by Кей Хупер
So she had been listening after all.
He sat down on a chair near the sofa. "According to what you've ... sensed, Dinah could be held underground. Maybe in a basement or cellar. If the sounds of water you're hearing are coming from a natural source, it could be a spring or well."
"I guess." Faith rubbed her temple absently. "But it was ... so loud. Water under tremendous pressure. If it was natural, I don't see how anything could have been built near it, not without having the structure undermined." She blinked, then said softly, "It couldn't be that, could it? She couldn't be there, in your building?"
"I don't see how," Kane said. "The building site has been crawling with people for months, and the foundation is only now being closed in. The structure has been wide open, no hiding places anywhere."
"What about nearby?"
"Are there other buildings nearby? Of course. Other office buildings, a hotel, a medical clinic, God knows what else."
"And even if we knew for a fact she was in that area, in one of those buildings, how could we possibly guess which one when we still don't know what this is all about? Why can't I remember?"
Kane started to reach out, then stopped himself. He was becoming more and more aware of this urge to touch her, to be close to her. Almost as if ... No. It wasn't that. Dinah was the one he wanted.
"You can't force it," he said finally. "And whether you remember or not, sooner or later we'll find out the truth."
She looked at him. "Will we? I can't help wondering how much you'll hate me if we find out that I am responsible for Dinah disappearing, for getting us both involved in something dangerous."
Kane wanted to say he wouldn't hate her at all, but he wasn't sure it was true. He wasn't sure he didn't hate her a little bit even now, for tying his emotions into knots. For wrecking his certainties.
The silence had dragged on just one moment too long when the office door opened and Sydney Wilkes strolled in.
"I'm sorry, Kane... Sharon didn't tell me you had a visitor. Hello, Faith." This time, the silence was filled with a different kind of tension. Kane looked from Faith's expression of surprise to his sister's dawning confusion, and wondered if his own face was such a study in bewilderment.
"Syd, you know Faith?"
"Of course I know her." Sydney frowned as she looked at Faith. "I had to deal very closely with the Office of Building Inspections and Zoning on that Andrews project, and Faith was the person I worked with. But I guess I'm not so memorable."
Quickly, Faith said, "I was in a car accident a couple of months ago and lost my memory of practically everything, including the people I knew."
"Really? How terrible for you." Sydney came to sit on the other end of the sofa, her face filled now with compassion. "That must be the loneliest feeling in the world."
Before Faith could respond, Kane said, "What did you mean when you said you guessed you weren't so memorable, Syd?"
She laughed. "Injured vanity, I suppose."
He shook his head. "No, the way you said it implied that Faith was unusually memorable to you. Why?"
Sydney looked uncomfortable. "You're reading too much into the comment, Kane."
"I don't think so."
"Kane..."
"Sydney, part of Faith's lost memory might tell us who grabbed Dinah and why. So if you know anything ... "
His sister looked at Faith, puzzled once again. "I wasn't aware you and Dinah knew each other."
"We were friends," Faith said.
"I see." Sydney shook her head. "Well, I don't, but that hardly matters. Kane, there's nothing I know about Faith that could possibly help you find Dinah. We knew each other on the most superficial, businesslike level, nothing more."
"But she made an impression on you. Why?"
Sydney let out an impatient breath. "If you must know, it was because she somehow misplaced the paperwork of two inspectors on that project, and we had to wait while the inspections were rescheduled. Set us back two weeks."
"I'm sorry," Faith said.
Sydney smiled at her. "Well, I was upset at the time, but you did everything you could to get the second round of inspections done quickly, even worked overtime, so I forgave you. Paperwork does get misplaced, after all, especially in an office whose sole purpose seems to be to generate paper."
Kane wasn't entirely satisfied with Sydney's explanation, but he let it go. Because he couldn't see how the situation could have had anything to do with Dinah's disappearance, not when it happened last spring.
Sydney said to him, "I gather there's been nothing new on Dinah?"
"No, nothing helpful."
"I'm sorry, Kane. I wish there was something I could do."
Lightly, he said, "You're holding the company together, and that's more than enough."
"I couldn't solve Max Sanders' problem," she said wit a grimace. "I mean, it looked like a structural failure to me, but I'm no engineer. I had no idea where to look for a cause or a solution."
"I'll deal with Max, Syd. You just keep the other projects on track and the other clients happy, and Macgregor and Payne will be fine."
"I'll do my best. In fact, I have a meeting in ten minutes to go over plans with a couple of residential clients, so I'd better get back downstairs to my office. I just wanted to see you while you were here and find out if there was any news."
Kane felt a stab of guilt. "I know I haven't been very accessible lately, Syd. I'm sorry."
"Don't be ridiculous." She smiled a little sadly. "No one else can truly understand how you feel, but at least I have some idea. You've put your thoughts and energies where they needed to go, just as you have to keep doing until you find Dinah. Don't apologize for that. And don't worry about me."
"Thanks, Syd."
"Don't mention it. And call me right away if... if anything changes, all right?"
