Hiding in the Shadows tbscus-2

by Кей Хупер

  "So am I." Faith kept her gaze on Kane.

  He continued to play the piano for several minutes, looking at her rather than the keys, then broke off abruptly and rose to his feet.

  "Faith ..."

  "If that's where Dinah was held, where the where they hurt her, I'll be able to recognize the place, I know I will."

  He nodded finally. "All right. You'll need a jacket, something dark. I think there's one of Dinah's in my closet, if you want to grab that."

  The dog had either never been trained not to take food from strangers, or defied his training in order to sink his teeth into the raw steak.

  They had to wait a few minutes for the sedatives to take effect, but he was sleeping peacefully by the time Kane picked the padlock on the gate and they crept in.

  "I don't think I want to ask who taught you to do that," Daniels said dryly.

  A smothered laugh escaped Kane. "It was Dinah. One of her shadier contacts taught her years ago, and she taught me last spring after I got locked out of the apartment once. She made sure we both kept in practice, said you never knew when it might come in handy."

  He kept his voice low.

  Faith, walking silently between the two men, wondered if that was why Dinah's tormentors had bound her wrists with thin, brutal wire. Had they tried something simpler in the early days of her captivity, like handcuffs, only to find that their victim was adept at picking locks?

  "Yeah," Daniels said, "but that's a first-class set of burglar's tools you've got there, pal. Should I ask where you got them?"

  Kane patted the zippered leather case he had in his jacket pocket.

  "It's amazing what you can get these days if you ask the right person. Dinah knew who to ask."

  "Uh-huh. Well, the warehouse is bound to have a security system," Daniels pointed out. "How are you with those?"

  "We'll see, won't we?"

  Faith heard Daniels swear under his breath, thought he didn't sound all that upset. In fact, it had already occurred to her that both men relished this outing; after all the weeks of sifting through facts and talking to people, taking even a risky action appealed to them. As for Faith, she felt ... peculiar. Lost in Dinah's jacket, which was several sizes too large, and dwarfed by the two large men, she had an odd sense of not really being there. Or maybe that was because the sound of the water was back, so distant she caught herself straining to hear it, and that gave her a sense of some other place. She tried to concentrate on the here and now, gazing warily around through darkness at the hulking shapes of the warehouse and outbuildings, but the feeling of unreality persisted. Her hands felt cold; she jammed them into the pockets of the jacket. In the right pocket, she felt something, and her fingers explored with idle curiosity. A thin, flexible piece of metal. She had no idea what it was, but could not find the concentration to pull it out and look at it.

  The warehouse loomed above them, and she tried to focus on it in another attempt to fix her consciousness on the present. But the faint sounds of water rushing grew more distinct inside her head.

  "Here." Kane had located a door into the warehouse, and his pencil flashlight examined it inch by inch. "As far as I can see, there's no security system."

  "They think the dog's enough," Faith murmured with certainty.

  "Could be," Daniels agreed.

  Kane shrugged, muttered, "In for a penny," and knelt to work on the door's lock.

  Faith watched his agile fingers using the fine tools. She wondered if there was anything he had tried his hand at only to fail, and doubted it.

  Like Kane seldom failed. At anything.

  "Got it." Kane rose to his feet, putting away the tools and securing the case in his pocket, then cautiously tried the door. If there was any alarm raised, it was a silent one.

  They stood inside a cavernous space illuminated by a few scattered yellow security lights. The place was virtually empty.

  Kane glanced at Daniels, who shrugged and said, "Explains the lack of any real security."

  Faith was thinking of something else. "There are windows, and the walls don't look right. Is there something below this level? A basement of some kind?"

  "Let's find out," Kane said.

  Since it was easy to remain within sight of one another, they split up to search, and it was Kane who summoned the other two nearly ten minutes later. He had located a room, adjacent to the main warehouse, that was clearly meant to house an office but currently held only an old slate-top desk and a wooden chair.

  And another door.

  The door opened onto stairs, and the stairs led down. There was a light switch just inside the door, and Kane hesitated, glancing at Daniels.

  "What do you think?"

  "I think we're alone here."

  "I know we are," Faith said, not even aware of her certainty until she spoke.

  That was good enough for Kane, so he flipped the switch. Several naked bulbs awoke to provide enough light to see by.

  As soon as the three of them started down, Faith felt the damp chill that was so familiar she stopped in her tracks.

  "Faith?" Daniels, behind her, didn't touch her.

  Three steps below her, Kane turned and looked back. "Is this it?" he asked softly.

  She swallowed. "We're close."

  He took her hand. "Come on."

  Faith didn't know if she would have been able to continue down into that place without his grip. It was more commanding than comforting, but at least it was contact with something warm and alive.

  I have to stay grounded, he said, connected to the here and now.

  The water sounds were louder inside her head. She hung on to Kane's hand as if to a lifeline.

  At the bottom of the long flight of stairs, they found themselves in a square concrete room hardly larger than the office above. There was no sign that it was intended for anything other than extra storage; open metal shelving units lined two of the walls, though all they contained now were a few dusty stacks of paper and other ancient office supplies.

