“It’s about time you got serious about a woman.”
“I’m serious about all women,” Rafe assured him. “Now, how about you? How’s it going here in the wild, wicked city?”
“Not too badly. I’ve only been here a few days, and we’ve had a couple of breaks.” He told his brother about the torso and the tattoos, and the roses delivered to Maria Garcia’s house, warning him that they weren’t letting that information out to the public. Then he shrugged unhappily. “Jimmy had Madison in, as well.”
“So?” Rafe said. “She’s worked with him before. It makes sense that he’d want her help on something like this.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Why? What is Madison seeing? How close is she getting?”
Kyle shook his head in disgust. “All she’s seen so far is the victim.”
“She mostly sees the victims. She never saw her mother’s killer, remember?”
“She’s seen more on occasion. Sometimes she sees what the victim sees. But you’re right. She seems to have a blind spot for the killer on this. All that’s happened so far is that she feels pain for the woman who was killed. I just don’t like her being involved.”
“What can you do?” Rafe asked him with a sympathetic shrug. “Jimmy is going to use her, and Madison is over twenty-one.”
“I just don’t have a good feeling about it.”
Rafe toyed with the label on his beer bottle, hesitating. “I think you just came home and got nervous because Madison looks so much like Lainie did…when Lainie was killed.”
Kyle shook his head, wondering why his brother’s words were suddenly making him feel as if he had missed something. “It’s not that. Besides, Harry Nore was certifiably insane, and he was caught.”
Rafe shrugged. “I don’t think Madison ever believed that Harry Nore killed her mother.”
“She accepted it. The cops had him, along with the murder weapon—with traces of Lainie’s blood still on it.”
“She accepted it because she was a kid and she was told that was what happened. She had no choice.”
“The evidence against Nore was damning, and that’s my point. Madison has gone through enough.”
“Oh, she’s stronger than you think. Besides, little bro, you can’t just come waltzing back into town when you’ve been gone for years and think you’re going to boss the family around.”
“I don’t think that,” Kyle said with a scowl. “I just don’t like…I don’t like her being involved. It makes me nervous as all hell.”
“Then get her uninvolved.”
“How?”
Rafe laughed. “How the hell do I know? You’re the damned FBI agent!” He sobered suddenly. “Okay, so this is a nerve-racking case. More and more about what’s going on is making its way into the newspapers, and lots of people are getting nervous. Maybe this is a bad one. Maybe you’re right and Madison shouldn’t be involved. Find a way to keep her busy elsewhere. Have her kidnapped to a desert island for the time being.”
“Right. Then the FBI will be after me.”
Rafe laughed easily. “I’m sure you can think of something. Do your best to keep her out of it.”
Kyle stood suddenly.
“Where are you going?” Rafe asked.
“I’m going to call her. I’ve heard from everyone else—hell, Trent even gave me a call. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
“She’s a big girl now,” Rafe reminded him.
Kyle nodded and headed toward the phones. He had a cellular, but he hated the damned thing, and he’d left it in the hotel room.
He dialed Madison’s number. Her machine picked up. “Madison, it’s Kyle. Pick up. Madison, I’m going to wait. I’m going to keep talking. It’s Kyle. Pick up.”
She didn’t do so. He tried ringing her number once again. Once again he got the machine.
He hung up and walked back to Rafe, glancing at his watch. “Eleven o’clock on a weeknight. Where the hell is she?”
“Out on a date?” Rafe suggested.
“She has a kid.”
“Yeah, well, women with kids go out on dates.”
He cast his brother a glare. “Then the baby-sitter would pick up.”
“Right. But you’re forgetting that Darryl is in town. Maybe Carrie Anne’s with him. Maybe she is, too.”
“Madison and Darryl are divorced—”
“Yeah, well, they’re still close. Real close. Friends. Who knows, maybe once they’ve both sown a few wild oats they’ll get back together again. Kyle, she’s all right. Wake up and smell the coffee. She’s probably sleeping at Darryl’s house. You can’t come home and start chasing her around.”
“I’m not trying to chase her around. I’m worried about her.”
“Kyle, she’s all grown up. You’re not even really related to her, plus you left her life years ago. I’m telling you, you can’t be her guardian angel now.”
“Maybe not.”
They talked about stocks, Rafe telling Kyle where he should invest.
“You’re going to have to make good investments, there just aren’t that many really rich FBI agents,” Rafe reminded him.
It was late when Kyle finally left his brother.
Late when he went to bed after two beers.
He should have slept quickly, and well.
He didn’t.
At first he lay awake wondering what it was that he should be seeing and just wasn’t realizing. Something in the pictures of the victims, in the forensic reports.
He crawled out of bed and started going through the reports once again. What was it?
Then it hit him, and he realized it had taken him so long because the picture he had of Julie Sabor was in black and white.
Redheads.
They were all redheads.
Maria Garcia had been very dark, but still, there were traces of red in her hair. And the corpse today…
He felt ill. More worried than ever about Madison. He tried her house again.
She didn’t answer.
