“So what’s his type?” she asked cautiously.
“Slim. Pretty. Brunette. Youngish—under thirty. Sweet little wholesome girls. Yeah, in case you’re wondering, you fit the type.”
Maddie blinked. “What?”
Gardner nodded. “You’re his type. One hundred percent. On the plane up here from New Orleans, he was about to jump out of his skin from worrying that the UNSUB—the sick bastard we’re chasing—would get to you before we did. As soon as I saw you, I had it figured out: He was so worried because you’re his type.”
“Do men even have a type?”
Gardner lowered the paper to her lap. “You mean you haven’t noticed? Honey, where’ve you been? Of course they do. They all have a type. And if you don’t fit his type, you have to work like the devil to get a particular guy to even look at you.”
The faint undertone of bitterness underlying that comment made Maddie look at Gardner in a whole new light. She sounded genuinely pained.
“So you’re really interested in him? McCabe, I mean?” Maddie approached the seating group and sank down into the squashy depths of her green corduroy armchair. Yesterday she and Gardner had barely exchanged half a dozen words. Today they were going to chat? This was new. Intriguing, though.
“If he gave me half a chance, I’d have his babies.” Gardner gave a wry little grimace. “I’d take him home to Mama. I’d wrap him up in cellophane and ... well, you get the idea. Maybe it’s something to do with my age. I’m thirty-seven. All of a sudden, I keep hearing my biological clock ticking. And every time I hear it tick, McCabe’s is the face I see.”
“He’s not married, then?” Maddie asked cautiously. It was bad enough to be asking the question. It was worse to be so interested in the answer.
“Single, just like me. Just like Wynne.” Gardner made a face. “Hell, who would have us? Except Wynne. Somebody might take Wynne.”
“Wynne seems nice.”
“Wynne is nice. Just the nicest guy around. But you have to admit, he’s no stud-muffin.”
Maddie thought about that. “Maybe a stud-muffin isn’t the best choice to give you what you want. Maybe for a long-term relationship—for babies—you should be thinking in terms of just a really nice guy.”
“Like Wynne.” Gardner sounded less than convinced. Then she sighed. “To tell you the truth, the thought’s crossed my mind. The thing is, Wynne seems to be interested in me. So far, McCabe doesn’t. And I know Wynne’s probably a better long-term prospect. But I hate it that he smokes. ...”
“He quit,” Maddie interjected swiftly.
“And I hate it that he doesn’t take better care of himself.”
“The doughnuts,” Maddie said, suddenly understanding.
“Yes. Exactly. You saw him with the doughnuts.” Gardner sighed. “See? It’s always something. That’s the thing with men. None of them—not one I’ve ever met—is perfect.”
“Unlike us,” Maddie said.
Gardner looked at her sharply. Then she grinned. “All right. Point taken. But if I could somehow take Wynne’s personality and stuff it inside McCabe’s body ...” She paused, her eyes gleaming. Then her face fell. “The new perfect hybrid would not be interested in me. How dismal is that? Oh, forget it. Hey, you want part of the paper?”
Maddie laughed, and accepted the Metro section.
By late afternoon, though, Maddie was going stir-crazy. Having been stuck inside her apartment—which, ordinarily, she loved—for almost two full days, she was ready to climb the walls. After finishing the paper, she’d worked on her laptop. She’d played back all the phone messages that had been left—it was amazing how fast the news had gotten around that her car windows had been shot out—and returned a judicious few. She and Cynthia—they were on a first-name basis by that time—shared soup and crackers for lunch, as Maddie’s cupboard was practically bare. Over the meal, she’d learned just about everything there was left to know about the other woman. In a nutshell, Cynthia had been born and raised in New Jersey, her marriage had been right out of high school and had lasted two years before ending in divorce, and she’d joined the FBI twelve years earlier, as soon as she had finished college. Maddie had also learned a great deal about Wynne. Wynne was also thirty-seven, also divorced once, also childless. He’d grown up in Connecticut and had very WASPish elderly parents still living there, to whom he was devoted. He visited them all the time, whenever he got the chance, and Cynthia had met them once. They hadn’t seemed overly impressed with her, which Cynthia professed to find amusing. As for McCabe—Maddie especially enjoyed the nuggets Cynthia let drop about McCabe, although she did her best not to ask any more leading questions about him than she could help. According to Cynthia, he had parents still living, too, although she had never met them, a gaggle of siblings she had likewise never met, and a string of ex-girlfriends—Maddie imagined all the aforementioned slim, pretty brunettes—a mile long. He was thirty-five years old, never wed, and basically married to his job.
