by Nora Roberts
“I was seventeen. I had, as you know, Dee, a supportive family, a good home. I’d just begun my modeling career, and I thought the world was at my feet. Then I discovered I was pregnant.”
“The father? Do you want to talk about him?”
“Was a nice, sweet boy who was every bit as terrified as I. He was my first.” She smiled a little now, remembering him. “I was his. We were dazzled by each other, by what we felt for each other. When I told him, we just sat there, numb. We were in LA, and we’d gone to the beach. We sat there and watched the surf. He offered to marry me.”
“Some people might feel that would have been the answer. You didn’t?”
“Not for me, or the boy, or the child.” Kate continued, using all of her skill to keep her voice level. “Do you remember the way we used to talk about what we wanted to do when we grew up?”
“Yes. I do.” Deanna linked her fingers with Kate’s. “You never had any doubts.”
“I’d always wanted to be an actress. I’d made some progress modeling, and I was going to conquer Hollywood come hell or high water. Then I was pregnant.”
“Did you consider abortion? Discuss the option with the father, with your family?”
“Yes, I did. As difficult as it was, Dee, I remember how supportive my parents were. I’d hurt them, disappointed them. I didn’t realize how much until I was older and had some perspective. But they never wavered. I can’t explain to you why I decided the way I did. It was a purely emotional decision, but I think my parents’ unflagging support helped me make it. I decided to have the baby and give it away. And I didn’t know, not until it came time to do just that, how hard it would be.”
“Do you know who adopted the baby?”
“No.” Kate dashed a tear away. “No, I didn’t want to know. I’d made a deal. I had chosen to give the child to people who would love and care for it. And it wasn’t my baby any longer, but theirs. She would be ten years old now, nearly eleven.” Eyes swimming, she looked toward the camera. “I hope she’s happy. I hope she doesn’t hate me.”
“Thousands of women face what you faced. Each choice they make is theirs to make, however difficult it is. I think one of the reasons you play admirable, accessible women so well is that you’ve been through the hardest test a woman can face.”
“When I played Tess, I wondered how everything would have worked out if I’d chosen differently. I’ll never know.”
“Do you regret your choice?”
“A part of me always will regret I couldn’t be a mother to that child. But I think I’ve finally realized, after all these years, that it really was the right one. For everybody.”
“We’ll be back in a moment,” Deanna said to the camera, then turned to Kate. “Are you all right?”
“Barely. I didn’t think it would be so hard.” She took two deep breaths, but kept her eyes on Deanna rather than look out at the audience. “The questions are going to come fast and furious. And God, the press tomorrow.”
“You’ll get through it.”
“Yes, I will. Dee.” She leaned forward and gripped Deanna’s hand. “It meant a lot to me, to be able to do this here, with you. It seemed, for a minute or two, as if I were just talking to you. The way we used to.”
“Then maybe this time you’ll keep in touch.”
“Yeah, I will. You know, I realized while I was talking why I hated Angela so much. I thought it was because she was using me. But it was because she was using my baby. It helps knowing that.”
“Hell of a show.” Fran fisted her hands on her hips as Deanna walked into the dressing room. “You knew. I could tell you knew. Why the hell didn’t you tell me? Me, your producer and your best friend.”
“Because I wasn’t sure she’d go through with it.” The strain of the past hour had Deanna’s shoulders aching. Rolling them in slow circles, she went directly to the lighted mirror to change makeup. Fran was miffed. She understood that, expected it. Just as she understood and expected it would wear off quickly. “And I didn’t feel it was right to talk about it until she did. Give me a gauge on audience reaction, Fran.”
“After the shock waves died off? I’d say about sixty-five percent were in her corner, maybe ten percent never got past the stunned stage, and the remaining twenty-five were ticked off that their princess stumbled.”
“That’s about how I figured it. Not bad.” Deanna slathered her face with moisturizer. “She’ll be all right.” She lifted a brow at Fran’s reflection. “Where do you stand?”
