by Кей Хупер
"Trying to. Can you help me?"
"We weren't close," Eve said frankly. "Friendly, just not confiding. So I don't know much, except that you were very angry."
"Angry? Not frightened?"
"I don't think you were as afraid of your ex as some of us were. Maybe because he was so far away, or maybe because you had other things on your mind. I think you and Dinah were up to something."
Faith blinked. "Up to something?"
"Yeah. A story of some kind. I don't know what it was about, but I got the feeling Dinah was trying to hold you back in some way. To keep you from doing something she didn't think you should do. I think she was worried about you."
Faith wondered again if it was her fault that Dinah it I it was in such danger, and was conscious of a cold, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. But all she said was, "Were you close to Dinah?"
Eve's rather immobile face softened. "She talked to me a lot for her story. And, after, she gave me the money I needed to go back to school. I got my GED, but I wasn't going to do anything else until Dinah convinced me it was the best thing for me to do. I'm studying computers," she finished proudly.
Faith smiled at her. "That's great."
"Yeah, I think so. I have a future now. Dinah said..." She broke off and bit her lip.
"What did she say, Eve?"
The younger woman hesitated, then said slowly, "I've thought about it since she disappeared, and crazy as it sounds, I think she always knew she'd... she didn't have a future of her own. She seemed almost sad when we talked about my plans. Once, she said I had so much to look forward to, and that she wished she'd be here to see it."
"Maybe she was ... just planning to go away," Faith said.
"I don't think so. You didn't see her face the way I did, hear her voice. I think she could see the future sometimes, that she knew about things before they happened. She never said so, but once she warned me not to go back to a certain club I liked, and later I found out my ex had been there looking for me. I heard her tell Andrea she should go see her mother, and just a couple of weeks later the poor lady died of a heart attack. And there were other things. The way she looked at Katie and the other kids. The way she moved really fast to arrange things whenever she donated money to Haven House or one of us, as if she knew she had to hurry." Eve shook her head. "I think she knew she didn't have much time left."
Faith suddenly remembered what Bishop had said about Dinah. She was precognitive, able to ... tune in to future events, to predict the turn of a card or the throw of dice.
Had Dinah seen her own future?
CHAPTER 6
The sky darkened early with a November storm, one of those weather systems that seemed to circle a place, thunder rumbling and lightning flashing, warning while it decided if it wanted to strike.
Kane wondered if it was an omen, and tried not to let himself believe that. But it was hard not to. The night and the storm had closed in, cutting him off and making it impossible for him to be out doing something, anything, that might help him find Dinah. He hated the night.
It was impossible to sit still. He had learned weeks ago that when he was barred from doing anything to help Dinah, he had to keep himself busy with mundane activities. It kept him grounded. Kept him sane.
At least, he hoped it did.
He dug into the freezer for one of the homemade meals that were occasional weekend projects for him.
Dinah had teased him that he went on cooking lags on weekends only because he wanted to make her look bad, but the truth was that there was a streak of practicality in his nature and a strong sense of self-reliance, and he regularly practiced the skill of cooking just as he regularly practiced his other skills.
Because one never knew when such things would come in handy. It was after seven, and the storm was rumbling closer, when Faith emerged from the bedroom. She had retreated there soon after they returned from the shelter, obviously upset by what she had learned there, although she had told Kane it was "nothing useful."
He suspected she had discovered more details of her own past and personality, but even so it bothered him that she hadn't wanted to discuss it. In the weeks since Dinah had vanished, he had begun to realize just how much of herself she had been unable or unwilling to share with him. That, coupled with his deepening sense of loss, his increasing feeling that Dinah was slipping further and further away from him, made him want to hold on even tighter to the only connection to her he had left: Faith.
"Are you sure you don't want me to move into the guest room now that Bishop's gone?" she asked abruptly, obviously speaking more to fill the silence than for any other reason.
"I'm sure." He didn't offer a reason, not wanting to admit that either bed was useless to him anyway, since he spent his nights pacing the floor until exhaustion finally drove him to close his eyes for an hour or two.
Faith shrugged. "Something smells good."
"Irish stew. My own version, anyway." A boom of thunder interrupted him, and he waited it out before adding, "Perfect night for it, I thought."
"Isn't it a little late in the year for this kind of ?" Faith wondered, automatically the plates and silverware he had stacked on the counter and going to set the table. She was just as restless and edgy as he was, a fact he had noticed before now.
"Maybe, but it's not so unusual. According to the weather reports, it'll probably storm all night."
Great.
He checked the bread baking in the oven, then looked across the room at her. "Do storms bother you?"
"Just a bit. More if there's wind."
"Dinah's just the same," he said, keeping his tone casual. "A feline trait, she calls it. Never having owned a cat, I have no idea what she means by that."
"I do. Means we hate change and low-pressure ems."
Thunder boomed suddenly, and Faith jumped. "Damn," she murmured a little sheepishly.
"You're wound pretty tight," Kane noted.
"I'll be all right once the storm actually arrives. It's all this rumbling around beforehand that gets on my nerves. The table's set. Can I do anything else?"