He hung up. Rafe had all but told him that she still slept with her ex. He could check with Darryl, except that he didn’t have any idea where Darryl was staying.
It was really late, but he called Jassy. She came on the line sounding really sleepy. “Madison could be at Darryl’s, but she’s probably home. She turns the ringer down on her phone after ten all the time because Carrie Anne is such a light sleeper. Call her in the morning, Kyle. I’m sure she’s fine.”
He thought about driving out to her house then and there, and banging on the door until she acknowledged him. She would be really ready to kill him, though, and more prone than ever to ignore his warnings. He had to be calm, had to tell himself that it was a good thing she was probably sleeping safely with her ex-husband, that he should get a grip and wait until morning.
He lay awake.
Finally he dozed.
And he dreamed.
He dreamed once again that he and Madison were in the same house. And he was moving down a darkened hallway, trying to get to her. He was wearing a towel. He’d showered, and he was intent on one thing—Madison. It was simply time. It didn’t matter that they always argued when they talked. It was time. She knew it just as well as he did. It didn’t have anything to do with the kind of emotion that had tied him to Fallon. It had nothing to do with the past or the future, and she knew that, too.
So he walked down the hall. And in his dream the hallway was dark and misty. Long.
Like the hallway in the house Lainie Adair had shared with Roger Montgomery, all those years ago.
Madison was at the end of the hallway, in her room. There was a soft yellow light emanating from her room, sweeping around her. She was wearing a towel, as well. Her hair was dry, burning red in the strange light, creating a cape around her naked shoulders as he walked down the hallway. Her chin was up, her eyes were bright, her lips were poised to speak. She was going to tell him what he should be doing with himself, except it didn’t m
atter. What she said didn’t matter. She was waiting, because they both knew that there had to be an outlet for what they were feeling.
His groin tightened.
He met her eyes. Felt the electric fury that burned within her because she wanted him and he knew it. She didn’t want to want him, and she definitely didn’t want him to know that she wanted him….
He just smiled. And walked closer.
That was when it happened….
When the darkness suddenly deepened. When she suddenly seemed so far away from him. When the air itself changed. When he felt…
A presence.
Someone between them.
Someone lurking in the shadows that were suddenly becoming deeper and deeper. Someone waiting. Someone evil, threatening Madison…
Out of the pitch-darkness he suddenly saw the silver glitter of a knife. Big, long, a butcher’s knife, wickedly sharp. It hung in the air, as if suspended in the darkness of a haunted castle in an amusement park, the strings hidden by the eerie lack of light.
The silver streaked through the air.
The shadows shifted and moved.
Madison screamed….
Kyle awoke, drenched in sweat.
For several long seconds he sat there, realizing he’d been dreaming, that he was in his bed in his hotel room, that morning’s light was just beginning to filter into his room.
Six-thirty.
The alarm went off.
He nearly jumped off the bed.
Get a grip! he warned himself in silent self-disgust. He crawled out of bed and into the shower, jumping when the water hit him, cold as ice at first.
The water warmed, and he lifted his head, letting it stream over him. Maybe he shouldn’t have accepted this assignment. There were criminals all across the country. He should never have come home.
The phone was already ringing when he left the shower. He picked up the receiver. His assistant, Ricky Haines, was calling from Virginia. They hadn’t found any matchups with the rose tattoos so far, but he would keep looking.
Kyle thanked him, hung up and glanced at the clock. Nearly eight. He called Jimmy, who was usually in by seven-thirty, if not earlier.
Jimmy was in, and he had information.
There had finally been an identification on their Jane Doe. She was in fact Julie Sabor; dental records brought in from Cincinnati had clinched the ID.
“We think we’ve got a name on our weekend victim, as well,” Jimmy told him. “Holly Tyler, twenty-eight, worked as a receptionist at a med-tech lab. Only child, parents deceased, friendly, well liked at work. She was incredibly excited and secretive Friday afternoon. She was getting off early for a ‘wild weekend’—and she told the girls at work that she wouldn’t whisper a word until she saw them again come Monday.”
“She never showed up on Monday?”
“Her friends in the office even hesitated about calling in this morning—they thought she might be planning to call in sick or something. But then one of them noticed an article in the paper this morning about the torso we found yesterday and decided to call in. I’m expecting Larraine Harrison and Betty Kilbride, two of the girls she worked with, to come down and identify the body—well, the head—in about an hour.”
“I’ll be there,” Kyle said, and hung up.
He dressed quickly, then tried Madison’s number. He still got the answering machine.
He swore, then decided to drive by her house.
Her beige Cherokee was in the drive, but she didn’t answer the bell. He knocked on the door, then walked around the house, pounding on the windows.
“Damn you, Madison!” he muttered out loud.
Finally he used his cellular phone and called Jimmy. “Have you got Madison with you down at the morgue again?” he demanded angrily.
“No, I don’t have Madison at the morgue,” Jimmy informed him irritably. “What the hell’s eating you?”
“She didn’t answer her phone last night, and she’s not here now.”
“Well, you know, Kyle, she is over twenty-one.”
