Not again. Suddenly she understood, with horrible clarity, what was so familiar about this ability to conjure up ghostlike pictures in her mind, pictures of other people’s thoughts. She had had this ability before, a long time ago, and it had nearly ruined her life. Now the lightning had reawakened it.
To see herself through Perry’s eyes was bad enough, but there was more. A wave of disgust swelled within her, pure and powerful and uncomplicated by feelings of love or tenderness or affection of any kind. What she felt—or rather, what Perry felt and transmitted to her by his touch—was simple repugnance. He viewed her not as a loved one to be comforted, but as a thing to be dealt with. An irritating thing. An ugly thing. A disgusting thing.
“India! You’re hurting me! Let go!” Her grip had tightened involuntarily. She tried to loosen her fingers, but they wouldn’t budge. He tried to shake her off. “Let go, damn it!”
The nurse managed to pry her fingers open. “There, now. Isn’t it nice to have your husband here? I can make up a cot if you’d like, and he can stay the night. Wouldn’t that be—”
“G-get him out,” India gasped, her voice a thick slur. Perry and the nurse exchanged a look, but she didn’t care. “L-leave me alone, Perry.”
“Now, dear.” The nurse rested a hand on her arm, and India saw her own face, wild-eyed and terrified, and knew what the nurse was thinking ... A good strong sedative...
“N-no!” She swatted clumsily at the nurse, wincing at the pain that coursed through her. “G-go away! Don’t touch me!”
Perry closed a hand over her shoulder. She saw herself again, felt his revulsion again. “India, stop this. Now!” He turned to the nurse. “Can’t you give her something?”
“Don’t touch me!” India screamed, writhing and flailing at him. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me! Leave me alone!” Other people came into the room. Strong hands held her down while she struggled, her mind a kaleidoscope of disjointed images and sensations. Someone gripped her arm painfully. She felt an icy scrub of alcohol, followed by the sting of a needle.
“Leave me alone,” she moaned as her muscles relaxed and her eyelids grew heavy. “I just want to be alone. That’s all I ever wanted.”
Chapter One
* * *
DETECTIVE LIEUTENANT JAMES Keegan bounded up the back steps of the Mansfield, New Jersey, police station, threw open the door, and sang out, “Honey, I’m home!”
The desk sergeant, leathery Al Albonetti, glanced up from his paperwork without moving his head or altering his perpetually bored expression. “Morning, Lieutenant. Captain wants to see you, some lady’s waiting for you in your office, and, uh...” His gaze slid toward an elderly woman scowling in the corner.
“It’s about time, Keegan,” she growled as she pulled a steno pad from the pocket of her parka and flipped it open. Sylvia Hazelett was a wizened little bird of a woman, but she had the voice of a three-pack-a-day teamster.
The detective unbuttoned his trench coat with one hand and held the other palm out as he backed away. “Sorry, Sylvie, but I’m late this morning as it is, and—”
“A five-minute interview, Jamie.” She slipped on the reading glasses that hung around her neck. “I go to press tomorrow, and the Courier’s just a weekly, so if I wait to get this story, it’ll be dead news by the time my readers see it.”
“What story?”
Sergeant Albonetti sighed. “That’s what Captain Garrett wants to brief you on, Lieutenant.”
“The arson story,” Sylvie said.
He groaned. “Don’t tell me—”
“Another note came this morning,” the sergeant said. “Signed ‘The Firefly,’ same as the other three. Says he’s gonna do it again sometime this week.”
“Shit,” Jamie hissed. The first note had come three weeks ago, the eleventh of October to be exact. Four days later, in the middle of the night, the contents of the Dumpster behind the Stop ‘n Save went up in flames. Everyone had been relieved that it wasn’t worse. A few days later, there’d been another note, followed by another, somewhat more destructive, fire. The framework of a house under construction in an upscale subdivision had been torched. People started to get nervous. The third note had precipitated a flurry of anxious speculation as to the Firefly’s next target. It turned out to be Little Eddie’s, a roadhouse on the edge of town. The single-story clapboard structure had swiftly burned to the ground in the wee hours of the morning, a week ago. Thankfully, the arsonist had waited until after closing time to set the blaze. So far, his attacks had claimed no human victims, and Jamie wanted to end them before that changed.
