She wiped her finger on a cloth and turned toward him. “After you left, I connected with Phaedra again. Just like with me, the man came back and punished her for wetting herself. She watched him walk to a bathroom at the end of a hallway and wash out her clothes. I saw more of the room. It’s a bigger place than I thought. The bathroom looked regular, not one you’d see on a boat, I would think. Or in a truck. I tried to capture it.” She nodded toward her canvas. “Does it make any sense?”
He studied the painting. “Not really.”
She slid her fingers over the canvas, smearing the paint even more. “I’m not good with details, only abstract ideas.”
“And eyes. You put eyes in all your paintings.”
She dipped her finger into the black paint and drew a large eye in the middle of the canvas. “That’s what I see in my mind when I slip into a creative trance.”
“I’d say it’s your theme.”
She gave him one of her Mona Lisa smiles. “I guess I do incorporate eyes into my work a lot, now that I think about it.” Her fingers worked methodically, finishing the eye. She then started working on a white eye against the green background.
He watched her paint for a few minutes, feeling a sense of peace steal over him at her graceful movements. She seemed immersed in her painting, so he turned the large chair in the living room group around and settled into its cushy confines. Stasia curled up between him and Olivia with a rope chew toy. The CD changed to Pat Benatar, who sang about love being a battlefield.
He watched Olivia’s finger swirl across the canvas. She reached down to a rack of jars and ran her finger across the Braille labels. She grabbed the fourth jar and poured some of the paint into one of the empty wells. The murkier green color complemented the background green. She had a different color on each of her three fingers; sometimes she used another finger to blend the colors together.
“What’s it like to not see your final product?”
“Frustrating. I can imagine what it looks like, but I’m sure it’s nothing like that in reality.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Just like I could try to imagine what you look like, but I’d be off by a mile.” The thought of her trying to imagine what he looked like seemed intimate somehow.
“Do you remember what colors look like?”
“I do, but only because I work at it. Otherwise my visual memory would fade away. It’s like a muscle I have to exercise or lose forever.”
Her words had grown soft on the last part, but she gave no other indication of how that prospect made her feel. She continued to paint with her back straight and her chin up.
“I paint, too,” he said, though he hadn’t meant to admit it.
“Really?” She turned around.
“Something I started doing a couple of years ago, to keep my mind busy. I did model cars for a while. Now I do resin kits. You paint them and glue the pieces together.”
“Are the kits cars, too?”
“They’re figurines. I’ve done a lot of horror film classics, like The Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein.”
“Movie monsters,” she said, seeming to give it a lot of thought. “Who was your favorite?”
“The Man Who Laughs,” came out of his mouth. That surprised him; he hadn’t thought about that piece in a long time. It was crammed on the shelf with the others.
“I haven’t heard of that monster.”
“He wasn’t a monster, just a hapless victim in a silent film from the twenties.”
She was facing him now. “Tell me about him.”
“His name is Gwynplaine, the son of a Scottish nobleman that King James II executes. The king disfigures the boy’s face and gives him to a band of gypsies who abandon him during a blizzard. As the boy trudges through the snow, he discovers a baby. He rescues it and is then rescued by a troupe of actors who take him in. He becomes a famous clown…and falls in love with a beautiful blind woman.” He paused at the profundity of it. “Anyway, go on and paint. Forget I’m here.” He settled into the chair.
After a moment, she turned back to her canvas. It took her another few minutes to get back into her groove. Her brown, wavy hair hung to just beneath her shoulder blades. It was bound loosely with a blue ribbon. He had an urge to lean forward and untie the ribbon. If he could move, that was. He had melted into the chair, and for the first time in years, peace flowed through him. Watching her did that. Her whole body moved with each stroke of her fingers. She feathered streaks of yellow over the dark red and, with a flourish, added a light line of pale yellow. Her pinky remained aloft the entire time.