"You can pour the wine. I'll have this ready in just a few minutes."
It wasn't until they were sitting at the table with the meal before them that Faith finally said, with obviously forced nonchalance, "Did you hear from Bishop about that restricted file?"
Kane nodded slowly.
"I can see from your face I'm not going to like it. Let me guess. My abusive ex had something to do with the murder of my family?"
"Is that a guess?" he asked.
"Educated. I've been talking to the women at the shelter, remember. Been hearing a lot about violent men. So I had to wonder about the violent man in my past."
She paused and seemed to brace herself. "Did he kill my mother and sister?"
"He was — and is — suspected. But the police haven't found any evidence, Faith, and he not only passed a couple of lie detector tests but also told the same story under some kind of experimental truth serum."
"Truth serum?"
"Noah said to forget we heard that."
She smiled, but it was an effort. "Okay, so what story did he tell?"
"He claims that after you left him in L A. — where you two had lived for the ten months of your marriage — he didn't hear from you again until he was served with divorce papers. At which point he says he got calmly on a plane for Seattle, intending to talk to you about the situation. He also says he checked into a hotel in Seattle, called your mother's house, and learned that you were working. So he says he stayed at the hotel and didn't have a clue what had happened until the police rousted him out of bed the next morning."
"The police, on the other hand, believe that blind rage overcame him when he was served with the papers. That even though phone records show he did call your mother's house, he could have driven out there, still enraged, killed your mother and sister, and burned the house to the ground. There wasn't much forensic evidence, nothing to say who'd do
ne it, but Tony Ellis had motive and no real alibi, so..."
"Tony Ellis. Is that his name?"
Kane heard in her voice a loss he could barely comprehend. At least he knew what he had lost; Faith was almost hourly discovering bits and pieces of her life, good and horrible, that had vanished from her mind.
"Is it his name?" she repeated steadily.
"Yes. I'm sorry, Faith."
She shook her head and looked down at her plate for a moment, then slowly shifted her fork from her right hand to her left.
"I'm glad I don't remember him," she said almost absently. "But I'm still confused about why that file is restricted."
"Ellis is an FBI agent."
She looked up swiftly. "Ali. Now it makes more sense. Covering for one of their own?"
"That was apparently your view. But it really does appear that there was no evidence to arrest him. Or even for the FBI to fire him, for that matter. They demoted him, and he's under close observation in L A., something he's well aware of, apparently. From everything Noah could gather, he's been behaving himself for the last eighteen months."
"I told someone at the shelter that I had medical evidence that could ruin his career."
"Yes. Hospital records showing broken bones and severe bruising." Kane held his voice even and steady, but it took effort. "You turned it over to the police in Seattle. But when they couldn't prosecute him for the murders, you apparently decided that rather than let them prosecute for assault against you, you'd use the evidence to pressure him into signing the divorce papers and getting out of your life for good."
Faith shook her head. "And then what? I crossed the country just to make sure?"
"Maybe."
And maybe not.
Once again, Faith was unsure if that was her voice, her question — or someone else's.
She tried to think, to concentrate. "I was angry. I wanted ... justice. That's what Dinah said to me, that we had to have proof that would stand up in court or I wouldn't get my justice. But as far as we can tell, up until the accident, everything that happened to me happened before I came to Atlanta. It has to connect, though, it just has to. Whatever Dinah and I were investigating here has to connect to my life before."
"That makes sense."
"Then it is my fault Dinah's in trouble."
"Dinah's a grown woman with a damned good mind," Kane said after a moment. "Whatever was going on, I doubt she was dragged into it unwillingly."
"What if I didn't tell her everything? What if I took whatever it is they want, and I didn't tell Dinah what I did with it?" She grimaced suddenly and set her wineglass on the table. "Dammit, not knowing what the thing is makes it sound so ridiculous when you talk about it."
"We could always call it the Macguffin," Kane suggested wryly.
"Isn't that a word Hitchcock coined? To name something in a movie that everybody was after?"
He smiled faintly. "Another Hitchcock fan, I see."
"I guess so."
"Well, then, we'll call it the Macguffin until we know what it is."
Faith waited out a long, rolling rumble of thunder.
"I just wish we knew."
"We'll find out." We have to find out. He didn't speak the last words, but he might as well have.
He wouldn't let her help him clear up, and when he was done in the kitchen, he lit a fire in the fireplace.
Faith wandered uneasily to the piano for a few moments and then to a window. The storm was going strong, and the rain was heavy now, blown against the windows by gusty wind in a rattle that told of sleet.
It made her feel very jumpy.
Be careful
That voice again, almost inaudible to her now.
"I think this is going to go on all night," Kane said, watching her as he stood by the fireplace.
Move ... now!
"I think you're right." Baffled by the faint whisper in her mind, by her own tension, Faith winced as a bright flash of lightning illuminated the night, then she turned from the window. "And I don't know why I have this compulsion to stand here and watch when it makes me..."