Sylvie clicked her pen. “Each fire’s been a little more ambitious than the last. Do you expect that trend to continue?”
“What do you think?” Jamie asked.
She peered at him over her reading glasses. “I think you better catch this guy before he barbecues the whole town.”
“That’s excellent advice, Sylvie. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
She grabbed his arm. “Everyone in town knows you’re in charge of the arson investigation. You’ve been pulled off everything else, right?” Jamie nodded. “Then I can’t help but wonder if the woman who’s waiting for you upstairs has something to do with the case. Maybe she knows something about the note that came today.”
With a sigh, Jamie turned to Sergeant Albonetti. “Does she?”
“Dunno, Lieutenant. All’s I know is, she showed up at the front desk about forty-five minutes ago, asking for you.”
“I saw her,” Sylvie interjected. “Quite the hot ticket—for Mansfield, anyway. Black hair, shades. Looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her. What do you think—is she here about the arson case?”
Jamie shrugged. “I guess there’s a better than even chance. If you want to wait around till after I talk to her—”
“I don’t ‘wait around’, Keegan.” She tucked her notebook away and took off her glasses, a mischievous spark in her eyes. “She’s probably just one of your conquests, anyway.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “One of my conquests? You overestimate my appeal, Sylvie.”
“Honey, you’re tall, dark and handsome. Not to mention employed. That’s a winning formula all by itself, but throw in that nice Irish brogue—”
“I don’t have a brogue.”
“You do, just a residual one. I mean, it doesn’t sound like you just got off the boat. You came here, what—a good ten or fifteen years ago, right?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Oh. Well, it’s very slight. It comes out mostly when you’re all worked up over something. That’s what really puts you over the top. I guarantee you there are a dozen women in Mansfield alone who’d sell their souls to be able to pour your Cheerios in the morning.”
“If you run into one, would you get me her number? It’s been a while since I’ve had my Cheerios poured.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Hard to believe.”
He grinned. “I’m saving it for you, Sylvie, but you persist in playing hard to get.”
“I wondered why you were always undressing me with your eyes.”
“Lieutenant.” Sergeant Albonetti cocked his head toward a lanky, shirtsleeved figure leaning against the doorframe of the roll call room.
Jamie nodded. “Captain. You wanted to see me?”
“Take your time, Lieutenant.” Twenty years in Mansfield, New Jersey, hadn’t made much of an inroad in Sam Garrett’s lazy Texas drawl. With his weather-beaten face and thick shock of salt-and-pepper hair, he looked every inch the displaced, aging cowboy. Glancing from Jamie to Sylvie, he said, “I can wait till you’ve finished attempting to seduce Ms. Hazelett.”
Sylvie zipped up her parka. “If I weren’t twice his age, I’d give him a run for his money.” She strode purposefully out the door.
Garrett’s expression sobered. He held up a sheet of paper. Jamie walked over and took it from him. It was a photocopy of a note that had been spelled out, like the last one, with letters s
nipped from magazines: “My matchbook is whispering to me. Something burns this week. The Firefly.”
Garrett said, “The original’s at the lab with the documents examiner, but I can tell you right now, he’s not gonna find a damn thing we can use. There won’t be any prints, of course.”
“Not unless he suddenly decides to slip up. So, what have we got?”
“We got us a pyro who means to torch another building in Mansfield sometime between tonight and next Monday. If he sticks to his favorite M.O., he’ll strike in the early morning hours and use kerosene as an accelerant. Am I missing anything? It’s your case.”
“He probably uses matches, rather than a cigarette or a candle or some other igniter that would delay the flames till he’s had a chance to get away.”
