape victims are often so angry that they’d do most anything to have their assailants apprehended and punished.”

  “The anger will come.”

  Looking at Paul, Anthony tossed his head Savannah’s way. “She’s in the wrong field. Sounds more like a therapist than a lawyer.”

  “I’m a woman,” Savannah said with surprising vehemence. Her gender wasn’t an argument she usually used, but she refused to back down. “I can imagine what I’d be feeling if I were in Megan’s place. Right about now, I’d probably want to climb into a cocoon, curl up in a ball, and stay there for a good, long time. She’s been traumatized, Anthony. I know that’s hard for you to understand, but, believe me, she’s feeling pain.”

  “She could try to help,” he argued, drumming his fingers. “It would make our jobs a hell of a lot easier.”

  “I doubt she’s thinking about our jobs right now.”

  “Well, I am. We have to come up with a strategy for dealing with the press that’s going to get us out of this one, if not smelling like a rose, then at least smelling sweeter than a rat.”

  “Why would we smell like a rat?” Savannah shot back. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “We haven’t done anything right, either. That’s the point. We haven’t done much of anything at all.”

  Savannah felt her temper rise. She worked to keep it in check. “In the first place,” she said with care, “we got Megan back alive, and if that doesn’t count as something right in your book, you’ve got your priorities messed up. And in the second place,” she went on, staring at him hard, “there are those of us who have spent the past few days suffering along with this case. You wouldn’t know about that. You weren’t sitting with Will or worrying about Megan or trying to coordinate an underground investigation.”

  “So, what did it turn up?” he goaded. His fingers beat out an annoying tattoo on the credenza.

  Unwilling to stoop to his level, Savannah gripped the doorknob behind her, took a measured breath, and gave her answer to Paul. “We are dealing with two very shrewd men. They’ve covered their tracks from the start. Even with the manpower that’s now on this case, nothing’s turned up. Very honestly, I don’t know what to tell the press.”

  Paul folded his hands across his middle. “We’ll tell them we’re working on it. We can stress the strength of the resources we’ve brought in and simply say that we’re hoping for a break.” He arched a brow toward Anthony, who promptly took the plan a step further.

  “Secrecy. Play on the need for secrecy. Say that the investigation is in full swing but that to comment on the details would put the whole thing in jeopardy. Whatever you do, imply confidence. And Paul’s right—talk about the different agencies involved, praise them, set them up to share the blame if things go wrong.” He began doing drum rolls with the eraser end of a pencil. “And stress that Megan’s fine. It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, say it.”

  Savannah had plenty of experience evading pointed questions from the press. She just wasn’t sure whether this time around she could do it with her usual aplomb. It was going to be a challenge.

  “Tell them,” Anthony went on, “that we’ve been monitoring the case from the start but that, to some extent, we’ve had to honor the kidnappers’ demand that the police not be brought in. You can even go so far as to say that you have a tape recording of the voice of one of the men.”

  Savannah shook her head. “The tape is practically worthless.”

  “So? At least it will sound like we have something.”

  “But we don’t. The voice was distorted, and the lab hasn’t come up with a thing by way of identifying background noise.”

  “Who has to know? Come on, Savannah. You know how the game is played. We’re not lying. We do have a tape. So we let people draw their own conclusions about its usefulness, and if their conclusions are wrong, that’s their problem, not ours.”

  Savannah was uneasy with that. “Supposing, just supposing one or both of the kidnappers is still in the area and follows coverage of what we say. How would they react to news that there’s a tape? Would they get nervous and run? Or would they get angry?”

  “What difference does it make?” Anthony asked. “If they run, at least they’ll be smoked out. And if they’re angry, so what? They wouldn’t dare try anything more.”

  She wasn’t sure she believed that, but then, she suspected she had imagined Megan’s fear so well that it had become her own. She couldn’t seem to control the flashing images of a naked Megan tied spread-eagle to a bed, being raped again and again. More than once, she had seen her own face there instead of Megan’s. It was foolish, she knew, but it did unsettle her.