  Faith turned immediately toward the bare wall the farthest from the stairs, and realized she was silently counting only when she reached twelve steps — and that rear wall. Her free hand lifted to touch it gently.

  "This shouldn't be here," she murmured. "It ... She was past this, beyond this point."

  Daniels took out a penknife and dug into the mortar between two concrete blocks. It crumbled easily, still visibly damp. "This is a new wall. Only a few days old, if that."

  It took them a while to find tools that would work — a dull ax and a heavy mallet from upstairs in the warehouse. Kane and Daniels were able to knock several blocks loose and open up the wall.

  Standing several feet away, Faith stared at that gaping maw and told herself there was no reason to fear what lay within. Just the other half of this room, that was all. Bare concrete floor and block walls and ...Kane and Daniels went through the wall.

  The chair wouldn't be in there, she thought. That would have been destroyed, maybe burned. But they must not have been able to get the bloodstains out of the concrete floor, and so they'd walled up the place, concealing all evidence. Everybody knew the police had all kinds of forensic tricks now, chemicals they could spray on surfaces to make bloodstains show up, even when they'd been scrubbed, even when they were invisible to the naked eye, perhaps painted over.

  Closing off that part of the room was safest, that's what they would have thought. Move Dinah somewhere else, somewhere even darker and colder, where the sounds of water were loud and constant and maddening, and then build this wall to hide what had been done in this place.

  Faith drew a deep breath and went through the hole in the wall to join Kane and Daniels inside.

  The more powerful flashlights they had brought for this interior search helped to delineate the shape and size of the small basement, but there was almost nothing to be seen. Walls, ceiling, floor.

  Stained floor.

  "They tried to clean it up," Daniels said with detachment
. "But concrete is porous and stains below the surface. They might have painted it, but the entire floor would have had to be done in order not to look suspicious, and who would bother painting a floor in a place like this? Easier and simpler to just make the space down here match up with the size of the office above by building a wall to hide this part. Without the original blueprints, it isn't likely that anyone looking down here would have guessed. The new wall would blend once the mortar cured, and their ... secret would have been safe."

  Faith looked down at the rust-colored stains on the floor, then turned her gaze away with a shudder as she remembered blood dripping from mangled wrists.

  Kane was staring down at the floor, unmoving.

  She wanted so badly to reach out to him that her hand lifted instinctively. And then hung there between them, meaningless and impotent.

  He didn't want to be touched. And most especially, she thought, he didn't want to be touched by her.

  In that same steady, unemotional voice, Daniels said, "Kane, we have to get out of here. We have what we came here to get evidence to convince us that something happened here, that Dinah might have been held here."

  "The police," Kane said in an odd, still tone.

  "There are still no legal grounds for a warrant. We're in here illegally. If the police even listened to us and came in here, they couldn't use anything they found in court. Worse, storming in here openly before we know more could panic whoever's got Dinah, force them to... We have to find a way to uncover other evidence that will lead the police here logically. It will take time, but it has to be done. We won't help Dinah by rushing off to confront Cochrane before we know more. But we have a place to start now. We have somewhere to look."

  Faith forced her hand to drop to her side and made herself speak calmly.

  "Won't they know we were here?"

  "Not if we're careful. And lucky. Kane, we have to go. Now. That dog won't be out much longer."

  Faith thought it was a toss-up as to whether Kane would listen to the RI., but in the end he did. Or perhaps he simply had to get away from those terrible stains on the floor.

  He and Daniels replaced the blocks they had removed, using the crumbling mortar for the joints.

  The result would fool no one close-up, but when Daniels loosened the bare light-bulb hanging closest to the wall until it went Out, the dimness made their handiwork much less evident.

  They were careful to replace the tools and to close and lock the doors they had found that way, but there was no time in getting out of the warehouse and back to the gate. The sleeping dog was just beginning to stir as they slipped past him.

  Daniels didn't come in when they returned to Kane's apartment; he wanted to do his own checking on Jordan Cochrane and the warehouse, and said he'd return first thing the following morning to report in... sooner if he discovered anything even remotely likely to help them find Dinah.

  Kane was pacing.

  Faith wasn't sure he was ready to talk, but she needed to. "There's something bothering me."

  It was, on the face of it, an absurd thing to say, but Kane merely sat down in the chair across from her and said calmly, "Something in particular? What is it?"

  "When I had the... the dream about Dinah being attacked by that dog, she didn't seem sure where she was. Something about the address being vague, and maybe not even being in the right part of the city."

  "So how come she didn't know that place backed up to the building site?"

  "That's part of it. And what if she was there to meet someone? What if whoever it was took advantage of an unused warehouse, and the only connection to the Cochranes is that building?"

  "Cheerful thought," Kane said sourly.

  "But possible."

  "Oh, yeah, it's possible."

  "And if it's true?"

  "Then we're back to square one. Unless that building has some tangible connection to whoever held Dinah there ... But we don't know it's true, not yet."

  He gazed at her broodingly, glad she was there because being alone tonight would have been unbearable. At least when he listened to her voice his imagination couldn't recreate Dinah's cries of pain. At least when he looked at her, he no longer saw stained concrete.