“How do you know?”
“He just told us so, in his note.”
The captain grunted. “Smart-ass.”
“But other than that—” he shrugged “—I don’t have a clue. No useful evidence, no motive.... Where the hell do I start?”
“Why don’t you start with that visitor I hear you’ve got waiting for you upstairs? Find out what she wants. If there’s any connection whatsoever to this case, I suggest you get to the bottom of it, pronto.”
Jamie folded up the photocopy and stuck it in a pocket of his coat. “You got it.”
Upstairs, he poured two foam cups full of coffee, then stood outside the glass door of his tiny office, studying the woman seated on the little metal chair in front of his desk. When his aunt Bridey had taught him how to do this, she’d called it “sizing up the mark.” Years later, when Professor Mayhew had taught him the same skills for use in criminal investigation, he’d called it “visual preanalysis of the interviewee.” Whatever you called it, it amounted to the same thing, a cataloging of the subject’s features and actions in order to pinpoint various characteristics. In Aunt Bridey’s case, the characteristics she looked for were wealth and gullibility. Professor Mayhew had expanded this list to include trustworthiness, cooperativeness, secretiveness—anything that might help or hinder the police detective in his work.
By Jamie’s estimation, the woman waiting for him was thirty to thirty-five years of age. She had chin-length black hair, pale skin, a slender frame, and looked to be of medium height. She wore faded blue jeans, but that was the only color on her body. Her turtleneck, boots and shoulder bag were black, as were the Ray-Ban sunglasses that hid her eyes from view and the dyed shearling coat hung on the corner rack. She even had on black leather gloves, although it was just early November, and a mild day at that.
Also, she’d been indoors for almost an hour, so why the gloves? Or the sunglasses? People communicated with their hands and eyes. To cover them up like that was an unmistakable signal: Leave me alone.
The signal was echoed in her posture—legs tightly crossed, arms wrapped around her torso. Ditto the all-black attire, as if a spot of color might draw too much attention to her. But if she wanted to be left alone, why’d she come here, of all places?
Well, that was his job, right? To find out.
He opened the door and set the cups down on his desk. “Good morning. Sorry you had to wait so long.”
She nodded stiffly without altering her wary posture. He wondered where all that tension was coming from.
He extended his hand. She glanced at it, then at his face—damn, he wished he could see her eyes—and then at the foam cups.
“Is one of those for me?” she asked softly.
After a moment, he lowered his hand. He gave her one of the cups, thinking police station coffee was unlikely to improve her mood any. She accepted it without removing her gloves, her other arm still hugging her mid-section. Her voice was soft, with a cultured accent that pegged her as an educated northeasterner.
He took off his trench coat and hung it on the rack next to hers. “Sugar? Cream? Well, not cream exactly, but we’ve got some kind of white powder that turns this stuff gray, if you want.”
“Black is fine.”
Should have known. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. “I’m James Keegan.”
“Yes, I know, Lieutenant.”
Uh-huh...
She raised her cup to her mouth and blew on the hot coffee. Her lips were the only part of her face he could get a good look at, so maybe that’s why he zeroed in on them. They were perfectly shaped, like the painted lips on a porcelain doll. If she had lipstick on, it was one of those dreary lip-colored shades. He wondered why women spent good money for colors that didn’t look like anything, when for the same price, they could have a nice three-alarm red.
Seating himself behind his desk, he took a sip of his own coffee, and winced. Damn. Should have blown on it.
He pulled his little blue spiral notebook out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “The usual thing would be for you to tell me your name now. It’s a custom we earthlings have.”
A slight pause. He saw her swallow hard. “Jane, uh—”
“Doe?”
A faint wash of pink colored her cheeks.
With quiet authority he said, “If you give me a false name, I’ll know it before the words are out of your mouth. Miss... Mrs.”
“Doctor.”
He sat back and allowed himself a small smile. “Mrs. Doctor.”