"Of course."
Sydney got to her feet. "Faith, I ... wish you luck. I hope you get your memory back."
"Thanks."
When they were alone again, Kane said restlessly, "As far as I can see, there's nothing wrong with the design from an engineering standpoint, so the fault has to be either materials or construction. I'll have to go out there."
"I'd like to come along," Faith said. "Didn't you tell me that Dinah had visited the site the day before she vanished?"
"Yeah, she showed up out there looking for me, and Max gave her a quick tour. The police checked out the area, but as far as they could tell she didn't go back there the day she disappeared."
"And they talked to Max?"
"Of course." Kane frowned."Why?"
Slowly, Faith said, "Probably nothing, but the only thing I can think of that both Dinah and I had some kind of connection to other than the shelter was construction. I worked at a construction company in Seattle, then came here and eventually got a job at the Office of Building Inspections and Zoning. Dinah's engaged to an engineer and architect whose company is involved in a very large project for the city, a building site she toured the day before she disappeared. I'm in what looks like a manufactured accident, she vanishes — and now your project is in trouble." She paused. "I can just hear Bishop say there's no such thing as a string of coincidences that long."
Thinking about that, Kane said, "The building was started shortly before your accident, so it fits loosely within the time frame. But how many other buildings were started in the same period?"
"God knows." Faith got up. "But I'd say we start with this one."
As they neared the construction site, Faith frowned and rubbed her temple. "Damn," she said softly.
"What is it?" Kane asked. "The water sound?"
"Yes. It's been fading in and out, but it's louder now. At least I think it is."
"Do you think Dinah is somewhere nearby?" he asked quickly.
"I don't know. I don't get any sense of direction. Just the sounds, the smells."
"Maybe your senses are trying to guide you."
"It's like this itching in my mi
nd," Faith said, rubbing her temple again. "Deep inside my head. And along with it is the notion that there's something just out of my reach, something that would answer all my questions if I could just touch it."
"I know you said you didn't want to try to reach out to Dinah directly again, Faith, but..."
"It was like falling into a deep well. There was nothing to hold on to."
Kane parked the car by the padlocked gate at the construction site.
"According to what I've picked up from Noah over the years, there's a trick to managing any kind of clairvoyance. The first step is to stay grounded, safely connected to the here and now." He turned to face her and extended a hand. "Noah calls it a lifeline. Take my hand, Faith."
She hesitated, then slowly took his hand. It was warm and hard, and for a dizzying moment the whole world seemed to shift around her.
Instinctively, she closed her eyes and reached out, toward the sounds. The cold was bone-chilling. There was a heaviness, an intense weight bearing down on her, smothering her... No air. There was no air, she couldn't breathe.
She couldn't move.
She couldn't ... The sounds and scents vanished, and Faith opened her eyes slowly.
"It's gone."
"Gone?"
She looked at her hand clinging to his, and made herself release him.
"Gone. No sounds, no smells, no feeling of being trapped. Nothing. For just a moment, I thought I was right there, in the darkness, and then ... nothing."
He watched his own hand close slowly into a fist.
"Nothing," he repeated.
"I'm sorry, Kane."
After a moment, he shook his head and, in a voice that sounded harsh even to himself, said, "Just tell me she's still alive, Faith."
I am, you know that. You know.
Faith caught her breath, tried to listen to that whispery voice, but it said no more.
"Faith?"
"I ... only know what I feel. What I believe. And I believe Dinah is still alive."
He wanted to believe her. He almost did.
"Okay," he said finally.
Faith looked as if she wanted to say something more, but then shook her head and got out of the car.
Kane had the key for the padlocked gate, and the nighttime security guard had not come on duty yet, there was no one to see them enter the fenced construction site. Kane paused and looked back beyond his car to an unobtrusive sedan parked across the street.
"Your private investigator?" Faith guessed, aware that the man had been nearby since they had left the apartment.
"Yeah. Some of his people are still out looking for leads, so he decided to take this duty himself. His orders are to follow and to stick with the car. But this time..." Kane gestured slightly, and the man immediately left his car and crossed the street to join them.
Faith was briefly introduced to Tim Daniels, a well-built man in his early thirties with something in his shrewd gray eyes that reminded her of the women in the shelter; they were older than his years and didn't look as though they could ever doubt that evil existed in the world. He wore a gun in a shoulder holster beneath his jacket, and she could see the antenna of a cell phone peeking from his shirt pocket.
"I need to take a look at this site," Kane told Daniels. "It should be secure, but I'd rather not take any chances."
Daniels nodded. "I'll watch your back."
He trailed along behind them as Kane took Faith's arm and guided her down the rutted track that led to the building. They stood looking up at the steel skeleton clawing its way nearly a dozen stories in the air so far. Only the underground parking garage had been partially closed in.
Faith eased her arm from Kane's grasp. "I don't think I want to go down inside that."
"Then you stay here with Tim. I'll be right back."