  "You haven't told me everything," he said abruptly. "You were upset yesterday when you came back from Haven House, for one thing. For another, I've gotten the feeling more than once that you could have offered more details about Dinah."

  She hesitated, biting her bottom lip, then said, "Not details you need to hear. Not details that would help us find her."

  Kane closed his eyes briefly. "Is she alive, Faith?"

  She hesitated for a moment. "Sometimes I ... think I hear her voice in my head. But I'm not sure. I was told by somebody at Haven House that I seemed to be psychic with Dinah, that we clicked somehow from the moment we met."

  "Then..."

  Faith shook her head. "If it is her voice I'm hearing, she can't or won't tell me where she is — and I can't control what I hear, can't ask her questions or demand answers. It doesn't seem to work that way, no matter what I try. It just ... comes when it comes. At odd moments, when I least expect it. A voice in my head I'm not even sure isn't my own."

  A slight laugh that held no humor was forced from Kane. "That jibes with what Noah's told me. He says concentration and years of practice help but that few psychics are able to do more than open a door. What comes through, and how, is almost always a jumble and is seldom helpful in any real sense. As if even the subconscious can't cope with those extra senses and has to translate using symbolism and imagery. He says if ever a psychic is born who can control his or her abilities a hundred percent, the whole world will change. "

  "I'm sorry, Kane. Maybe we could try something that might help me concentrate more or focus. Hypnosis ..."

  "Noah says psychics can't be hypnotized."

  After a moment, Faith said, "I guess he'd know."

  "Yeah. He'd know." Kane paused. "You learned something else at Haven House, didn't you, Faith?"

  Tell him.

  She swallowed. "It's nothing that would help..."

  "Something about Dinah? What is it?"

  Tell him.

  Faith couldn't see how the knowledge would help Kane. She was afraid it might even hurt him more, but heard herself say reluctantly, "I have no way of knowing if it's true, but someone at the shelter who spent a lot of time with Dinah is convinced she believed she didn't have a future."

  "What?"

  "Eve could be wrong, Kane. It was just her impression, based on a lot of little things. A remark here and there, a fleeting expression. She thought Dinah was always aware of time, that she had some sense of it running out. For her."

  He got up abruptly and moved toward the dark fireplace. He stood there for a moment, frowning, then bent and turned on the gas logs as though he felt a sudden chill.

  "That ... would explain a lot," he murmured.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I always thought — always felt — there was a reason why she never wanted to make plans beyond the next weekend."

  "But if you were engaged ..."

  His smile was twisted. "We weren't. I just said that to the press because ... because I wanted it to be true, I suppose. But Dinah and I hadn't come close to that kind of commitment. I was hesitating over suggesting that we move in together, not because she was too independent but because I had the feeling it was a corner she just wasn't ready to turn. "

  "Bishop said she was precognitive."

  Kane nodded slowly.

  "Then maybe she did see her future. Or at least see enough to believe it wasn't wise of her to make longterm plans. Maybe that's why she moved so fast after my accident, why she was so careful to set things up quickly even though she knew I might be in the coma a long time."

  "Maybe." Kane drew a breath. "But even if she did see her future, even if she believed she was running out of time, she could have been wrong, Faith. Psychics get it wrong all the time, even the
best of them. She could still be alive."

  Yes.

  "I don't..." He shook his head. "I still don't feel her."

  "I'm sorry."

  "I almost envy you that voice in your head. At least you can tell yourself it's a connection, whether you really believe it is or not. At least you can tell yourself you have a piece of her."

  "It's nothing to envy, believe me."

  "Isn't it?"

  "No. I don't have a piece of her, Kane. I don't even have a piece of me."

  There was something forlorn in her voice, and not for the first time he had a sense of how hard this was for her. It was his turn to say, "I'm sorry."

  Faith shook her head but didn't otherwise reply, and when she looked past him, the reflection of the fire made her eyes look vividly alive.

  Green eyes, not blue. Red hair instead of blond. Slender fragility instead of athletic grace.

  The intelligence was much the same, the occasional dry humor, but physically... Realizing where his thoughts had wandered, Kane felt a shock. He stared at Faith, conscious of his heart beating faster, of an emotion that was part longing and part guilt, and something else he dared not examine too closely.

  "Kane?" She was looking back at him, puzzlement turning into awareness.

  One of her hands began to lift as if to reach out to him, but then she clasped both of them tightly together in her lap. The neat red nails gleamed darkly.

  Red nails.

  Kane turned from the fireplace and from her, crossed the room to the piano, and sat down on the bench.

  "Don't let me keep you up." His voice was much harsher than he had intended.

  He had played no more than a few quiet notes when Faith rose from the couch with a murmured good-night and retreated to the bedroom. Kane continued to play but wholly by rote. He wanted to go after her.

  But he couldn't.

  He couldn't.

  ... Faith woke to bright morning sunlight slanting through the drapes and the sound of the piano being played softly. She had left her bedroom door ajar for no reason she wanted to explain to herself, and each time she had awakened in the night she had heard the quiet notes. She wondered if he even realized he had played the same song over and over again.