by Gayle Wilson
“I don’t know that. He just…had that look.”
His eyes cut down to her face, despite the fact that he had also been concentrating on the people in the crowd. She looked up to meet them and realized that what she’d just said amused him. He wasn’t openly smiling, but the amusement was reflected in his eyes. The expression of emotion she had futilely searched for in the eyes of her captor.
“And yes, you do,” she said, deliberately turning to scan a group of people who were approaching the other end of the line.
“I do what?”
“Have that look.”
He did. Dark and dangerous. As if he knew his way around the right end of a weapon. On him, however…
“Excuse us,” Ethan said, pulling her with him through the mob at the entrance of the cafeteria. “Excuse us, please.”
“What are you doing?” she protested, smiling apologetically at the family they had just broken in front of.
“We aren’t going to be served. There’s no point in standing in line.”
She closed her lips against any further objections, concentrating on following him through the service area and past the cash registers. Her eyes scanned those seated at the close-packed tables, but there was no sign of the man with the gun.
“This should do.”
Ethan was standing beside a table set against the glass wall that separated the cafeteria from the hallway where the line had formed. He had pulled out one of the chairs, holding it as if he were waiting for her to sit down.
“What for?”
“We’re going to watch for your guy.”
“Here?”
“Why not? It’s the perfect view.”
He was right. If she were sitting in the chair he held out, she would be able to see anyone approaching this area from the corridor where she’d gotten off the elevators.
And they would be able to see her.
“I can’t do this,” she said when she realized that.
“All you have to do is identify him.”
And I’ll handle the rest. That was the implication of his tone at least.
There was a growing pressure in her chest, making it difficult to breathe. She looked at the people seated at the nearby tables. Most of them were family groups, and they included small children.
“You don’t understand,” she said, remembering those cold, golden eyes.
And remembering her clear impression that he would do exactly what he said he would. If she’d refused to go with him at the ICU, he would have pulled the trigger and blown a hole in her back. If he saw her sitting here in plain sight—
For an instant the noises of people eating and conversing faded from her consciousness to be replaced by the sound of gunshots. Breaking glass. Hysteria.
“Tell me.”
Called back from those images of chaos and destruction by Ethan’s demand, she realized that his eyes had lost all trace of the amusement she’d seen there only seconds ago.
“He’ll shoot. Even in here,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest because of the coldness centered there. “He’ll fire into this crowd if he sees me. It won’t bother him if he hits someone else.”
Her eyes left Ethan’s face to focus on the towheaded toddler seated in the high chair at the next table. She shivered.
Ethan didn’t ask why she believed that. He didn’t ask her anything at all.
“If he’d been able to follow me,” she reasoned, trying to clear her mind of the grisly pictures that had invaded it, “he would have been here by now. He’s probably looking for me in the ICU. Or he’s given up. Maybe he left.”
“Or maybe he saw me grab you in the hallway.”
It took a second or two for her to reach the conclusion he had. “He recognized you?”
“Or he knew I’d recognize him.”
She couldn’t dispute the possibility. She had already acknowledged that in so many ways they were alike. Two sides of the same coin.
Except that whatever had happened to turn the man with the amber eyes into what he had become hadn’t changed Ethan Snow. Not at the heart. Not where it mattered.
THANKFULLY ETHAN hadn’t parked in the deck when they’d arrived. She wasn’t sure she could have borne the thought of having to retrace that journey back to those particular elevators, with their color-coded instructions.
Despite having Ethan by her side, his hand at her waist, she’d been anxious until they had actually climbed into his car and driven away from the hospital. She hadn’t been sure if that uneasiness had been caused by residual nerves from her encounter or if the man who had taken her captive still presented a legitimate threat.
Only when Ethan directed the dark-green M-Class he’d picked up at the airport out into the late-afternoon Beltway traffic had she been able to relax. And to try to put the events of the day into some kind of perspective.
“So where are we going?”
“Griff wants to see you.”
The tension that had begun to ease built again at the thought of facing Cabot. And more especially Claire. “At his house?”
“At the Phoenix office.”
It made sense. Claire’s husband wouldn’t want her on his home turf. Not if she were likely to run into his wife again.
“I’m sorry I had to do that,” Raine said.
“Do what?”
“To tell her like that. So…abruptly. I was afraid that if I didn’t, she wouldn’t let me see him.”
“Your father?” His tone was skeptical.
Why wouldn’t it be? He had believed almost nothing she’d told him since he’d shown up at her front door last night. His reaction to her warning in the cafeteria had been the sole exception in the course of their short acquaintance.
“He is my father.”
“I hope you have proof of that.”
“Is that what Cabot wants? Proof?”
“For starters.”
“He protected his family as long as he could.”
“So you told them.”
“He sent for me. There had to be a reason for that.”
“I told you why he gave me your name. He thought you could help us with The Covenant.”
