The cave opening became clear, partly blocked by Mariah’s body, which was silhouetted against the light. When he reached her, she took his hand, the gesture somehow managing not to bump up against the boundaries they’d set, seeming friendly rather than sexual, as if saying they were in this together. “Come on,” she urged. “Take a look.”
She drew him through the opening, onto another stone ledge like the one they’d come from. Only this one didn’t overlook a forest path, he saw when he straightened to his full height. It overlooked a mountain paradise.
The small bowl of grass-covered earth was bounded on all sides by high rock walls, though dark niches here and there suggested that their particular cave wasn’t the only way in or out. In almost the exact center of the bowl, a pool of water formed a nearly perfect circle, fed by a tall, cascading waterfall that accounted for the roaring noise. At the opposite side, a narrow outflow disappeared between a pair of rock slabs that leaned into each other, forming a small triangular gap at their bases.
The ledge where Mariah and Gray stood was twenty, maybe thirty feet up from the grassy floor, giving them a breathtaking vantage point without distancing them from the splendor of the view.
“What do you think?” Mariah asked softly, not looking at him.
“You promised me peace,” he replied, his voice not echoing now that they were back outside. “I’d say you delivered.” He could practically feel the tension melt away from him, thought he felt the same from her through their joined hands.
“Come on.” She tugged him along the ledge, to where a treacherous-looking path wound down to the grassy floor.
He followed without protest, not feeling trapped anymore, but feeling humbled and somehow insignificant. Human. Very unlike the person he’d become over the past few years, who was more special agent than man, and who walked the thin line between justice and vigilantism.
She led him to the edge of the pool, where a flat rock hung over like a wide diving platform. Instead of the cool of the cave, the air beside the water was mild, and the spray from the cataract felt warm on the exposed skin of his hands and face.
“Is there a hot spring underneath?” he asked, pitching his voice so Mariah could hear him over the thunder of water.
She lifted her free hand in a gesture of “Who knows?” “Either that or the bowl somehow creates a miniclimate of its own. I’m a photographer, not a scientist. The water’s warm, that’s for sure.”
Which reminded him of something that got his gut twinging. “The pictures Lee wrecked. Were they of this place? Could he follow them here?”
She shook her head. “No, those were older pictures, ones I’d taken before I met Lee. Once he and I got married, there never seemed to be time for me to shoot pictures, or I was never in the mood. It wasn’t until later that I realized that was another way he was controlling me. Then, after the attacks there was the trial and all the problems with my parents and the media, and there was no way I could see beauty in the world the way I used to.” She paused. “I only started taking pictures again a few months ago, after I found this place. It gave me…perspective, I guess you could say. Maybe it’ll do the same for you.”
And maybe it’ll help you remember, he thought about saying, but didn’t because he recognized the urge for what it was: a cop-out, a pretense that this was about the case rather than the two of them, and the simpatico connection that had grown between them whether either of them liked it or not. So rather than deflecting the moment, he gave in to it, dropping down to sit at the edge of the warm stone overhang, where a natural depression formed a place where they could lean back comfortably. He tugged her down beside him, no words seeming necessary.
They sat there for a long moment, watching the waterfall. The liquid curtain was both hypnotic in its relentless rhythm and surprising in the endless variety of patterns that arose from water falling along the exact same path.
After a while, he said softly, “I don’t remember the last time I talked about Ken, Trish and the baby. I guess I got tired of everyone telling me their deaths were on al-Jihad and his people, not on me. But the whole mall trip was Trish’s idea of how to get me out of my own head. She said she just wanted to see me smile.”
“What would they say if they saw you now?”
Gray winced at the question he’d consciously avoided asking himself more than once before. “Doesn’t matter. They’re dead.”
“You’re not.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be meditating?”
She shot him a “gotcha” look from beneath her lashes, but fell silent and returned her attention to the waterfall.