After a moment of stilted silence, Fran exhaled hard, fluttering her choppy bangs. “In her corner, one hundred percent. It must have been hell for her, poor kid. God, Dee, what made her decide to go public that way?”
“It all has to do with Angela,” Deanna began, and told her.
“Blackmail.” Too intrigued now for even mild annoyance, Fran let out a low whistle. “I knew she was a bitch, but I never thought she’d sunk that low. I guess the list of suspects just expanded by several dozen.” Her eyes widened. “You don’t think Kate—”
“No, I don’t.” Not that she hadn’t considered it, thoroughly, Deanna thought, logically, and she hoped objectively. “Even if I thought she killed Angela, which I don’t, she doesn’t have any reason to have killed Marshall. She didn’t even know him.”
“I guess not. I wish the cops would figure it out and lock this lunatic up. It worries me sick that you’re still getting those notes.” Now that all was forgiven, she moved over, automatically massaging Deanna’s stiff shoulders. “At least I can rest easier knowing Finn won’t be going out of town until this is over.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because—” Fran caught herself, looked quickly at her watch. “Gosh, what am I doing sitting around here talking? I’ve got a hundred things—”
“Fran.” Deanna stood and stepped in front of her. “How do you know that Finn’s not going out of town until this is over? The last I heard he was scheduled to go to Rome right after Christmas.”
“I, ah, I must have gotten mixed up.”
“Like hell.”
“Damn it, Dee, don’t get that warrior look on your face.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he told me, okay?” She tossed up her hands in disgust. “And I was supposed to keep my big mouth shut about the fact that he’s canceled the Rome shoot and anything else that takes him out of Chicago.”
“I see.” Deanna lowered her eyes, brushed a speck of lint from her teal silk skirt.
“No, you don’t see because you’ve got your blinders on. Do you really expect the man to fly gleefully across the Atlantic while this is going on? For Christ’s sake, he loves you.”
“I’m aware of that.” But her spine was rigid. “I have things to do myself,” she said, and stormed out.
“Good going, Myers.” Muttering oaths, Fran snatched up the dressing room phone and called up to Finn’s office. If she’d inadvertently started a war, the least she could do was tell him to be fully armed.
In his office above the newsroom, Finn replaced the receiver and sent a scowl at Barlow James. “You’re about to get some reinforcements. Deanna’s on her way up.”
“Fine.” Pleased, Barlow settled back in his chair, stretched his burly arms. “We’ll get all this settled once and for all.”
“It is settled, Barlow. I’m not traveling more than an hour away from home until the police make an arrest.”
“Finn, I understand your concerns for Deanna. I have them as well. But you’re short-sheeting the show. You’re overreacting.”
“Really?” Finn’s voice was cool, deceptively so. “And I thought I was taking two murders and the harassment of the woman I love so well.”
Sarcasm didn’t deflate Barlow. “My point is that she can obtain round-the-clock protection. Professionals. God knows a woman in her financial position can afford the very best. Not to slight your manhood, Finn, but you’re a reporter, not a bodyguard. And,” he continued be
fore Finn could respond, “as skilled a reporter as you are, you are not a detective. Let the police do their job and you do yours. You have a responsibility to the show, to the people who work with you. To the network, to the sponsors. You have a contract, Finn. You’re legally bound to travel whenever and wherever news is breaking. You agreed to those terms. Hell, you demanded them.”
“Sue me,” Finn invited, eyes gleaming in anticipation of a bout. He glanced up as the door slammed open.
She stood there in her snazzy silk suit, eyes flashing, chin angled. Each stride a challenge, she marched to his desk, slapped her palms on the surface.
“I won’t have it.”
He didn’t bother to pretend he didn’t understand. “You don’t have any say in this, Deanna. It’s my choice.”
“You weren’t even going to tell me. You were just going to make some lame excuse about why the trip was canceled. You’d have lied to me.”
He’d have killed for her, he thought, and shrugged. “Now that’s not necessary.” He leaned back in the chair, steepled his fingers. Though he was wearing a sweater and jeans, he looked every inch the star. “How did the show go this morning?”