He sank into a hypnotic state. No thinking, no suspicions, no doubts. Just watching her and floating along with the words to “Promises in the Dark.” He lost himself in her fluid movements; she was moving in rhythm to the music.
“Max?”
He blinked, coming out of the trance. “Hmm?”
She turned around. “You were breathing…differently. Louder. Faster. Why?”
He ran his hand down his face, feeling heat on his skin. He thought about telling her he’d fallen asleep, but he wasn’t in the mood for a lie.
“Because watching you paint is a turn on.”
Her mouth opened slightly, but nothing came out. Those words, spoken bluntly and honestly, took her completely off guard.
His voice was low. “There’s something about the way you move. It’s sensual, almost spiritual.”
Her mouth tightened. “You’re not coming onto me, are you?”
He chuckled. “I’m too tired to come onto you.”
Her cheeks warmed. Had she made one of those embarrassing faux pas again? She slowly dipped a finger into the paint.
“I’ll leave if you want me to,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. You asked, and I told you the truth.”
She was turning him on. The knowledge of that flowed through her like a glass of wine, warm and tantalizing. “You don’t have to leave.” Had she just invited him to stay longer? Sounded like it to her.
“I’ll just close my eyes and listen to you paint.”
What she needed was some time alone to sort this out. Max the suspicious, sexy detective, her savior? Her first reaction to that revelation was disbelief. As he’d recounted the events of that terrible night, her disbelief melted away.
He’d been an adversary of sorts these past few days. He’d once been her rescuer. Now his blunt honesty was making her see him as something else: a man.
Which was such a bad idea. She resumed her painting after realizing she’d come to a standstill. Max Callahan was a likely candidate for a rescuer personality, the kind of man who would want to keep her safe and protected. Add in that he’d once done just that, and it became a recipe for romantic disaster. There’d be the question of whether their feelings were a result of that long-ago connection, the connection many rescuer/rescuees had. She’d already built him up to be a hero. Surely she’d carry that into a relationship with him, should she choose to pursue one.
Reason enough to keep that particular door closed. She didn’t need to spend herself in an emotional relationship with a knock-the-door-down rescue type. Especially one who had lost his wife and daughter and still couldn’t come to terms with it.
Then why did you ask him to stay?
Why, indeed.
He’d called her Livvy, and the way he’d said it...
She squeezed her eyes shut and listened to his breathing. Not the deep, heavy rhythm, but a slow, even one.
“Max,” she whispered.
No change in his breathing. He’d fallen asleep. She had heard the exhaustion in his voice. Once he’d closed his eyes, his body gave into it. He’d said he was too tired to come onto her, but he hadn’t said the prospect was out of the question.
The Man Who Laughs. Laughing on the outside, crying on the inside. And the beautiful blind woman he’d fallen in love with, did she love him back? Did they have a happy ending?
“Once there was a man,” Pat Benatar sang i
n her song “One Love.” Olivia tried to assemble the description Judy had given her into a face, but it was impossible. She whispered his name again as she wiped her fingers on the cloth and came to her feet. Her chest felt tight as she walked closer. Her fingers traced along the back edge of the chair until she felt his hair. She stopped, taking a soft breath. You shouldn’t be doing this. It’s crazy.
His hair brushed against the back of her fingers. His breathing was doing strange things to her, compounding the intimacy of the moment…making her want to curl up in his lap and feel safe.
Not that she was afraid. She’d stopped being afraid a long time ago.
The need pulled at her, the need … to feel loved, cherished. It hit her in the stomach, stealing away her breath. Where had it come from so suddenly, so powerfully? What she really wanted was to be accepted and understood—psychic oddities and all.
She needed to “see” what he looked like. She leaned over him. Her hands skimmed over his hair. It was short and soft and followed no particular style. She followed his thick, arched eyebrows with the pads of her fingers. Both fingers ran down the very straight ridge of his nose and fanned out over wide cheekbones. He had an intriguing dip at the bottom of his chin. His mouth was lush, soft. She traced the ridge of his upper lip and felt the cool air of his exhalation. Fine stubble scraped across her pads. She could make out a face in her mind: Max’s face.