Gray watched the patterns of the cataract, and the tumbling swirls of impact where the fall met the pond. The moist, warm air melted into him, relaxing him, and the skimming patterns, coupled with the thunderous white noise of the waterfall, made him dizzy, then slid him toward a light doze.
He didn’t mean to fall asleep, didn’t know how long he was out, but when he awakened the cloud cover had broken and sunlight was streaming down, lighting the glen and refracting through the mists that gathered where the waterfall hit the pool below. Rainbows grew from the mists, making him think he was still dreaming because in his experience, such beauty was the province of movies and fantasy, not the hard, bloody grit of the real world.
It wasn’t just the mist or the scenery, either. It was the woman beside him.
Mariah lay on her side facing him, propped up on one elbow, looking down at him expectantly, as though she’d been the one to wake him. Her dark hair was a riot of moisture-sprung curls, and her lips were wet and full, as they’d been the day before, right after he’d tangled with her in a kiss that they’d both agreed was a mistake, but that had felt like anything but.
When their eyes connected, the sun warmed a degree, and the rainbows gleamed a fraction brighter, which only confirmed what he’d suspected—that this was a dream. And because it was a dream, it was supremely natural for him to reach up to her, and for her to lean down, so they met halfway in a kiss that might not make sense in the real world, but was exactly right in this one.
MARIAH SAW THE FUZZY warmth in his eyes, and knew he hadn’t fully awakened when he reached for her, when he kissed her.
On one level she knew she should stop him, that they had tried this, and it hadn’t left either of them in a good place. But the waterfall always left her warm and soft, and sharing this spot with him had wound up feeling far more intimate than she’d expected or intended. She’d meant to offer him a bit of peace to counteract the grief she’d seen in his face when he’d spoken of his dead friends. She’d also meant to find some peace for herself, and maybe use it to dredge up darker memories.
She’d found the peace but not the memory, and maybe it was partly that frustration that had her leaning into him and allowing the kiss. Welcoming it. Returning it. But that was only part of what had her twining her arms around his neck and shifting so they almost touched, so the air between them heated with the promise of that touch.
The rest was simple desire. Which wasn’t simple at all.
Need spun through her, spiraling higher when he shifted against her, so his chest dragged against the sensitized tips of her breasts and his strong thighs tangled with her legs. She moaned, the soft sound carrying over the crash of the waterfall and jolting her to new awareness of what they were doing, and where.
More important, she remembered what was waiting for them back out in reality—namely, the knowledge that they weren’t a good fit, and the presence of larger stakes, not just for the two of them but for the innocents she’d failed before. And in remembering that, she remembered something else: a happy image of a smiling clown face.
Adrenaline slashed through her. Breaking the kiss, she pulled back, grinning. “I think I know what Lee wants.”
As a mood killer, that statement ranked pretty high.
Gray went very still, though she felt the tension in his body and the rapid beat of his pulse. His eyes d
arkened with something akin to regret. “For a second, I thought this was a hell of a dream.”
“Sorry.”
“Me, too.” He disengaged and rolled away from her to lie on his back for a moment, breathing deeply, his eyes closed in concentration. When he opened them again, she saw not the man, but the soldier. “What did he say to you?”
She shook her head. “I can’t remember precisely what he said. But I was sitting here doing some of the breathing exercises that profiler showed me, just letting myself drift, and I started getting panicky, and heard myself saying, ‘No, no, no!’”
She didn’t realize that she’d balled her hands into fists until she felt him take one in his own and uncurl her fingers to tangle them with his in a gesture that was more supportive than sexual, but brought a warm, steadying glow nonetheless. “I’m here,” Gray said simply. “He’s not. You’re safe.”
And because she was safe in this insulated place, with this good-hearted though closed-off man, in this moment in time, she was able to continue. “Just now, I saw an image, and I suddenly knew what he’d been asking me about. It was this little statuette I used to have, a ceramic figurine of a clown I kept in my curio cabinet.”