“It was his way of getting in touch with me. Your asking for his help provided him with an excuse to make contact again.”
She didn’t understand why after living all these years without her father acknowledging her existence, this had become so important to her. Maybe, as she’d thought from the moment Ethan had broken the news about the attack, because this might be her last chance.
“If that’s what he wanted to do,” Ethan said, taking his eyes off the road long enough to glance at her, “it would have seemed easier to pick up the phone.”
“I don’t expect you to understand—”
“Good. Because I don’t. What you did back there—” He stopped, taking a slow breath before he continued. “To an outsider, it seemed cruel. And unnecessary.”
The accusation hurt, more than she wanted to admit. She closed her lips, swallowing against the tightness in her throat.
Cruel she would have to accept, especially when she remembered Claire Cabot’s face. And she was truly sorry for that. But unnecessary…?
“He’s my father,” she said, trying not to let any of that emotion show. “And I was afraid I’d never see him again. If you can’t understand that…”
She couldn’t think of any way to finish that sentence. Ethan’s sympathies all seemed to lie with Claire, who had always had everything.
You sound like a child. Still jealous. Still wanting things you can never have.
“I do understand,” Ethan said, his voice less judgmental. “It just seemed you could have waited until a less traumatic time to break news like that.”
It had been obvious to everyone that Claire was under an enormous amount of stress, and she had added to it. Raine couldn’t argue with Ethan’s assessment, although it didn’t address the fact that she’d been afraid her father was dying. Or th
at he’d been trying to get in touch with her.
“You told me you were mistreated as a child. I can’t believe Mr. Gardner would let something like that happen. Or was that an exaggeration?”
She noticed that he didn’t refer to Gardner as her father. Of course, to be fair, she hadn’t been completely comfortable using that terminology in the ICU today.
“He didn’t know.”
“He didn’t know you were being beaten?”
“He didn’t know anything about me.”
“Are you saying he didn’t know you were his daughter?”
“My mother didn’t tell him. She didn’t intend for him to ever know, I think, but… She died when I was four.”
It had always bothered her that she could remember so little of her mother. Not even what she looked like. She did remember her perfume. Even now when she smelled anything with those same undertones of jasmine and roses, it brought back an unaccustomed feeling of security. The memory of being loved and cosseted.
And she remembered her voice. Deep and husky, probably from the cigarettes she smoked almost incessantly.
It was as if she had just remembered that her mother smoked, she realized. As if that were something she had forgotten long ago and that had only now, in talking about her, come back to her.
“And then?” Ethan prompted.
“My uncle and aunt took me. My uncle knew who my father was, but he didn’t tell him about me. He didn’t even tell him that my mother had died.”
“If he didn’t tell him, then how did Mr. Gardner come to know about you?”
“The agency was looking for people like me. When he saw me, he knew. At least that I was her daughter. The rest was a matter of timing, I suppose. And there were the letters my mother had written to my uncle. I still had those. They were almost all I had left of her.”
“You have them now?”
“I think he must have them. My father. I’m not sure where.”
“You do understand—”
“How preposterous it all sounds?” she challenged. “Maybe I could try to think up some other explanation. Something you and Mr. Cabot won’t have any trouble believing.”
“Think fast, then,” Ethan suggested, as he pulled into the parking lot of an office building which seemed comprised mostly of black glass. On the central door was a discreet graphic of a bird spreading its wings to rise up out of a flame. “I should warn you, however. Griff Cabot isn’t someone you want to try and hoodwink. He has far too many resources at his disposal.”
While she had none, Raine acknowledged bitterly. Not even, it seemed, the one she’d been born with.
Chapter Six
“I know you don’t believe me, but I’d remind you that you approached me. I’ve never communicated with any member of Mr. Gardner’s family.”
Ethan noticed that Raine wasn’t referring to the old man as her father. Not in front of Griff. Given Cabot’s mood right now, that was probably a wise decision.
“And you never intended to, of course?” Griff said.
“If Ethan hadn’t told me about Mr. Gardner’s condition, I wouldn’t be in Washington right now. I told him from the beginning that I can’t help with your investigation.”
“But you did tell him why Monty Gardner thought you could?”
Griff was in interrogation mode. Ethan had seen him reduce strong men to stammering by those rapid-fire questions. Raine didn’t appear to be intimidated.
“I’m sure you know exactly what I told him. I’ll be glad to repeat it for you, if you like. I took part in CIA experiments during a time when the agency was exploring the possibility of using psychics in intelligence gathering.”
“Something called Grill Flame,” Griff said.
There was a moment’s hesitation. The small furrow Ethan had noticed before had again formed between Raine’s brows.
“Cassandra,” she said softly, seeming unsure of the name even as she spoke it.
“Cassandra?” Griff’s inquiry sounded genuine, in contrast to the sarcastic ones he’d used to solicit information he had already possessed.