She didn't question his optimistic estimate, just nodded. But when Kane had disappeared around the back of the structure, she glanced at Daniels and said, "Aren't you worried about him being alone down there?"
"He can take care of himself."
"I can't." She grimaced, and touched the hidden bandage on her left arm. "Well, maybe so."
"You're vulnerable at the moment. No memory means you couldn't tell friend from foe."
"So you know about that," she murmured.
"Kane told me what he thought I needed to know. No more and no less."
Faith decided not to question him on that point. She turned her attention back to the building. "I'd like to wander around a bit. Alone, if you don't mind."
"Any particular reason?" Daniels asked.
Because Dinah was here. Because I have to ... Had to what? She didn't know.
"No particular reason," she said.
Daniels glanced around the site, which appeared to be enclosed by a high wood and chain-link fence. "It looks safe enough. But don't go far."
"No, I won't." She had no idea what she was looking for, if anything.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe the voices in her head, familiar and unfamiliar, didn't know what they were talking about. Maybe she just wanted to have time and space to herself and for a few moments forget...
Except that you can't forget. I won't let you.
This time, Faith made no attempt to focus on that voice, to reach out for it. To catch it. Instead, she merely let her mind drift, trying not to think about anything at all.
That didn't work either.
She walked slowly, wandering without rhyme or reason. She passed the huge earth-moving machines parked on the site, the stacks of construction materials, and the trailer that housed the construction office.
Nothing she saw awoke a spark of memory.
It was, she saw now, absurd to imagine that Dinah might have been held here. The building was only a skeleton, even the underground floors barely enclosed. In fact, here at the back, the building was still open all the way down to the bottom most concrete floor.
Kane was moving around in the shadows of that lowest area, but she wasn't about to join him — mostly because she didn't care for shadowy underground places.
Mostly.
She turned and continued along a few feet inside the fence, picking her way over uneven ground and around the occasional pile of debris. Two giant Dumpsters barred her way at one point, and she chose to go between them and the fence rather than around them.
If she hadn't, she never would have seen the break in the fence.
The wooden slats had been removed or never installed in this section, so it was possible to see through the chain-link to what lay outside. There was an empty half acre or so, and then the back of a large building. A warehouse, she thought, maybe for industrial use rather than just storage. She saw at least one loading dock, but the place seemed deserted on this Tuesday afternoon.
Then she caught a whiff of something she thought she should recognize, something that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. That was the only warning she had before the eighty pound Rottweiler threw himself at the fence.
CHAPTER 8
"No judge in his right mind is going to give the police a warrant to search that place just because they have a guard dog," Daniels said matter-of-fact. "Not on the basis of a dream."
"I think it was more than a dream," Kane said.
"I know what you think." Daniels believed in nothing except what he could see, hear, or touch with his hands — but Kane wasn't paying him to scoff, and he saw Daniels send a faintly apologetic glance to Faith as she stood in the kitchen doorway with a cup of coffee.
Faith lifted her cup to Daniels in a grave salute of understanding, and Kane decided she was holding up pretty well after having a monster dog try to eat his way through a fence to get at her.
Kane, on the other hand, was moving restlessly around the living room of the apartment. Daniels watched him. "So let's talk about that warehouse."
And when Kane shot him a quick glance, he added dryly, "Don't think I don't know you're planning to check it out yourself as soon as it gets dark
enough."
"Somebody has to."
"That's a hell of a big dog, Kane."
"Even a big dog can be handled — if you have enough sedatives and a hunk of raw meat."
"Unless he's trained not to take food from strangers. "
"Well, there's only one way to find out."
Daniels smiled slightly. "True. But before you start doctoring sirloin, let me make a few calls and find out what I can about that warehouse."
Kane went to sit on the piano bench and absently ran his fingers up and down the scales to work out of the tension his hands.
"Cochrane was the name on the building."
"I saw it. And I got the street address, so I should be able to find out what the place is and who owns it."
"I know who owns it." Kane began to play the piano softly, choosing without thought a piece he was very familiar with — and which had always been Dinah's favorite despite her avowed tin ear: Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata."
"Jordan Cochrane and family. Mostly Jordan Cochrane."
"You know him?"
"We've met here and there. Not really surprising, since his family businesses include various aspects of construction. And since he's beginning a run for the governor's mansion."
Faith spoke for the first time since they'd returned. "Construction again."
Kane looked across the room at her. "You noticed that, huh?"
"And politics. Didn't Dinah say..."
"That this story she was into involved business and criminal elements — and possibly politics. Yes." Kane paused. "You told us you were sure Dinah wasn't in that warehouse now."
Carefully, Faith replied, "I'm sure I would have felt something, being that close. But I'm also sure she was there, the night she disappeared."
"Then we have to check it out."
Daniels drew a breath. "Breaking and entering, Kane."
"I'm willing to risk it."
"Yeah. I thought you might be."
"You don't have to..."
Daniels didn't let him finish. "Are you kidding? In all these weeks, this feels like the closest we've come to an honest-to-God trail without ice all over it. I'm definitely coming along."