“That’s right,” said The Phantom. “We aren’t that different. Don’t forget it, Callum.”
“You won’t let me, Hayden.”
He did! They both knew the other’s identity.
“You know,” said The Phantom, “there’s lots of times I’ve thought about blowing your cover. I could run to the papers and tell them all about who you are and why you do it.”
“If you told them why, they’d know about you too,” said Vigil.
“That’s true,” said The Phantom. “And I don’t want to give this up.” He gestured to his outfit. “Ever since I put on this mask, I’ve felt so free. Like all my inhibitions are gone.”
I drew in a gasp.
Then clapped my hand over my mouth at having made noise.
But they didn’t seem to have heard me.
Vigil had said almost the exact same thing as The Phantom. How were they connected?
“Maybe you could stand to be a little more inhibited.” Vigil drove a fist into The Phantom’s jaw.
The Phantom’s head whipped to one side. He stumbled backwards, his hand on his cheek. “Oooh, always the big man, throwing punches.”
“Not trying to be the big man,” said Vigil.
Phantom pistoned up on his feet, driving his shoulder into Vigil’s midsection. “What are you trying to be, hmm?” He drove Vigil into the wall of the nearby building.
Vigil huffed at the impact. “I want to help you. You know that.”
“Help me?” The Phantom let go of him. His voice took on a gleeful tone, like a kid opening Christmas presents. “You mean you’ll hold them down while I fuck them? Then, we’ll switch, and you can take a turn?”
Vigil leaped on him, pummeling him in the stomach, punching him again and again. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he said through clenched teeth.
The Phantom laughed as Vigil punched him. “Sure you do. That’s what you want deep down. You want the same thing as I want.”
“No.” Vigil grabbed The Phantom by the shoulders and shoved him.
The Phantom tumbled to the ground on his back. He was still laughing. “You want to control them. I’ve been watching you. I know that the girls you date are all whores. You can do whatever you like with them.”
Vigil shook his head. “You don’t know anything.”
The Phantom got to his feet. “I know what your little reporter’s tits look like.”
A wave of revulsion went through me. He remembered me, then. Before, he hadn’t. But the news article would have jogged his memory.
Vigil’s hands clenched into fists.
“She took her clothes off for me more than once,” The Phantom hissed. “I paid her to writhe on my lap—”
Vigil hit him again. He slugged him in the face.
The Phantom’s nose started to bleed. It splashed red all over his white mask. “Oooh, that’s more like it. You are growing a spine.”
Vigil lifted his fist again.
But The Phantom moved too quickly. He darted forward, grabbing Vigil by the neck and propelling him back into the wall. He pinned Vigil there, his hand wrapped around Vigil’s throat.
Vigil reached for The Phantom, ineffectually scrabbling at his face, knocking his mask askew.
“The thing is,” The Phantom said, “you can’t help me anymore. I’m too far gone. If you want to stop me, you’re going to have to kill me. Could you do that? Could you kill me?” He stared into Vigil’s eyes. Then he loosened his grip.
Vigil drew in choking breaths.
The Phantom took several steps backward. He rearranged his mask. He wiped the blood from his face. “I don’t know if I could kill you. You’re the only one who really understands.”
Then The Phantom turned and swept down the alley, his cape flowing out behind him.
“Hayden, wait!” Vigil yelled after him.
But The Phantom was gone.
Vigil clenched his fists and raised his face to the sky.
He looked agonized.
Part of me wanted to go to him.
But what would I say? Oh, hey, so I was eavesdropping, and I know we’re broken up now, but you looked upset, and by the way, what the hell is going on between you and The Phantom?
No.
I switched off my recorder and quietly made my way out of the alley.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Can I ask you about Maria’s relationship with the Barclay family?” I asked. I was talking to Loretta, Maria’s supposed “bestie.” We were sitting on the steps outside the Barclay, Barclay, and Quinn building.
Loretta was eating lunch. She had a salad and an apple cut into wedges. “Well, it was good. She was a good worker. They liked her, she liked them.”
“Did she ever interact with other members of the family?”
“Other members?”
“Well, Hayden Barclay for example.”
Loretta chewed on her lip. She appeared to be thinking. “I can’t remember anything specific. Hayden does come by the office a lot. He’s kind of a flirt. I don’t know if you’ve ever met him, but he’ll sing sugar in the ear of anything wearing a skirt.”
That was funny. That wouldn’t exactly be the way I’d describe him. But he could be charming, I supposed. He was similar to Callum that way, wasn’t he? “So, she didn’t have any sort of special interaction with him?”
“Nope,” she said.
“But they knew each other?”
“Yes, they knew each other.”
Interesting. I had hoped for something more. I couldn’t figure out exactly why The Phantom had hidden Maria’s legs. He was trying to hide something. But what? What was he trying to hide?
I offered Loretta my hand. “Thanks for talking to me. You’ve been very helpful.”
She shook my hand. “To be honest, Ms. Kane, I don’t think they’re going to find her. Well, not alive anyway. I think she’s probably been dead for a long time.” She looked sad.