“Project Cassandra,” Raine said again, sounding more certain this time. “I don’t remember anything called Grill Flame. Maybe the others worked on that, but…” She shook her head.
“Monty must have felt you were one of his more successful psychics to recommend you to us.”
Cabot had apparently decided to let her comment about the name of the project go unchallenged. Ethan knew him well enough to recognize that he’d been puzzled by it and had undoubtedly filed it away for future reference.
“Since I have no idea how successful the others were, I can’t verify that. But because he would almost certainly know that I’m no longer involved in the kind of thing I did for the CIA, I naturally assumed his summons was personal.”
“You’re suggesting that he was using our investigation as a means to contact you?”
“Sometimes it’s hard for men, especially of his generation, to express their emotions. I thought that he was using the work I’d done for the agency as a way to reestablish communication.”
“And exactly what kind of work did you do?”
“They called it remote viewing. To me it was little more than a game. They showed me a picture or pointed to some place on a map, and I described what was there.”
“I understand you have other talents as well. Ones you didn’t use for the agency.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Would it surprise you to learn that your name is well known in law enforcement circles?” Griff asked, opening a manila folder that had been lying on the desk in front of him since the interview had begun.
Ethan realized that Cabot had apparently called in some favors between the time he’d left the hospital and tonight’s meeting. Or maybe he’d had his operatives begin gathering information on Raine after Ethan’s phone call last night. In either case, the file in front of him was impressively thick.
And Ethan found that he didn’t want to know what it contained. Not after Cabot’s remark about her notoriety among law enforcement.
The possibility that Raine might have been running scams using her supposed psychic abilities made him sick at his stomach. It also made him aware of how far he’d strayed from his own hard-and-fast rules about not getting personally involved in an investigation.
“I’ve done some work in that area,” Raine said.
Her reluctance to talk about this was almost palpable. The single sentence was enough, however, to quell Ethan’s anxiety. It suggested that she was known to law enforcement because she’d worked with them. Although he was aware that psychics were occasionally used in police work, nobody could be farther from his mental image of that kind of person than Raine.
“More than some work,” Griff corrected. “During the course of the past ten years, you’ve been contacted extensively by police departments in many of the major metropolitan areas in the South. Atlanta, Miami, New Orleans,” Griff listed the names of those cities as he flipped through the pages of the folder in front of him. “Occasionally by departments as far away as Los Angeles and New York. Many of the officers you worked with speak very highly of your skills, by the way.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, Ms. McAllister. I’m only repeating what I was told. By more than one person, I might add. They all seemed to feel they’d gotten their money’s worth.”
Raine said nothing, holding Griff’s eyes. Her face was perfectly composed.
“Except you never accepted payment for what you did, did you? Not even in those cases where a reward had been offered.”
“I had no use for that money.”
“Everyone has a use for money. Especially sculptors, I should think. Or is the notion of the starving artist a myth?”
“Supporting myself has never been a problem.”
“At least not since Monty Gardner took you away from your uncle and became your very generous benefactor. Is th
at right?”
“Mr. Gardner is my father. The words you used to describe what he did have connotations that don’t apply in this case.”
“Then I apologize for them. Monty Gardner removed you from whatever situation you were in,” Griff amended, “and then paid for your education. A very good education, I might add. He even bought the house you live in, didn’t he?”
Griff had lifted another page of the file, his eyes scanning the one under it as if seeking information. Ethan knew that was strictly for show. Cabot wouldn’t have come to this interview without having memorized every bit of material that had been provided to him concerning Raine McAllister.
“I don’t believe Mr. Gardner’s financial support of me took anything away from his family. My impression is there was always more than enough money to go around. Unless you believe your wife was in some way deprived because of my relationship with him, I’m not quite sure why you feel you’re in a position to question how Mr. Gardner might choose to spend his money.”
There was a beat of silence. When Griff spoke again, it was apparent he’d decided to cut his losses and move away from a topic with which he wasn’t having a great deal of success.
“Several of the people I talked to in law enforcement indicated that you’re no longer available for the kind of services you once provided.”
“That’s correct.”
“Is there a reason for that?”
“Of course.”
Griff waited, but Raine refused to fill the strained silence. “Would you mind telling me what it is?”
“I still do forensic sculpting, but not…the other.”
“Forensic sculpting?”
Griff knew as well as he did what that meant. For some reason he wanted her to put it into words.
“If law enforcement finds a body that can’t be identified because of its degree of deterioration, they bring me the skull. I attempt to reconstruct the face.”
“You do that from the bone structure?”
She nodded.
“And from what the bones themselves reveal to you, of course,” the head of the Phoenix added softly.
It was clear he was no longer inquiring about the process. Griff was commenting on it instead—and as if he knew a great deal about how it was done.