And Cynthia wanted him bad.
It had been on that note, reiterated with a kind of wry smile, that Wynne had knocked on the door. Cynthia had immediately reverted to Rambo Barbie mode, motioning to Maddie to stay back while she looked through the peephole. Recognizing Wynne, she had relaxed and let him in. When Maddie saw that he was bearing bags of groceries, she was ready to fall on his neck.
Cynthia left, and Maddie fixed a light supper—spaghetti and salad, which had the dual advantage of being easy and nutritious—for herself and Wynne. They talked while they ate, and Maddie got the distinct impression that Wynne was as taken with Cynthia as Cynthia was with McCabe. Not that Wynne said so in so many words. Unlike Cynthia, he seemed inclined to keep his secrets. After supper, Wynne helped her clean up and then watched TV while she settled down with her laptop at the kitchen table. She checked her e-mail, checked the next week’s schedule, and gave some thought to a campaign Creative Partners was preparing to pitch to a local ice-cream chain, making a few sketches and writing a few lines of copy that she was unhappy with almost as soon as she finished them. Vowing to work on it more the next day, Maddie allowed herself a moment to bask in the remembered glow of Friday’s success—we got the Brehmer account—then packed her laptop into her briefcase and left the kitchen. Given the fact that she hadn’t been able to get to the cleaners, her choice of outfits for the morrow was somewhat limited, so she settled on her favorite basic black summer dress. Sleeveless and made of some kind of wrinkle-proof synthetic that looked like slubby raw linen, it was cool and comfortable. Add a loose white linen jacket to wear with clients and spectator pumps, and she was good to go.
By then it was after ten. McCabe would be coming at eleven. Maddie took a bath, applied ointment and a fresh bandage to her shoulder—which, she was glad to observe, was healing nicely—put on her nightclothes and, with a quick good-night to Wynne, retreated to her bedroom. There she meant to stay until the following morning.
She’d been careful to limit her liquid intake after supper, so there should be no need for her to see McCabe at all.
A thing for him.
Even if she had one, which, okay, she might, she was absolutely not stupid enough to encourage it. Given what he was—and what she was—she would stand a better chance of emerging whole from a game of Russian roulette.
She was already in bed with the lights off, trying desperately to go to sleep, when she heard McCabe arrive. He and Wynne talked for a few minutes. Although she couldn’t quite hear what they were saying over the TV, the deep drawl of his voice was unmistakable. Wynne’s tones were a little higher-pitched, a little more clipped, milk chocolate rather than dark. Listening, Maddie was ready to concede that Cynthia was exactly right—Wynne even sounded like the nicest guy in the world.
McCabe sounded like pure sex.
On that sleep-inducing thought, Maddie pulled the sheet up over her head and squeezed her eyes shut. It only helped marginally. She heard McCabe laugh, heard the door close, heard a pop as
though he had opened a tab-top can. More Diet Coke? Probably. She lay there with the door ajar, listening to what sounded like ESPN, unable to keep from picturing McCabe sprawled out on her couch—and fell asleep.