Without warning, he grabbed her hands. “What are you doing?” His voice was throaty.
“I…I wanted to see what you looked like. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You did startle me. I was out.”
“Can I have my hands back now?” She tugged, and he let them go. “Maybe you’d better go. It’s late.” She pressed her watch. “One-thirty-two.”
After a moment, he got to his feet. “Let me turn the chair back around.”
“There’s masking tape on the floor to indicate where it goes. Everything has to be in a certain place, or I’ll walk into it.”
She heard him shuffling the chair into place. He grabbed his keys off the small table and walked to the door. “Lock your door.”
Then he was gone. She sank against the arm of the chair for a moment before forcing herself to the door to lock it. It had been easier when they’d been in opposing corners. She was great at fighting, at keeping people at a distance.
It was different with Max. And that was dangerous.
CHAPTER 13
Saturday, December 23
Max arrived at the station early. He glanced at the clock and calculated how many hours Phaedra had been missing. Too many. He couldn’t imagine how her family would face Christmas if their little girl were still missing.
He ran his father’s name through the system, and found a surprise: Bobby Callahan had been a cop once. He’d joined the Orlando police force when he was eighteen and quit two years later. Max had been a toddler then; he didn’t even remember living in Castaway, the small town near Orlando. There was nothing about him in the system after that, no surprise there.
He called the Castaway sheriff’s station and asked the clerk to dig into the archives for details of Bobby’s death. She didn’t sound eager to jump on the task but promised to get someone on it as soon as possible.
His father couldn’t be alive. Olivia had to be inserting her own experience, just as she’d suspected in the beginning. That made more sense. That possibility didn’t make his stomach twist and turn.
If Sam discovered she knew about the shamrock, he’d haul her right in. Maybe that’s what Max should do, too. He didn’t know if he believed her, and he didn’t know if he disbelieved her. Next, he put in a call to human resources and asked the clerk to check on Bill Williams.
He pulled out the notes he’d made on Olivia’s abduction and called the doctor who had examined her eyes after the kidnapping. He left his request with Dr. Gambel’s answering service and hung up just as Sam walked in. He didn’t look happy, but then Max realized why: Petey’s birthday party was that afternoon.
Max leaned back in his chair. “Annie mad about you working today?”
“She’s used to my schedule, but Petey isn’t. I told him I’d swing by at least.” He dropped into his chair at a desk caddy-corner to Max’s. His eyes looked bloodshot and for the first time he looked every one of his forty-nine years. “Where are we going on this case, Max? Nowhere, that’s where. We’ve got nothing new, nothing concrete. The girl’s parents were out front when I came in. Huntington’s with them now, so be ready to catch some hell when he gets here.”
Max didn’t want to mention that investigating all of the area’s convicted past offenders hadn’t turned up anything yet either. “You all right, man?”
“We’re supposed to be working this case together, right?”
“Yeah,” Max answered carefully. “But we agreed to spread out and cover more ground.”
“Yeah, I remember. I’m just feeling left out of the loop.”
Max ran his fingers through his hair. It was still damp from his shower. “I’m working on a few things I’m not ready to let loose yet. They’re probably dead ends, but I’ve got to check them out first. Give me some line, and I’ll fill you in on everything soon enough.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “This has something to do with Olivia Howe, doesn’t it? She’s trouble, Max.”
“I’ve got a handle on it. Have I ever screwed you over?”
Something Max couldn’t identify crossed Sam’s face.
“Callahan! O’Reilly! In my office!” Huntington’s voice bellowed as he walked into the detective’s area.
Max pushed himself to his feet. “There are only five guys in here, and he still has to yell.”
Huntington’s face was red as he tapped his ragged pencil on his desk. “I’m taking heat from the parents, the media, and the Commissioner. Their publicist is running us into the ground. Why haven’t you found that girl yet? Did I make a mistake putting you on this case?”