“I’m going in, Jimmy.”
“Kyle, I’m sure that—”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m going in.”
“Fine. I’ll be there in five minutes. Five—”
Kyle had already hung up.
8
“Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. Now, no smiles for this. Be sultry. Seduce the camera, Madison. We’re not being playful here, we’re smoldering, my darling. You are pure sensuality…. Give me movement, subtle movement, just a tiny bit of movement, face, eyes…Part your lips, just a hair. That’s it, perfect, perfect….”
Jaime Marquesa’s camera clicked away as he gave her his instructions. It was an outdoor shoot, on a small private spit of beach at Key West, and as Jaime moved around with his camera, his two assistants hovered in silence behind, ready to move any obstruction or raise aluminum sheets against the sun if the shot demanded it.
Madison liked Jaime, and she liked working with Michelle Michaux, a local woman who had come from Miami’s inner-city area to excel in fashion design. Of Haitian descent, Michelle had a beautiful, soft accent. Her swimwear was becoming so popular that the onetime dollar-an-hour seamstress was frequently quoted in Forbes. But she also had a deep-seated belief in giving back to her community. Today, she, Jaime and Madison were all donating their time and talents for a poster campaign to support the local arts and students interested in pursuing careers in fashion and the fine arts. The concept was Michelle’s. The theme was To Soar Where We Can Dream. To Madison, with Darryl working in Miami and anxious to spend time with Carrie Anne, the opportunity to take the few days necessary to work on the project had seemed incredibly fortuitous. She’d also been anxious to get away.
She’d been curious to discover if she had the willpower to force herself to leave Miami and slip away, knowing that Kyle was there. But if he and Jassy were getting together, she needed to keep herself out of the way. And if she had been misreading the signs…
“Sand!” Jaime exclaimed suddenly—and unhappily. He took up an admonishing stance and stared at one of his young assistants, a handsome New Yorker of Nicaraguan descent named Hector. “Sand!” he repeated.
Hector shrugged and came running forward with his little brush, carefully removing every spec of the offending sand from Madison’s buttocks.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
He winked at her with a casual shrug. “Bugger of a job, Madison, but someone’s got to do it.”
She smiled back. He wasn’t being offensive. He was Jaime’s lover.
“And I get to hold the sun shields!” George Nathan, Jaime’s other assistant, said with a sigh as he checked a light meter. George was sandy-haired, lanky, a recent graduate of the University of Miami. He’d already won a number of prizes for his own photography, but he was working with Jaime to learn from the best.
“Sun shields are important,” Hector assured him.
“But sand is more fun.”
“Boys, we’re working here!” Jaime commented with an exaggerated sigh. “Once again, same look, Madison, sultry, dreamy…Okay, she needs the scarves now. Okay, with the scarves, Madison, you play. Just play. Have fun. Run with them, keep them flying in the breeze. We are showing that dreams are spun like fine silk, that they float in the air, that they are what we make them, yes, you understand? Go with it, run with it….”
She did. Jaime was good, the best. She was certain he could have talked a five-hundred-pound bearded lady into feeling that she could be dressed up and dusted off to look just like Cinderella on her way to the ball. Playing with the silk scarves, running up and down the sand, was fun. Hard work, because—despite the fact that it was growing late in the afternoon—the sun remained intense and Jaime seemed to be taking thousands of pictures. They’d been at it all day. The stylist and makeup woman had left after the last break, and Jaime kept promising that they would be done any minute. His concept of a minute was apparently a bit different from the norm
, but he brought out the very best in her, and she knew it.
At a brief pause in the shooting—with Hector once again dusting her flesh free from sand—she was stunned to look up and see Kyle Montgomery standing in the back, beside Jaime and Michelle. He was talking with them but watching Madison. He was dressed for the beach in nothing but a pair of pale blue cutoff jeans. His head was bare; he wore sandals on his feet and, in the sun, his inevitable sunglasses. He looked a lot more like part of the shoot than a dedicated FBI agent. Dark hair fell casually over his forehead; his flesh was incredibly bronzed and covered with a sheen of sweat. He might have been a lifeguard.
At times, she mused, he had been. He had worked as a lifeguard during his last two summers before college.
That was a long time ago. He was no longer a local boy.
So what was he doing here? He was supposed to be working.
Despite herself, she felt her blood begin to race. Her heart pounded; breathing became difficult. She wished Kyle had stayed in Washington.
She commanded her knees to quit feeling so weak. She chided herself in silence for letting him affect her in any way. She wondered whether, if she closed her eyes, he would disappear.
She tried it. He didn’t.
Jaime indicated with a smile that Kyle was welcome to go talk with Madison. Kyle nodded, then started walking toward her. The casual beach-boy look of his clothing was immediately belied as she felt his damning stare, despite the darkness of his glasses. He stopped dead in front of her, and she was certain that he was using all his willpower not to reach for her and shake her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him, annoyed to realize that she didn’t sound at all casual. Her voice was irritatingly shrill. She couldn’t quite seem to control it around him.
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