by Dinah McCall
She stood then, looking down at her boy and wondering if he would ever become a man. She yearned for a daughter-in-law, someone she could confide in, another woman who would share her love of homemaking, someone who would give her the grandchildren she so desperately craved. But Phillip would have to be more than he was at this moment before that could ever happen. He had yet to hold a permanent job. Supporting a family at this point was out of the question. The fact that he made no attempts to pursue the opposite sex was lost upon her. Still, when the right woman came along, she was certain everything would work out.
Shaking off her worries, she pressed Play and then stood.
You will listen to the sound of my voice and my voice only. You will free your mind of everything. All thoughts are wiped clean, like chalk from a blackboard. You are standing at the foot of a long, ascending staircase, and at the top, there is a beautiful light. You will follow my voice up the stairs, and we will go together into the light. You with me. Me with you.
Lucy shivered. After all these years, the one thing about Emile that had not changed with age was his voice. That beautiful, compelling, magnificent voice. Giving Phillip one last look to make sure he was still asleep, she tiptoed from the room and then picked up her shoes. Just before she closed the door, she turned and blew him a kiss.
“Sleep well, my love,” she said softly. “Mother is taking care of everything.”
Dan Howard tossed aside the file he’d been handed moments earlier and stifled a curse as he strode to the window.
“I can’t believe there’s nothing on there we can use.”
The lab tech shrugged. “Sorry, sir, but we did our best. There are no hidden messages, no whispered words, nothing except what you hear.”
“A goddamned doorbell that someone is laying on and the distant sound of thunder. I might as well have added a little whistling to the tape. At least we’d have something entertaining to hear.”
“Sorry, sir. If there’s nothing else…?”
He left the sentence dangling, waiting to be dismissed, which Howard promptly did.
Once Dan was alone in the room, he thought about where they were on the case. Basically back to square one. They had no new leads and six dead women. He needed to call Sully. Maybe the world had opened up while he was sleeping and dropped the answer to this mess in their laps.
He strode back to his desk, rifling through his Rolodex until he found the right number, then made the call. It wasn’t until he looked at his watch that he realized he might be calling too early. But what the hell. Time and crime waited for no one.
When the phone began to ring, Ginny came awake with a jerk, her heart pounding, her mind fumbling to orient herself to where she was. Expecting Sully to answer it from somewhere else in the house, it took a moment for her to realize she could hear water running. She glanced toward the bathroom. He must be taking a shower.
“Sully!” she yelled, but got no reply.
The phone rang again, and then again. She jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom door.
“Sully! Telephone!”
The water stopped. Seconds later he came out on the run, leaving a water trail behind him as he went.
“Hello?”
“Sully, it’s me, Dan.”
Sully mouthed an okay to Ginny and then motioned for her to hand him a towel. She disappeared into the bathroom with a smile on her face.
“What’s up?” Sully asked.
“The tape was a bust.”
“Are you sure?”
“The lab couldn’t identify one single thing that would give us a lead.”
“Damn it.”
“Look, at the risk of totally pissing you off and putting Ginny at risk, I’d like for her to listen to the tape.”
“I don’t know,” Sully said, glancing toward Ginny, who was coming out of the bathroom with a couple of towels.
“What’s wrong?” Ginny asked.
“Just a minute,” Sully told Dan, and then covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “Dan says the tape was a bust. The lab couldn’t find anything on there that would help us.”
The smile on Ginny’s face went south. So much had been riding on that lead, including her life.
“Are they sure?” she asked.
Sully shrugged. “They don’t think it’s anything, but he wants you to hear it anyway.”
Ginny stood with her head down, absently studying the trail of wet footprints Sully had left behind.
“Look, honey, you don’t have to. In fact, I’d much rather you—”
“Tell him to bring it.”
Now that she’d taken the decision out of his hands, Sully was the one who felt panic. It had been much easier when he’d just said no. But it was her life that was on hold, and Dan had said there wasn’t really anything to hear. He didn’t have it in him to say no.
“You sure?”
She nodded.
Sully sighed and turned back to the phone. “Dan, she says bring it. She’ll listen. But I’m warning you now, if this goes bad…”
“I’ve got it handled,” Dan said. “I’ll be there this afternoon.”
“Yeah, all right. Oh…hey, Dan?”
“Yes?”
“Since you’re coming, how about packing a couple bottles of champagne and some Godiva chocolates.”
Ginny’s eyes lit in appreciation.
“What the hell do we have to warrant that kind of celebration?”
“I didn’t say it had anything to do with you,” Sully said. “Just do it, okay?”
Dan chuckled. “Oh. Her. Don’t tell me the mighty Sullivan has fallen?”
“None of your business,” Sully snapped. “Just do as I asked.”
“Okay, okay, keep your shorts on. Or…maybe not,” he added, breaking into a chuckle.
Sully hung up the phone and was about to turn around when something warm and soft brushed the backside of his leg. God almighty, Ginny was drying him off. He stood in total silence, reveling in the feel of her hands on his body until she put the towel between his legs. He turned, a growl of anticipation purring deep in his throat, and took the towel out of her hands and tossed it on the floor.