“Stop it. Just stop it.” She whirled, jabbing a finger at Barlow. “You can order him to go, can’t you?”
“I thought I could.” He lifted his hands, let them fall. “I came from New York hoping to make him see reason. I should have known better.” With a sigh, he rose. “I’ll be in the newsroom for the next hour or so. If you fare any better than I did, let me know.”
Finn waited until the door clicked shut. The sound was as definitive as that of the bell in a boxing ring. “You won’t, Deanna, so you might as well accept it.”
“I want you to go,” she said, spacing each word carefully. “I don’t want our lives to be interfered with. It’s important to me.”
“You’re important to me.”
“Then do this for me.”
He picked up a pencil, ran it through his fingers once, twice, then snapped it neatly in two. “No.”
“Your career could be on the line.”
He tilted his head as if considering it. And damn him, his dimples winked at her. “I don’t think so.”
He was, she thought, as sturdy, as unshakable and as unmovable as granite. “They could cancel your show.”
“Throw out the baby with the bathwater?” Though he wasn’t feeling particularly calm, he levered back, propped his feet on the desk. “I’ve known network execs to do dumber things, so let’s say they decide to cancel a highly rated, profitable and award-winning show because I’m not going on the road for a while.” He stared up at her, his eyes darkly amused. “I guess you’d have to support me while I’m unemployed. I might get to like it and retire completely. Take up gardening or golf. No, I know. I’ll be your business manager. You’d be the star—you know, like a country-western singer.”
“This isn’t a joke, Finn.”
“It isn’t a tragedy, either.” His phone rang. Finn picked up the receiver, said, “Later,” and hung up again. “I’m sticking, Deanna. I can’t keep up with the investigation if I’m off in Europe.”
“Why do you need to keep up with it?” Her eyes narrowed. “Is that what you’ve been doing? Why there was a rerun last Tuesday night? All those calls from Jenner. You’re not working on In Depth, you’re working with him.”
“He doesn’t have a problem with it. Why should you?”
She spun away. “I hate this. I hate that our private and professional lives are becoming mixed and unbalanced. I hate being scared this way. Jumping every time there’s a noise in the hall, or bracing whenever the elevator door opens.”
“That’s my point. That’s exactly how I feel. Come here.” He held out a hand, gripping hers when she walked around the desk. With his eyes on hers, he drew her into his lap. “I’m scared, Deanna, right down to the bone.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “You never said so.”
“Maybe I should have. Male pride’s a twitchy business. The fact is, I need to be here, I need to be involved, to know what’s happening. It’s the only way I’ve got to fight back the fear.”
“Just promise me you won’t take any chances, any risks.”
“He’s not going after me, Deanna.”
“I want to be sure of that.” She closed her eyes. But she wasn’t sure.
After Deanna left, Finn went down to the video vault. An idea had been niggling at him since Marshall’s murder, the notion that he’d forgotten something. Or overlooked it.
All Barlow’s talk about responsibilities, loyalties, had triggered a memory. Finn skimmed through the black forest of video cases until he found February 1992.
He slipped the cassette into the machine, fast-forwarding through news reports, local, world, weather, sports. He wasn’t sure of the precise date, or how much coverage there had been. But he was certain Lew McNeil’s previous Chicago connection would have warranted at least one full report on his murder.
He got more than he’d hoped for.
Finn slowed the tape to normal, eyes narrowing as he focused in on the CBC reporter standing on the snowy sidewalk.
“Violence struck in the early morning hours in this affluent New York neighborhood. Lewis McNeil, senior producer of the popular talk show Angela’s, was gunned down outside his home in Brooklyn Heights this morning. According to a police source, McNeil, a Chicago native, was apparently leaving for work when he was shot at close range. McNeil’s wife was in the house . . . .” The camera did its slow pan. “She was awakened shortly after seven A.M. by the sound of a gunshot.”