Gray frowned. “Why would he want a piece of china?”
She shook her head, baffled. “I don’t know. Maybe because it was one of the few things I ever stood up to him on. He didn’t like it, thought it was silly and juvenile. After we got married and moved into the new house—I know, how old-fashioned, that we didn’t live together first?—he told me to get rid of it a few times. I argued with him, and he let me keep it. For the longest time, though, I thought that was where the problems started in our marriage, with that damn ceramic clown.”
Gray squeezed her fingers, bringing her attention to him. “What, exactly, did he want to know about the clown, and what did you tell him?”
“I didn’t tell him anything,” she said softly. “You know how they were waiting for someone the night I escaped from the cabin and you helped me get away? Well, something he said yesterday brought that memory, too. Al-Jihad was going to use drugs and torture to force me to talk…then Lee was going to kill me, to make sure I never talked again, ever.”
“Mariah,” he said, his voice soft of the syllables. “What did they ask, exactly?”
“Lee kept wanting to know where the clown was.” The memory hurt, constricting her chest and making it hard to breathe. Bearing down on Gray’s grip, letting him anchor her as the water thundered around them and the air sparkled with rainbows, she said, “I couldn’t tell him. I already ruined their lives once. I couldn’t do it again.”
Gray exhaled. “Your parents have it.”
She nodded, fighting to breathe. “It was my mother’s. My father won it for her a long time ago at one of the carnivals they’d worked. I’d always had my eye on it—that one in particular—over all the other little figurines she’d collected. I played with it whenever I could persuade her to let me take it out of its case. She gave it to me the day I left for college, she said so I’d always remember her and my father, and the life I came from. I almost didn’t take it, but I knew it was her way of apologizing, if only a little bit, for us not being the best match.”
“Believe me, I know how that is,” Gray said softly, and she didn’t think he was talking about the case anymore. But then he continued, “How did she end up with the clown?”
“She asked for it.” Mariah lifted a shoulder, trying to play it as if she’d understood, though she hadn’t really. “Before they moved away, she said she’d like it back, as a reminder of better times. That was why I couldn’t tell Lee. He would’ve gone after her, after both of them.” She paused when a terrible thought occurred. “What if he has? Gray, what if—”
“Don’t. Mariah, stop!” He shook her, interrupting her building panic. “They’re fine, I promise. The FBI does this for a living, remember? We’ve had a team on your parents since about a half hour after I got you to the city that first night, when we realized you were still involved in this somehow.”
“Oh.” Mariah blew out a breath, then winced. “Oh. My mother’s probably furious with me. If the neighbors find out they’re under FBI surveillance and the media circus starts all over again…”
“They’ll deal,” Gray said firmly. “And so will you.” He rose to his feet, drawing her up with him. “First things first, though. We need to have someone pick up that statuette.” He paused. “Any idea why your ex wants the clown?”
“Other than to smash it? Not a clue. It’s not hollow or anything, so I can’t see him hiding something inside it.” But there was some logic to the idea. “He could be pretty sure I wouldn’t get rid of it, though—he knew it had major sentimental value to me. Which begs the question of why he never did smash it. That’s exactly the sort of thing he would’ve done—something he knew would hurt me, but that he could make into no biggie if I called him on it. ‘It was an accident,’ he’d say, or, ‘I didn’t know it meant that much to you.’”
“Since he didn’t ruin it,” Gray finished for her, “you have to wonder whether he was counting on you keeping it safe…say, for instance, if he spent some time in jail.”
“You’re right. Come on.” Crouching, filling with new purpose, she scooped up her flashlight and headed for the cave entrance. When she didn’t hear his footsteps right behind her, she paused and turned back, only to find Gray standing where she’d left him, staring at the waterfall with an odd look on his face. “What is it?”
When he glanced at her, that expression blanked to neutral. “Nothing. Let’s go.”