“You want to be on top or on the bottom?”
“Both,” she said, and surprised him with a laugh.
He pushed her backward onto the mattress and without so much as a kiss to pass for foreplay, slid between her legs and thrust himself inside. The water on his body was all the lubricant they needed, and after they began the dance, he would have sworn it turned to steam.
13
Two hours had passed since Dan Howard’s call, and Sully knew he was going to have to get out of bed and get dressed. The last thing he wanted was to field the taunts about falling for the woman he was supposed to be guarding. It was as old a joke within the Bureau as the corny ones about the traveling salesman and the farmer’s daughter. Besides that, what he felt for Ginny didn’t belong within the atmosphere of locker room talk. He was in love and teetering between obsessed and just plain possessive.
Ginny was in the bathroom now. He could hear the water running in the shower, and the thought of joining her was almost too tempting to ignore. But he bypassed the urge by getting out of the bed and going across the hall to his room, then digging through his limited supply of clothing for something clean to wear.
As he reached in the drawer where his clean shirts were kept, he felt something hard beneath the stack. Shifting the shirts aside, he saw the back of a book, and it wasn’t until he picked it up and turned it over that he realized what it was. Dan Howard’s men must have slipped it between the shirts when they’d packed up all their gear, and when he’d unpacked in a hurry the other night, he hadn’t seen it. He couldn’t believe that he’d forgotten about it again.
“Well, hell,” he muttered. “Blame it on the hole Auger tried to put in my head.”
Ginny had yet to see it, and there was always the chance that it would trigger a memory they could use. Dressing quickly
, he hurried across the hall into her room with the book in hand.
Ginny’s hair was wet and clinging to the back of her neck as she pulled a clean T-shirt over her head.
“My hair dryer doesn’t work anymore. Do you have one?”
He noticed a tremble in her lips but thought little of it as he answered.
“Yeah, hang on a minute, honey. I’ll be right back.”
He was halfway across the hall when it hit him. Auger had tried to tie her up with the cord from her dryer. God only knows what had gone through her mind when she’d picked the damned thing up.
He came back with his, ready to take that look off her face.
“Sit down here near this outlet and I’ll dry your hair for you while you look through Georgia’s year-book.”
“Oh my gosh,” Ginny said. “I’d forgotten all about it.”
“Yeah, so had I,” he said, and rubbed the scar on his head. “It’s no wonder, right?”
She nodded, trying not to think about the blood on Sully’s face and the weight of Auger’s body as he pinned her to the floor.
“Is this too hot?” Sully asked, as he turned the dryer toward her head.
“A little. Try the medium setting, okay?”
“You got it, babe. Now put your feet up and take yourself a stroll down memory lane. And if you see something that might help on the case, give a holler. We need a break in the very worst way. I marked the pages with your class picture and then the gifted class down below.”
“Okay.”
As she allowed herself the pleasure of concentrating on Sully’s hands combing through her hair and separating the strands so the warm air could circulate better, the bad thoughts began to dissipate.
“If you ever decide to give up your day job, you’d make a good stylist,” she said.
“I wouldn’t do this for anyone but you.”
“Too macho?” she taunted.
“Yes.”
“At least you’re honest,” she said, then grinned to herself as she turned to the pages he’d marked.
As she did, her mind slid back to that first day of school and how afraid she had been—until Georgia. Georgia, with pigtails and freckles, was all giggles and light, bouncing from the swings to the slide like a butterfly too flighty to linger. Oh, the times they’d had. It didn’t seem possible that she was gone, that all of them were gone—except herself. She sighed. Looking at those little smiling faces, so unaware of what lay in store, seemed obscene. It was like looking at ghosts.
Sully turned off the dryer and leaned down beside her. “You okay?”
She nodded.
He knew this was difficult for her, but it had to be done.
“Anything ring a bell?”
“Not really. I never did see Frances after the school burned down. The others, I saw off and on. Some of their parents stayed in the same area where we grew up.” Ginny traced the faces in the photograph with the tip of her finger. “We were so young.”
Sully squatted down beside her. “I remember noticing something different about this picture when I first saw it in Georgia’s things.”
“Like what?”
“Well…see these other group shots? There’s a teacher or a sponsor in every one. But not in yours. Why is that?”
Ginny frowned. “I don’t know.”
“It probably doesn’t mean anything. Maybe he or she was sick that day and they just didn’t want to photograph the sub. But you’d think the name would have been listed, anyway, wouldn’t you?”
Ginny’s frown deepened as she sifted through the pages. “I wonder why there’s no mention of his name?”
“His?”
Ginny blinked and then looked up. “I don’t know why I said that. It just came.”
“You said before that you didn’t remember who the teacher was, but you’d recognize him, wouldn’t you, if you saw him in here?”
“I don’t know. It was my first year of school, remember? And I was so timid. If it hadn’t been for Georgia, I probably wouldn’t have said a word all year.”
“You? Timid?”
She grinned. “I grew out of it.”