Max was startled to find that icy stare pinning him with that question. “We’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got.”
“Which isn’t a lot at this point,” Sam said.
The lieutenant asked, “What about Mike Burns?”
Sam said, “He’s still a possibility, but he’s slippery. I’m working on finding out who he’s been seeing, but he’s apparently cut off the affair since the abduction. Through his credit card bills, I nailed down a restaurant that he frequents. I’m going to talk to the waiter tonight and see if we can ID a girlfriend.”
So Sam was holding back information, too. That was the first Max had heard about that.
“And Pat Burns?”
Sam said, “I’ve been doing some quiet inquiries at his chain of restaurants. There are whispers of financial trouble, but rumors aren’t going to get us a search warrant. If he did his kid for the money, he’ll have to make sure she’s found soon.”
“What about the Howe woman?”
Sam turned to Max. “Callahan’s been working that angle. He’ll have to give you that update.”
“I’m tracking down some loose threads now.”
“How come you didn’t tell me about checking out the harbor? Heard that from one of the guys. Did this happen to be one of Howe’s leads?”
Sam shot Max a smug look. Max said, “Yes, sir. We didn’t have any other leads. I figured it was worth checking into.”
“Well, it’s not worth it. Either she’s a suspect, or she’s not. Is she?”
Sam said “Yes” at the same time that Max said, “No.”
Impatience tightened Huntington’s features. “If she’s a suspect, treat her like one. But we’re not working with her, understand? I don’t want to give Pat Burns’s publicist a reason to think we are. And how the hell is Burns hearing about her, anyway?”
Max said, “I’d like to find that out myself. Someone’s been leaking information to him.”
The lieutenant took them both in with his steely eyes, but th
ey remained on Max longer. “You still on the surface, Callahan?”
“Yes, sir.” He wasn’t going to admit how close to going under he was. That girl, every passing hour, and Olivia, they were all dragging him under.
“Don’t screw up this case.” He looked over at Sam. “Lucky for us, even the Burnses’ P.I. hasn’t found anything yet. That means that either we’re all incompetent, or the guy who took her has his bases covered. Either way, it doesn’t look good. Any leads on the Santa suit?”
Max said, “We had officers check every Dumpster in the area, but nothing turned up. We’re widening our search for out-of-town costume stores.”
The lieutenant tapped his fingers on his desk. “I don’t want to have to tell these parents that we couldn’t find their girl. She’s their only kid. We haven’t had a stranger abduction here in two years. Since your last big case,” he said to Max. “You came through for us that time. Come through again.”
Max could only nod as he backed out the door. Sam paused. Was he going to mention his suspicions that Max was getting involved with Olivia? He didn’t need a facedown with the lieutenant just then, and he wasn’t ready to divulge what he knew.
Sam said something brief to the lieutenant and walked out of the office. He headed to the break room instead of returning to his desk. Max’s phone rang; it was Dr. Gambel.
“Sorry to bother you on a Saturday, doctor, but I’m working on a case and I need information as soon as you can get it for me. It concerns a girl who was kidnapped, and lost her sight: Olivia Howe.” Max gave him dates and other details.
“I vaguely remember that. I’d have to have someone pull the records from storage.”
“I’d appreciate that. We’ve got some facts that need clearing up as soon as possible?”
“I’ll have my office manager pull the file. That was before we computerized everything. She can meet me at the bridge club, and I’ll call you from there.”
Sam returned with a mug of coffee. Normally they would both go, or one would ask the other if he needed a refill. Sam was probably the only real friend Max had, but this case was tearing them apart. They’d never worked at odds like this. Sure, they’d had different opinions, but they always kept an open mind. Because of Sam’s dogged suspicion of Olivia, and because of what she’d told him, that door had to be closed.
Blindsight [Now You See Me] (Romantic Suspense) Page 16