Hiding in the Shadows

by Kay Hooper

  “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 mind,” 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—”

  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 since 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.”

  “And 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 bottommost 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.

  NINE

  “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-factly. “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 some of the tension in his hands. “The sign said Cochrane’s.”

  “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.”

  “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 they—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 returned to 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 but 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. Men 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, di
dn’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.