THE DREAM CAME, as she had known that sooner or later it must. It was late at night, and she was in bed—another bed, a long-ago bed. In a house that wasn’t hers. It was a narrow bed—a cot, really—and it was old and creaky and smelled faintly of mildew. She was alone in it, alone in the room. The dark room. So dark that even with her eyes open, she couldn’t see the broken chest that she knew was pushed up against the opposite wall just a few feet away. There were people in the house—people who scared her. She could hear them talking. The voices got louder, and she could feel the pulse knocking below her ear. Her fingertips throbbed—her hands were tied behind her back. Something stabbed painfully into her palm—her nails. She was just absorbing this when, without warning, the door opened. A rectangle of light spilled over the bed. Her eyes closed instantly, and she lay very still. A shadow fell across the bed, across her. A terror unlike any she had ever known twisted her stomach, tightened her throat. Even as cold sweat drenched her, she took care to breathe—in, out, in, out—in the slow cadence of deep sleep. All the while she watched the shadow from the tiny slit between her upper and lower lids, watched the horrible elongated thing that spilled like pure evil from the dark figure silhouetted in the doorway. She watched it, and prayed that he wouldn’t come any closer, wouldn’t come into the room. In, out, in, out. Lying still as death, just breathing in that interminable rhythm, while her heart beat like a trapped wild thing in her chest, she started to shake. God, he would see.... Don’t let me die. Please, don’t let me die. Then the shadow rippled, moved—a scream crowded into her throat but she forced it back—in, out, in, out ...
Maddie startled awake. For a moment, she lay blinking up into the darkness, her heart pounding, her breathing coming in shuddering gasps. The dream—of course it was the dream. Would she never be rid of it?
Then it hit her. Darkness ... her room was dark. She wasn’t dreaming, and her room was dark. The apartment was dark, too, and quiet. Too quiet. The TV ... it was off, dark, soundless.
Her ears picked up a sound, a movement. Her breathing stopped as her eyes swung blindly in the direction from which it came.
This time it was for real.
There was someone in her room.
FIFTEEN
Maddie.” It was McCabe’s voice, the merest thread of sound.
Maddie drew in a shuddering breath and sat up. Her thundering heart slowed, and the knot in her stomach seemed to loosen.
“McCabe?”
“Shh.” He was beside her, beside the bed. She could see him now, indistinctly, as a denser shadow in the darkness. It wasn’t absolute, she saw. Not the pitch-blackness of her dream ...
She shuddered at the memory.
“Get up.” His tone was urgent. His hand touched her arm, slid around her back. Before she responded, he was all but lifting her off the bed.
“What?” Whispering, too, trying to get her still-foggy mind around what was happening, she slid to her feet, then stumbled against him. His chest was a solid wall that kept her from falling. His arm tightened around her, hard and supportive—and insistent.
“Someone’s coming up the fire escape. I want you to get in the bathroom, lock the door.”
He was already hustling her out of the bedroom. Still slightly dazed, not one hundred percent sure she wasn’t dreaming this, too, she went with him, shivering slightly despite the warmth of his arm around her, weak and drained as she always was in the aftermath of the dream. As they moved into the living room, the darkness lightened a degree, and Maddie saw that the long curtains covering the windows did not quite meet in the middle. A sliver of moonlight slid between them to paint a pale gray line across the floor. There was just enough light to permit her to see that in his other hand, the hand that was not clamped around her waist, McCabe held a gun.
Her heart lurched. What was happening became suddenly, sharply real.
They reached the bathroom and he thrust her inside.
“Lock it,” he said, voice low, and pulled the door closed behind him. “And stay put. I’ll be back.”
Maddie locked the door. Then she leaned against the thin panel, fingers wrapped around the knob, bare toes curling against the cold tile. The bathroom had no window, and she dared not turn on a light. The darkness was absolute, rendering her effectively blind. The faint scent of soap reached her nostrils. Shivering, pressing her cheek against the smooth painted wood, she listened with every fiber of her being. The toilet ran slightly; the air-conditioning hummed. Above those homely sounds, she could hear nothing—no footsteps, no rush of movement, nothing.
Except the drumming of her own heart in her ears.
A man is coming up my fire escape.
Cold panic curled deep inside her stomach at the thought. Her knees went weak.
Oh, God, would this never end?
Where was McCabe?
There was no way to tell. He might be right outside the door. He might be in the kitchen. He might have rushed down the fire escape to confront the intruder. He might be silently, horribly dead....
All she knew for sure was that she was alone in the dark, the terrifying dark, waiting for something to happen, for someone to come....