I let go of her hand, looking at the ground. I didn’t want to tell her that there was evidence that Maria was, in fact, dead. “Well, her family and friends deserve closure, at the very least.”
“They do,” said Loretta. “They definitely do.”
A sleek black car pulled up at the bottom of the steps. It looked familiar, but I didn’t have time to stare at it.
I handed Loretta my card. “If you think of anything else you’d like to tell me, go ahead and give me a call.”
She nodded, taking the card. “I’ll do that.”
The door the car was opening.
Shit. I knew that car. That was—
Callum got out. He started up the steps.
“I need to go,” I said. “Thanks again for everything.”
She smiled. “Sure thing.” She went back to her lunch.
I began down the stairs to intercept Callum.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said, closing the distance between us.
“I’m working,” I said.
He grabbed me by the arm. “You and I need to talk.”
I pulled my arm out of his grasp. “You could have called.”
He sighed. “Just come on a drive with me.”
“Maybe I’m busy,” I said. “Maybe I have important appointments.”
His shoulders sagged.
Okay, who was I kidding? Of course I was going to talk to him. If nothing else, I wanted to ask him questions about The Phantom, talk to him about the new developments, that kind of thing. “I guess I could spare a few minutes.”
“Thanks,” he said. He tried to smile at me, but it looked nervous.
“I read the article,” Callum said, sitting next to me in the backseat of the car. “The one you wrote about your past?”
It had been published this morning. I expected a lot of people had read it by now. I nodded.
“You made me look like an ass.”
I had? But Henry had said that I didn’t do that at all. “That wasn’t my intention.”
“Do
you think I’m an ass?” he said.
“No,” I said. I thought about the pictures of him and Blake. “Well… maybe.”
He massaged the bridge of his nose. “Well, that’s clear. Thanks.”
“I’m sorry.” I folded my hands in my lap. I was struck by the urge to make myself as small as possible.
“I just don’t understand what happened,” he said. “That article made it seem like you thought things were over between us.”
I gave him a funny look. “They are.”
He sank into his seat, shutting his eyes.
I leaned forward, twisting to look at him. “Aren’t they?”
He opened his eyes. “I don’t remember ever deciding that. I mean, I guess if you don’t want to be with me, then—”
“You haven’t called me,” I said. “You haven’t come by. I haven’t seen you.”
“I said I needed time to deal with the fact that half the people on the docks have seen you without your fucking clothes. How’s that the end?”
“You didn’t come after me,” I said. “You didn’t… I thought…” The urge to make myself small asserted itself again. I crumpled back into the seat.
He leaned forward. “Look, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. None of it does, not really. I know why you did it, and you did it before I even knew you. I don’t have any past claim on what you did with your body. So, it’s fucked up of me to make an issue out of it. I don’t want anything to change. I want to be with you in public. I want to be with you in private. I want you.”
It was what I’d wanted him to say. But somehow, the words had lost their sweetness. If he’d said it in the garden, at that picnic, it would have been one thing. Now, the words seemed somehow coerced. It wasn’t enough anymore.
“It sure seems like it matters to you. What was that little comment about half the people on the docks seeing me without my clothes?”
“Well, I want it not to matter,” he said. “That should count for something. If it mattering means I lose you, then I’ll find a way for it not to matter.”
“So it does matter?” I said.
“For fuck’s sake, Cecily, it would matter to every man on earth.” He shook his head angrily. “I think of you as… mine, and—damn it, now that just sounds creepy and possessive, and it’s not how I meant it.”
Actually, it had sent a shudder of pleasure through me. I liked the idea of being possessed by him.
I swallowed. “You were with Blake. I saw pictures on the internet. You had your hands on her—”
“You were spying on me using the internet?”
“It’s not exactly spying when you’re all over her in public, Callum.” My voice sharpened.
“I was not ‘all over’ her,” he said.
“And I saw you last night with The Phantom behind this building. I saw you talking to him. The things he said to you. Why are you the only person that understands him?”
“You saw me?” He glared at me. “What, are you stalking me or something, Cecily?”
“Stalking you?”
“For someone who claims she thought things were over between us, it doesn’t seem like you did much except follow me around.”
“I didn’t mean to see these things,” I said. “Airenne showed me the pictures, and I was here checking into information about Maria Shaw yesterday. It was a coincidence that we ended up here at the the same time.”
He pressed his lips together.
“You know, Callum,” I said, “maybe the truth is that I’m just not sure if I want to be with you, because you have too many secrets. Tell me about your connection to The Phantom. Tell me right now.”
He turned away from me, looking out the window. “That’s not fair. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to make this all about—”
“You know everything about me now. You know all of my secrets—”
“Yeah, because of a newspaper article,” he said. “Otherwise, you never would have told me.”
“Not the point,” I said. “The kinds of things I was hiding and the kinds of things I think you’re hiding? I’m not sure that they compare.”
His jaw worked. He wasn’t looking at me. “It’s hard to talk about.” His voice was barely a whisper.