“Look through it anyway, from top to bottom. If you see someone familiar, let me know. I’m going to put on a pot of coffee. Dan should be here any time now, and if I know him, it’s the first thing he’ll ask for when he hits the door.”
“Okay,” Ginny said.
“Keep looking. I’ll be right back.”
Ginny started at the front of the book and began to study the faces of every teacher. Some she remembered vividly, others were only names that she’d heard. Mrs. Milam had been her first-grade teacher, and she quickly picked her out of the lot. By the time she got to the end, she was convinced that whoever had taught that class was not in this book.
“What did you find?” Sully asked, as he came back into the room.
“Nothing. Whoever he was, he’s not there.”
“You keep saying he.”
She hesitated and then nodded. “Yes, for some reason that seems right. But I don’t get a face or a name, only a sense of an overpowering presence.”
Sully frowned. That was an odd choice of words to associate with a teacher.
“What does Dan think?” Ginny asked.
Sully grinned. “He’s going to have my head, for one thing. I haven’t showed him the book.”
“But why?”
“I didn’t have it when everything first happened. My initial conversation was with the director and mainly about the other women. I gave them all the information I had at the time from Pagillia. Georgia was dead, and I was so stunned.” He paced the floor, remembering. “Stunned doesn’t even come close. I felt guilt for not being there when she needed me, and I was so damned mad that they believed she’d committed suicide. I know…knew…Georgia like a sister, and that’s the last thing she ever would have done.” He shoved his hands through his hair, spiking the short, straight ends even more. “Then it became a race with time, trying to find you before someone else did. After I got the yearbook from the convent, I tossed it into my luggage and forgot about it. By the time I found you, I had other things on my mind. After Carney Auger…well…I didn’t have much on my mind at all, except you. Not very professional for a Fed, is it?”
She smiled. “I’m not complaining.”
“No, but Dan will.”
“But I’ve seen the book, and nothing I saw relates to the case. Other than the fact that there’s no teacher for that class, of course.”
“Yes, but if Dan can locate any of the teachers who were there, they might be able to tell us something that you can’t.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.” Then Ginny quickly leafed through the book, searching for a page she’d seen before. “Here,” she said, pointing to a picture near the front. “That’s Mr. Fontaine. He was the principal…actually, more like a headmaster. He was so nice. If anyone would remember the teacher, I’d think it would be him. He founded the school and did all the hiring and firing.”
Sully looked at Ginny with new respect. “Good job, honey. You might just have bailed me out of hot water with Dan.”
“My pleasure,” Ginny said. “I’ll take my pay later in kisses.”
Sully growled beneath his breath and started to reach for her when someone knocked at the door.
“I’ll get it,” Sully said. “It’s probably one of the guards.” Sure enough, when he opened the door, Franklin Chee nodded, then stepped inside. Dressed in an oversize shirt that was hanging loose on the outside of his jeans, he could have passed for a young man on vacation.
“What’s up?” Sully asked.
“Just got a call from the boss. Said he’s going to be a little bit late. Something about forgetting the Godivas?”
Sully laughed. “Okay, thanks.” Then he motioned for Ginny to come over. “Ginny, this is Franklin Chee. He and his brother, Webster, grew up in the area. The other agent is Kevin Holloway, who you saw yesterday while you were swimming
.”
Ginny smiled and held out her hand. The man’s dark eyes flashed as he returned the gesture.
“Thank you so much for being here,” Ginny said. “When this nightmare started, I thought I’d be dealing with it alone. You don’t know how much your presence means to me.”
Franklin Chee nodded, taking great care not to stare at the healing cuts and bruises still evident on her face.
“It is our job, but this time it is also our pleasure,” he said quietly.
“Would you please pass my appreciation on to your brother and your friend?”
“Yes, miss.” Then he turned to Sully. “Is there anything you need?”
“A miracle?”
This time Franklin grinned. “I’m good, Sullivan, but not that good. The Navajo are remarkable people, but we have yet to walk on water.”
Ginny grinned as Sully laughed aloud. For the moment, she almost felt lighthearted. If she didn’t focus too much on the problem at hand, she could pretend this was a friend who’d just come for a visit. But then he turned to leave, and as he did, she caught a glimpse of his gun beneath his shirt. Just as suddenly, the game was over.
Sully closed the door. When he turned around, Ginny was gone.
“Ginny?”
“In the kitchen.”
He followed her there. “So, we’ve got a reprieve. Dan’s on his way, but his arrival isn’t as imminent as I’d imagined.” He glanced at his watch. It was already after one. “Are you hungry, honey? If you are, say the word.”
“These men put their lives on the line every day, don’t they, Sully?”
He leaned against the cabinets and folded his arms across his chest, studying the seriousness on her face.
“Yes, but it was a choice we made when we entered the program. It’s not a lot different from being a cop. We just patrol a larger area.”
“I guess. But it doesn’t stop me from feeling guilty that you’re here because of me.”
“No, that’s where you’re wrong. We’re here because someone caused six women to die. We don’t know how, but we still know it’s true.”