Swaying, she clutched the doorknob for support. She was shivering, breathing fast. Her heart knocked against her ribs.
The dream still had her in its thrall. Maddie recognized that she was reacting to the situation she saw over and over again in her nightmares rather than to what was happening right at that moment, in what was now her real life. It was an effort to remember that the girl who had shivered so helplessly on that bed was long gone. She had grown up, grown resourceful, grown strong.
Get a grip, Maddie said it to herself savagely. Taking a deep breath, straightening her spine, willing her rubbery knees to hold up, she turned away from the door. Feeling her way along the tile wall, she found the sink, then the cabinet above it. Opening it, flinching slightly at the tiny creak, she touched the shelves, reaching for the can of hair spray she knew was there.
As a weapon, it didn’t even make the charts, she realized as she lifted the smooth metal cylinder from its accustomed spot. Mace or pepper spray it wasn’t. But in a pinch, if aimed at an intruder’s face, it might buy her time—maybe even enough time to get away. In any case, it was the closest thing to a weapon she could get her hands on.
Pressing the small of her back up against the unyielding contours of the sink so that she faced the door, her every sense trained on the deathly silence beyond the bathroom, Maddie clutched the can and waited.
Time spun out interminably.
A quick footstep just outside the door.
She caught her breath.
A brisk tap. “Maddie?”
Exhaling, Maddie rushed to the door and opened it. The apartment was still lit only by that sliver of moon. She could see no more of him than a powerful, dark shape. But even if the voice hadn’t identified him, she would have known it was McCabe.
It was clear from his tone, his knock: The danger was past.
Her knees gave out, and she practically fell forward against him.
“Hey,” he said on a surprised note, catching her by her elbows. “It’s over. It’s okay.”
“Did you get him?” She was cold, so cold that she was shivering in her thin little ivory slip of a nightgown, and weak with reaction to the dream and the scare combined.
“No.” McCabe must have felt the tremors that racked her, because he wrapped hard arms around her, pulling her comfortingly close even as he answered her question. He felt strong and solid, and he smelled of the outdoors and the faint but intoxicating eau de man that she had noticed before, and, best of all, he radiated heat like a stove. She absorbed the warmth greedily, snuggling closer yet, unable to resist the temptation to let her head droop forward like a too-heavy
flower to rest against the firm, broad expanse of his chest.
Encouraging him to hold her like this was probably a mistake, she knew. But she couldn’t seem to summon the willpower to push herself out of his arms. Always, she’d had to stand on her own two feet. Always, she’d had to take care of herself, to be strong. Where was the harm, for once in her life, in surrendering for just a few moments to the pure luxury of having somebody to lean on?
“Was it—him?” she asked in a faint voice.
“I don’t know. He was about a third of the way up your back stairs when something apparently spooked him. He took off like a bat out of hell.”
Maddie closed her eyes. What were the chances that this was a totally random thing? In the four years she had lived in her apartment, no one had ever been caught climbing her fire escape in the middle of the night—until now.
“I’m glad you were here.” It was quite an admission, and she recognized its enormity even as the words came out of her mouth. Her eyes popped open in alarm and she glanced up at him. Of course, it was impossible to see anything more than shadows upon shadows in the gloom.
“Yeah. Me, too.”
His tone told her that he had no clue just how huge her admission had been. She took a deep breath, knowing that she had to make a move and yet not able, just at that moment, to do so, and his arms tightened fractionally around her. His body was tense, and Maddie guessed that he was still wired, on edge, from the intruder. He exuded controlled power, and without any real surprise at all, she discovered that she had absolute faith in his ability to keep her safe.
From night-crawling hit men, at least.
The problem was, who was going to keep her safe from him?
With that thought, Maddie started to regain her sense of self-preservation.
What are you doing? she scolded herself. He’s an FBI agent, you numbskull.
Willing herself to get back with the program while she still could, she lifted her head from his chest. At the same moment, he moved. Maddie only realized that he was reaching behind her for the switch when the bathroom light clicked on.
Bait Page 20