Finn listened to the rest of the report, eyes fixed. Grimly, he zipped through another week of news, gathering snippets on the McNeil murder investigation.
He tucked his notes away and headed into the newsroom. He found Joe as the cameraman was heading out on assignment.
“Question.”
“Make it a quick one. I’m on the clock.”
“February ninety-two. Lew McNeil’s murder. That was your camerawork on the New York stand-up, wasn’t it?”
“What can I say?” Joe polished his nails on his sweatshirt. “My art is distinctive.”
“Right. Where was he shot?”
“As I recall, right outside his house.” As he thought back, Joe reached into his hip pocket for a Baby Ruth. “Yeah, they said it looked like he was cleaning off his car.”
“No, I mean anatomically. Chest, gut, head? None of the reports I reviewed said.”
“Oh.” Joe frowned, shutting his eyes as if to bring the scene back to mind. “They’d cleaned up pretty good by the time we got there. Never saw the stiff.” He opened his eyes. “Did you know Lew?”
“Some.”
“Yeah, me too. Tough.” He bit off a hefty section of chocolate. “Why the interest?”
“Something I’m working on. Didn’t your reporter ask the cops for details?”
“Who was that—Clemente, right? Didn’t last around here very long. Sloppy, you know? I can’t say if he did or not. Look, I’ve got to split.” He headed for the stairs, then rapped his knuckles on the side of his head. “Yeah, yeah.” He headed up the steps backward, watching Finn. “Seems to me I heard one of the other reporters talking. He said Lew caught the bullet in the face. Nasty, huh?”
“Yeah.” A grim satisfaction swam through Finn’s blood. “Very nasty.”
Jenner munched a midmorning danish, washing down the cherry filling with sweetened coffee. As he ate and sipped, he studied the grisly photos tacked to the corkboard. The conference room was quiet now, but he’d left the blinds open on the glass door that separated it from the bull pen of the precinct.
Angela Perkins. Marshall Pike. He stared at what had been done to them. If he stared long enough, he knew he could go into a kind of trance—a state of mind that left the brain clear for ideas, for possibilities.
He was just annoyed enough at Finn for emotion to interfere with intellect. The man should have tol
d him the details of his conversation with Pike. However slight it had been, it had been police business. The idea of Finn interviewing Pike alone burned Jenner more bitterly than the station house coffee.
He remembered their last meeting, in the early hours of the morning that Pike had been murdered.
“We’re clear that the shooter knows Miss Reynolds.” Jenner ticked the fact off on a finger. “Was aware of her relationship, or at least her argument, with Pike.” He held up a second finger. “He or she knows Deanna’s address, knew Pike’s and had enough knowledge of the studio to set up the camera after killing Angela Perkins.”
“Agreed.”
“The notes have shown up under Deanna’s door, on her desk, in her car, in the apartment she still keeps in Old Town.” Jenner had lifted a brow, hoping that Finn would offer some explanation for that interesting fact. But he hadn’t. Finn knew how to keep information to himself. It was one of the things Jenner admired about him. “It has to be someone who works at CBC,” Jenner concluded.
“Agreed. In theory.” Finn smiled when Jenner let out a huff of breath. “It could be someone who worked there. It’s possible it’s a fan of Deanna’s who’s been in the studio. A regular audience member. Lots of people have enough rudimentary knowledge of television to work a camera for a still shot.”
“I think that’s stretching it.”
“So let’s stretch it. He sees her every day on TV.”
“Could be a woman.”
Finn let that cook a moment, then shook his head. “A remote possibility. Let’s shuffle that aside for a minute and try out this theory: It’s a man, a lonely, frustrated man. He lives alone, but every day Deanna slips through the television screen right into his living room. She’s sitting right there with him, talking to him, smiling at him. He’s not lonely when she’s there. And he wants her there all the time. He doesn’t do well with women. He’s a little afraid of them. He’s a good planner, probably holds down a decent job, a responsible one, because he knows how to think things through. He’s thorough, meticulous.”