For an instant, Kane thought it was the crash of thunder that cut off her words, but he saw an expression of puzzlement and then shock twist her features.
Her right hand touched the upper part of her left arm just below the shoulder, and Kane saw scarlet bloom around her fingers.
"Faith..."
"Will you look at that?" She was staring at a mirror directly across the room from where she stood. A cobweb of large cracks radiated from a small hole in the center of the mirror.
With more haste than gentleness, Kane grabbed her and pulled her away from the windows. "Goddammit, somebody's shooting."
"At me?" She sounded only mildly interested.
He sat her down on the couch and pried her fingers away from her arm.
"Let me see."
Her sweatshirt bore two neat, round holes that were clearly entrance and exit points, and made it easy for him to tear the sleeve to expose the wound.
"It's just a scratch. I've always wanted to say that."
Kane had a hunch it was shock rather than courage that kept her voice strong and her words light. But she was right in that the wound was minor, a bloody furrow carved across no more than a couple of inches of the outside of her arm. He had no doubt, however, that it hurt like hell.
He made a pad of his handkerchief and pressed it to the sluggishly bleeding spot, and looked at Faith's pale, calm face.
"Can you hold this in place while I call the police?"
"Of course I can." She did so, then looked at him with amazingly clear eyes. "But I won't go to the hospital."
"Faith, this needs to be looked at."
"I can have Dr. Burnett look at it tomorrow when we go to talk to him," she said calmly. "It'll be fine tonight if you can just clean and bandage it."
"Faith..."
"It doesn't even need stitches. I'm all right, Kane, really."
She shivered suddenly as thunder boomed again. "I just ... I don't want to go out there tonight."
"All right."
He got a blanket and covered her with it before he went to call Richardson. He was careful to stay away from the windows, though he doubted there was any danger. Whoever had been out there was long gone now.
That a shot had been taken on a night like this, with blinding rain making precision impossible, told him the act was a scare tactic, not intended to hit a live target; the bullet had found Faith only by sheer dumb luck. Nothing else made sense.
But that hardly made the situation better.
Kane disinfected and bandaged the wound. She never flinched or made a sound, just sat there and watched him, and for some unaccountable reason her gaze made him feel suddenly clumsy.
"I'm sorry," he said, taping the final piece of gauze into place.
"Why? You didn't shoot me."
Still holding her arm gently between his hands, he looked up to find her smiling faintly. "I can't be flip about this, Faith."
"I see that. Kane, I'm fine. My arm hurts, and I won't be lingering near any windows for a while, but I'm all right."
"You must be one of those people who shine in a crisis."
"You didn't do so bad yourself."
He realized he was compulsively smoothing with his thumbs the tape holding the bandage in place, and forced himself to release her and lean back. "Yeah, well, I'll get the shakes later. And speaking of delayed shock — which do you prefer, whiskey or hot tea?"
"Tea, please."
When Richardson arrived a few minutes later, Faith answered the detective's questions with no visible anxiety. Not that there was much she could tell him.
"I saw the cracked mirror first, and thought how odd it was. Then my arm burned suddenly, but it wasn't until I put my hand over it that I felt the blood. Even then, I didn't immediately realize I'd been shot. I never heard it."
"The storm was right overhead," Kane told his friend. "There was so much noise we cou
ldn't hear the shot or the bullet going through the window and smashing the mirror."
Richardson went over to examine the mirror. "It's gone all the way through and into the wall." He took down the mirror, then produced a penknife and dug into the Sheetrock. Win a very few minutes, he held a misshapen slug.
Even across the room Kane read Richardson's expression. "I guess ballistics are out? No chance of tracing it to a particular gun?"
"I can't even tell what caliber it is, and I doubt the lab will be able to either." He eyed the distance to the window, then went to examine that as well. Like the mirror, the windowpane was marred by a small hole surrounded by a web of cracks.
"Too dark to see much now," he said. "I can come back tomorrow and take a stab at the trajectory, try to figure out where the shooter was. But if he was standing more than a few feet away, he couldn't have hoped to hit what he was aiming at, not in this weather." Kane said, "There's no fire escape, and we're on the fifth floor. Unless he was outside on the balcony — which is possible, if doubtful — he couldn't have been any closer than the apartments on the other side of the courtyard. And that building is a good hundred feet away."
Richardson studied the distance from the hole in the window to the floor, then compared that with the distance between the hole in the wall and the floor.
"Well, he sure as hell didn't shoot upward from ground level, or down from a higher spot. Do those apartments across the courtyard have balconies?"
"Yeah."
"Then we'll look for a vacant or currently unused apartment. I'm willing to bet we'll find one matching the trajectory of the shot. Somebody sat over there watching this place, and when they saw Miss Parker at the window..."
"But I stood there at least a couple of minutes before I moved away," Faith protested. "And it wasn't until then that I was shot."
"Then he was probably trying to scare you, and just got lucky with the shot."
"Lucky," she murmured.
Richardson smiled. "A figure of speech." He looked at Kane. "Did you two do anything today that might have gotten somebody's attention?"
"God knows. We talked to some people."