But as she led the way back out to the other special agents, and they began the process of contacting Johnson and having an Albuquerque field agent collect her mother’s china clown as evidence, Mariah couldn’t help thinking that, for the first time since she’d come to know Gray, he’d lied to her.
Whatever he’d been thinking just then, it hadn’t been nothing. And he’d been looking at her when he’d thought it.
GRAY SPENT A GOOD half hour on the phone getting Mariah’s parents pulled into protective custody over their apparently rather forceful protests, and seizing the ceramic clown from Mrs. Shore. Since she apparently had several dozen of the things and couldn’t seem to remember which one she’d gotten back from Mariah, the field agents had bagged and tagged all of them, and were sending them to Bear Claw so Mariah could make a positive ID on the clown in question. So to speak.
Even as the conversation seesawed from deadly serious to mildly ridiculous and back again, Gray was hyperaware of Mariah’s position in the cabin relative to his, conscious of her every move and breath. Maybe it was because he’d opened up to her about having lost what he’d practically considered his second family in the bombings; maybe it was the sense that they were finally on to something with this case, and that maybe, just maybe, they were getting close to nailing Mawadi. Whatever the reason, his perceptions of her—and his feelings toward her—had undergone a radical shift.
When he’d awakened by the waterfall and seen her leaning close, he hadn’t been thinking of the case or the past as he’d reached up to kiss her. He’d been thinking only of the present. And in that moment, kissing her had been the most important thing in his universe.
She was nothing like the woman he’d thought she was in the first two sets of interviews, nothing like the woman he’d expected to find—or at least spy on—that day nearly a week earlier when he’d hiked up the ridge to the cabin where he was now headquartered, trying to track down a damn china clown her mother had ungifted her.
It might be unfair, but he wasn’t getting a very good picture of her parents. His own hadn’t been perfect—whose were?—but he’d never once questioned whether he and his sisters were their priority. Even when he’d disappointed them by splitting with Stacy, his parents had been on his side. Whatever he needed, they would’ve given him if he’d asked. He hadn’t, of course. But it had helped to know that he could. Mariah didn’t hav
e that. As far as he could tell, she’d never had that from any source, except maybe from her grandfather.
“You still there?” a voice said in his ear, as the agent he’d been haranguing returned to their telephone conversation, having been scrambling down in the city, trying to get all the necessary facts.
“Waiting on you,” Gray said, though he’d also been watching through the open bedroom door as Mariah moved furniture around. Having remembered what her ex was after, she’d declared herself done with sleeping in her erstwhile cell. She’d set about turning it back into a bedroom, at least as much as she could with the decorations and items Mawadi hadn’t destroyed. Watching her, Gray didn’t have the heart to tell her they wouldn’t be staying long.
The agent on the other end of the line rattled off the info Gray had been holding for, which mostly consisted of negatives. No, there hadn’t been any evidence that Mariah’s abduction the day before had been a subterfuge designed to distract law enforcement from another prong of an attack. No, there hadn’t been any indication that al-Jihad had reentered the country, and there had been no further word on Jane Doe. Everything was quiet. Too quiet, to Gray’s mind. There was an itch along the center of his spine, a nagging sense that they were missing something, and it was something that was going to come back around and bite them, hard.
“And one last thing,” the agent said in closing.
“Yes?”
“Johnson said, and I quote, ‘Tell him to get his ass down the damn mountain with the woman before all these clowns get here,’ end quote.” There was a thread of laughter in the guy’s voice.
Yeah. Gray had a feeling he was never going to hear the end of the clown thing. “Got it,” he said curtly. He signed off and clicked the phone shut, knowing that Mariah wasn’t going to like the news.
He couldn’t say he was a fan, either, though not for any particular reason he could specify. It was more of a vague disquiet, a sense that they shouldn’t make the trip down to the city. But that didn’t make any sense, either. He’d never been a cabin-in-the-woods kind of guy. The faint urge to stay another few days, or come back up after all this was over…Those were just situational urges. They’d disappear eventually.
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