Ah. Her mouth twitched, just for a second there. “Dr. Cook,” she said in a resigned tone. “India Cook.”
He plucked a ballpoint from the cracked Donut Hut coffee mug that served as his pencil jar and wrote India Cook and the date on top of the first clean page in the notebook. “I don’t suppose you’d make up a name like that. What kind of doctor are you?”
She frowned at the notebook. “Do you have to write everything—”
“Absolutely. Now, would you mind answering my—”
“I’m a veterinarian. I specialize in cats.”
“Really?” He wrote it down. “I hate cats.”
“That probably means you’ve got something to hide.”
He squinted into her sunglasses. “Excuse me?”
“A fear of cats—”
“I didn’t say I feared them.”
“—often indicates that a person secretly—”
“Speaking of hiding things, Dr. Cook, would you mind losing the shades?” She stiffened slightly. He gestured toward her sunglasses with his pen and said, “Take them off. Please. I like to see a person’s eyes when I talk to them.”
She hesitated just long enough to make him really curious. He began to wonder if she had a black eye—or maybe some kind of disfigurement. It was possible, what with the way she hid behind those glasses. A vague sense of guilt and trepidation gripped him as she lowered her head and slowly—very slowly—reached up, slid the glasses off, and settled them on top of her head. When she looked up and met his gaze, his breath caught in his chest.
Her eyes were... He’d never seen anything like them. They were incredibly striking, a heart-stopping coppery brown fringed with sooty lashes. Slightly heavy-lidded, they tilted up just a bit at the corners. Eyebrows like black brush strokes arched dramatically above them, disappearing into her bangs.
God, she was beautiful, sensationally beautiful. He hadn’t realized, he’d had no idea. With those shades on, you couldn’t tell, but now...
Was that why she wore them? So men wouldn’t swallow their tongues every time they laid eyes on her? So they wouldn’t gawk at her... the way he was gawking?
Suddenly self-conscious, he cleared his throat and looked away, realizing he’d maintained eye contact just a tad longer than Professor Mayhew— or Aunt Bridey—would have thought advisable.
“Thank you,” he murmured. To cover his awkwardness, he bent his head over his notebook and wrote for a few seconds, then silently read it back to himself: Most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.
Get a grip, Keegan. He flipped that page over to expose a fresh one, then looked back up at India Cook and smiled in a way that he hoped would s
trike her as cordially professional.
She blinked, then returned his smile—for about a nanosecond—and then dropped her gaze. Noticing her coffee cup as if for the first time, she raised it to her mouth and took a sip, then glanced back at Jamie, and away again.
She was blushing.
This was getting interesting.
Too interesting. He had a job to do, and here he was exchanging flirtatious body language with a semi-spooky cat doctor who may or may not be here to provide him with information about a series of arson attacks that was seemingly both unpreventable and unsolvable.
Go for the no-nonsense approach, Keegan. Pretend she’s... He smiled to himself. Pretend she’s Sylvie.
He looked her straight in the eye, then abruptly looked away.
She wasn’t Sylvie.
“Lieutenant?” Little lines of puzzlement formed between her brows.
“Dr. Cook?”
“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”
“Of course. I was just waiting for you to... feel comfortable enough to...” Jeez, Keegan. This is embarrassing! “I mean, I wanted you to feel... that is, if you have any information... about... anything...”
With one hand she nervously fingered the collar of her turtleneck. “I have information about a crime.”
“A crime?” Maybe she did know something about the note. He fumbled in his desk drawer, came up with his little microcassette recorder, and set it for voice actuation. “Good. Great.”
When he looked back up, he saw that her gaze was riveted on the recorder positioned in the middle of his desk. Her pupils contracted to tiny black pinpoints, making her eyes glow like newly minted pennies. Something had upset her, and you didn’t have to be Einstein to know what it was.
“Look,” he began, “I need to tape this—”
“Then I need to leave.” She set her coffee cup on his desk and stood up.
Bodyguards Boxed Set Page 110