I lowered my voice too. “Tell me the truth, Callum. Have you ever fantasized about… hurting women? He said that you wanted—”
“No.” But he still wasn’t looking at me.
“When you put on that mask,” I said, “and you lose all your insecurities—”
“Stop.” He drew in a noisy breath through his nose. “Don’t ask me questions like that, Cecily.”
I pulled away from him, feeling unsure. Feeling a little frightened. “I think you should let me out of this car,” I said.
I spent the rest of the day at The Sun-Times office, digging up everything I could possibly dig up on Hayden Barclay and Callum Rutherford. Looking for anything I could find that connected them.
Mostly I came up empty. My search queries got me nowhere.
Near as I could see, the two of them had never been in the same place at the same time, not ever.
At one point, I thought I had something. I was searching for “Rutherford and Barclay.”
I got a few hits.
But what came up was simply the same picture, over and over again.
It was Frank Barclay and Veronica Waite Rutherford, Hayden’s father and Callum’s mother. They were standing together at some charity benefit, both holding drinks. Frank had apparently cracked some joke, and Veronica was laughing about whatever he’d said.
That was it.
Everything else I put in brought up nothing.
When I got sick of hunting down that angle, I turned back to Maria Shaw.
I didn’t understand why he’d killed her, or why he’d hidden her legs somewhere else, or any of that stuff.
Nothing made sense.
I was frustrated.
It was late, way after hours. The janitor had come by and turned off all the lights. I was working in the bright circle of my desk lamp. No one else was here anymore.
I guessed that I should go home. I had just as much access to the internet there, and that was how I was doing most of my searches. I did have access to all the old issues of The Sun-Times here, all the way back to 1924, when The Aurora Sun and The Aurora Times had merged. (And if it mattered, the old issues of The Sun went back to the 1800s, I was pretty sure. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t need information from anything that far back in time.)
I started to gather my things together. I’d go back to my apartment, and I’d do a bit more looking online, and then I’d go to sleep. And maybe I’d dream the answer. Maybe I’d figure out what all of it meant if I relaxed.
I slung my purse over my shoulder, looking around my desk to make sure that I hadn’t forgotten anything.
“Cecily.”
He was in the shadows, across the room from me, dark and hulking. He moved towards me, all muscles and black spandex.
My breath caught in my throat. I’d forgotten how powerful he looked when he moved. “Vigil.”
He caught me by the shoulders. “I didn’t know where you were. You’re hard to find these days.”
“I’m working,” I said again.
He crushed me against him, his lips coming for mine.
I put my hands on his chest, my heart banging away in my rib cage. “Wait. I’m still looking for answers when it comes to you.”
He shook his head. “This afternoon didn’t go well. But you can’t say no to me in the mask, Cecily.”
And his lips were on mine.
Resisting wasn’t even an option. He was sweet heat, pouring through my whole body, making feel lightheaded and warm. I opened my lips to him.
His tongue swept in to claim me.
I went limp in his arms, surrendering completely to him. His lips incited me, awakening my body to him.
He kissed my jaw, my neck.
I moaned.
>
“You’re mine,” he muttered between kisses. “Say it.”
“I’m yours,” I said. And I was.
His fingers found the top of the buttons on my shirt. He unbuttoned the first button.
“Wait.” I tried to push at him. It was like pushing a mountain.
He pulled back, making an irritated noise. “I want you, Cecily. You’re going to give yourself to me.”
I touched his lips. “Yes. I am.” I was. He was right that I couldn’t resist him in that damned costume. He was dark, deep sensuality. He unleashed my most secret desires. When he touched me, I felt lost. He consumed me. He controlled me. “But you have things to answer for.”
“I do?” He let go of me entirely, sounding even more annoyed.
“Yes,” I said. “And we can’t get it on in my office. Someone might come in.”
He looked around. It was dark everywhere. There was no one around. But he shrugged. “Fine.” He picked me up, swung his arms under my knees and swept me off the ground.
I let out a little startled cry.
He carried me to the elevator, set me down, and hit the button for the top floor.
The doors closed.
He stalked over to me and went back to unbuttoning my shirt.
I struggled to gather my thoughts. My breath was going shallow from his proximity. From the fact that he was undressing me. “You were with Blake.”
He undid more buttons. “She and I had a conversation about how she needed to stay away from you. And how I didn’t want to see her anymore.”
“You were alone with her in your car.”
“I didn’t want to have the conversation in public and bring more attention to the whole business with you and the article about your past,” he said. “Of course, I had no idea you were going to publish a little tell-all about it.”
“I… I thought it was better than trying to pretend it didn’t happen.”
He finished unbuttoning my shirt. He yanked it open, peering greedily at my skin, at my bra. “I have no feelings for Blake except bad ones, Cecily. Please tell me you believe that.”
I was dazed by the hungry way he was looking at me. “I believe it.”
“Good.” He pulled my shirt over my shoulders and arms. I was only in my bra now.
It wasn’t a particularly exciting bra. It was nude, and it was made of cotton. It stretched a thin layer over my skin.
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