  Paul studied her face. “Why don’t we call a press conference for two o’clock? At this point, I think speculation may be getting out of hand. That has to stop. If we make our own statement, we’ll have some control over what hits the news.” His look became gentle. “Want me to handle it?”

  Paul rarely offered to do something that was not in his best political interest. She appreciated the considerate gesture, as a sign that he had an understanding of the emotional strain she was under. She also knew he was paying her back for the loyalty she had shown him over the years.

  With a sad smile, she said, “Thanks, Paul, but I’ll do it. My relations with the press are as good now as they’ve ever been. Yours aren’t.”

  Paul chuckled dryly.

  Anthony went further with a snort. “Hammerschmidt is waiting to screw us on page one of the Journal. You can bet he’ll be watching this case with a magnifying glass.”

  “I can handle Hammerschmidt,” Savannah said. “I haven’t spent a Tuesday night a month for the past five months buying him beers for nothing.”

  Anthony smirked. “Was that the extent of it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Did you stop at beer?” His snare drum roll picked up tempo. “Or did you throw in a little something extra to sweeten the pot?”

  Savannah bristled. “I’ll forget you said that.”

  “Don’t. It’s worth considering. You’ve got something that Paul and I don’t. Maybe if you tried using it once in a while—”

  “That’s enough,” Paul said and rose from his chair.

  But Savannah held up a hand to him as she faced Anthony. “One of the reasons I have the credibility I do is that I don’t sell myself that way. Sure, I have drinks with the guys. I consider it good PR to make myself accessible, informally, to the press once in a while. I laugh at their jokes, listen to their complaints. I pass on little tidbits of news that they’d have picked up by themselves if they’d been on the ball. They like me because I spend that time with them, and because I do that, they’re more likely to do me a favor when I call. Not once though, not once have I done anything improper.”

  Anthony’s grin was snide. “Did I hit a raw nerve?”

  “You hit them all the time.”

  “Just wanted to see if you’re on your toes. You were looking a little subdued there for a while.”

  “Not subdued.
Tired. I had three hours of sleep last night—this morning—and your incessant drumming doesn’t help.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for a press conference?” Paul asked.

  She drew herself very straight. “I’m up for it. This is my case, Paul. I intend to see it through. When we find out who did this to Megan, I want to be the one who prosecutes.”

  Anthony had his arms crossed over his chest and was seesawing the pencil against his sleeve. “I wouldn’t want to be in those guys’ shoes.”

  “How could you be?” Savannah asked. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one appropriate punishment for men who do to a woman what those two did to Megan.” She dropped a pointed gaze to his fly. “But you haven’t got ’em to start with.” Ignoring the sudden snap of the pencil, she looked at Paul. “Two o’clock. I’ll be there.” Then she turned and left the office.

  * * *

  Megan Vandermeer lay in a sedated haze, content to neither move nor think. When she did move, she hurt all over, which was strange. She hadn’t hurt so much before. The doctors said that the healing process was taking over, that nerve ends were screeching their way back to life, and she accepted the explanation mainly because she didn’t have the will to argue.

  Besides, she didn’t mind the pain. She deserved it.

  But she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think, period. Thinking was more painful than moving. All she wanted to do was lie in her bed and tune out reality.

  Unfortunately, the world wouldn’t let her do that. Since she’d woken up, there had been a steady stream of people passing through her room—doctors, nurses, counselors, detectives, agents—all with questions that she didn’t want to answer.

  Why didn’t they leave her alone? she wondered. Couldn’t they see that she didn’t feel well? Couldn’t they see that she didn’t want to talk?

  All their questions blurred together in her mind. What do you remember? Does it hurt here? Can you give us a description? Were you taken in a car? Where did they hold you? How about a nice, soft-boiled egg? Were there any sounds in the room? Did they call each other by name? Would you like another bath?