As the water hammered down on me, I tried to reassure myself. If she knew, she would have said something, right? I’d just brazen it out. I’ve always been good at hiding my feelings.
Except...I rubbed at my stubble and muttered a curse. Except when those soft green eyes were watching me.
30
Yolanda
I HEARD the water turn off. A few seconds of toweling off and then—
If I’d been thinking straight, I would have expected him to emerge with just a towel around his waist: he hadn’t taken any clothes in with him. I could have prepared. Braced for impact. But I was too busy worrying about how the hell I was going to talk to him about last night, so the first I knew of it was when he swung open the door and I was staring right at his glistening pecs.
Since the first moment I saw him, I’d always thought that Calahan looked great in a suit. Even with his rebellious, disheveled look, he still fooled you into thinking he was...well, maybe not respectable, but civilized. But take the suit off him and he was resolutely blue collar. He looked like he’d been shaped in a foundry with hammers, surrounded by sparks and fire. His shoulders were too big, too solid, to work in an office: I could see why he’d played football in high school.
His chest, with its curving pecs the size of my head and dusky pink nipples...that hadn’t been built at some upscale Manhattan gym, surrounded by stockbrokers. He was just big, full of unapologetic brute force. And those abs, with their hard, tan ridges and deep valleys I wanted to run my fingers along...they didn’t look like they’d been carefully toned with planks and crunches, they looked like they’d gotten that way from Calahan tightening them to protect himself in fight after fight. His body was so gloriously raw and physical, so real…. I had an overwhelming urge to throw my arms around his neck, squash my breasts against his chest, and let his damp body soak through my top. I wanted to revel in how solidly rooted he was in this world, instead of my floaty, insubstantial world of ideas. And then I wanted him to take all that solid hardness and use it to pin me and spread me and—
I flushed. “We should get going.”
He nodded. Grabbed a fresh suit and shirt from the closet and pulled out a pair of soft gray jockey shorts. He stuck his thumbs into the top of the towel...and hesitated, looking at me.
Oh! I flushed all over again, and quickly spun the chair so my back was to him. I heard him unwind the towel from his waist and finish drying himself off. Then the heavy whump of the damp towel hitting the floor—
I was staring at the refrigerator in the kitchenette. It was polished stainless steel and the reflection of the tan, naked giant behind me was surprisingly clear. I felt the flush travel all the way down my neck and I wasn’t sure if it was from staring at those hard, muscled thighs and what was swinging between them, or the fact that he seemed to be staring at a point down and directly in front of him. Staring right at me.
I watched his body disappear piece by piece beneath his suit. Only when he was tying his tie did I dare to spin around. But looking at him started me blushing all over again. Now that I knew what was under his clothes, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
“My car’s downstairs,” I told him. “But I need to stop off at my place on the way.”
* * *
A half hour later, now wearing a charcoal gray suit jacket and skirt, I opened the door of my car, swung myself into the driver’s seat, and stowed my chair behind it. I slammed my door, turned to Calahan and—
He was just staring. Downwards.
“What?” I demanded.
His mouth moved but nothing came out.
I followed his gaze to my skirt, then rolled my eyes. “They’re legs, Calahan. I do have them.”
He looked out of his window, embarrassed, and passed me a huge takeout cup of coffee. “I got these across the street while you were, um...changing.”
I took it and gulped gratefully. I’d spent the night sitting next to his bed and I’d barely dozed. But I wasn’t so sleepy that I missed the way he stumbled on changing. Like he’d been thinking about me getting changed, while he was waiting down here.
I stowed the coffee and hit the gas. We drove to the FBI building in silence: I had no idea of how to broach the subject of last night. But at some point, we needed to talk.
When we arrived and I swung myself back into the chair, Calahan did a double-take. Not at my legs, this time: at what I was wearing on my feet. Glossy black leather pumps with a three inch heel. I smirked at him. “I don’t actually have to walk in them,” I said. “Might as well take advantage.”
Inside, we met up with Carrie and the rest of the FBI team who were assigned to the case. Carrie took us all into a meeting room and, this time, I didn’t feel like someone’s nerdy kid sister. The suit was a good idea.
Together, Calahan and I told them how the messages were actually spells. “Just to be clear,” I said, “We’re not saying this stuff is real. But the killer believes it is.”
Everyone started talking at once. And while they were debating possible strategies, my phone rang. “Hello?”
The voice was straight out of one of those lavish period dramas set in Britain, the ones with butlers and scandals. “Miss Hepler! Warrington Hobbs. I’m sorry I took so long to return your call, I was at the library until really quite late.” His voice was incredible. It was like he’d been frozen in the 1920s and just recently thawed out. “Now, as to your enquiry. I do recall writing the book you mentioned. It was some years ago, while I was traveling in Europe. I wanted to preserve the traditional French folklore before it was lost forever.”
“There was a whole chapter about the Merytou,” I said. “What is it?”
“A wise woman,” said Hobbs. “A sort of seer, or soothsayer. Very few were ever born but when they were, they were treated with great reverence because it was believed they could see the future.”
I leaned into the phone and closed my eyes, blocking out the rest of the room. “And how did the French recognize this...wise woman? Was there something physical about her, a sign?”
“Oh yes,” said Hobbs. “According to legend, a Merytou always had six fingers.”
I thanked him profusely and ended the call. Then I brought everyone up to speed on the word we’d found at the killer’s rented apartment. “That’s his next victim. A woman with six fingers.” I was already typing in search queries into my laptop. “Polydactyly,” I read aloud. “It’s not all that rare. There are hundreds of cases each year.”
“Okay,” said Carrie. “We have to find her before he does. “Something like that would be on a person’s medical records. We’ll have to get a judge to grant an order to search the central medical database. Then maybe we can….”
She trailed off. Everyone else was listening attentively but I was typing furiously.
“Yolanda?” Carrie asked nervously. “What are you doing?”
I said nothing and just kept grimly typing.
Carrie frowned at Calahan. “What’s she—” She glanced at me and then back at him. “Wait, is she—”
Calahan sighed and gave an apologetic smile. Probably.
Carrie jumped to her feet and raced around the table. I heard the intake of breath behind me when she saw the National Medical Database logo on my screen. “Stop that! Are you crazy?!—That’s a federal crime!”
I felt her reaching for me. Quick! I made one last flurry of keystrokes. Carrie grabbed my forearms and—“Done!” I said triumphantly. My screen started to fill with medical files.
“Oh Jesus,” said Carrie quietly, letting go of my arms. I twisted around and, when I saw how pale she’d gone, my triumphant smile faded.
Calahan got to his feet and came around the table. “Okay, now I know Yolanda’s methods might be unconventional—”
Carrie lost it. “Unconventional?! She just hacked a federal database. That’s ten years in federal prison!”
“We didn’t have time to wait around for a judge,” I mumbled.
“She’s righ
t, Carrie,” said Calahan.
Carrie’s face had gone from white to red. She snapped her arm out like a weapon, her finger pointing at Calahan. “She’s a civilian, Calahan, but you know better! Don’t you start defending her just because—” Her eyes went to me, then back to him. Calahan and I both reddened. Carrie shook her head, incredulous. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you could be in?” she asked me. Then she waved her hand at the rest of the table. “How much trouble this office could be in?”
I swallowed and looked at the floor. I’d never had to worry about other people. I’d always worked on my own. “I can just throw it away,” I said. Please don’t make me throw it away. My finger hovered over the Escape key—
Carrie sucked in a long breath and let it out. “No,” she said. “Let’s catch this son of a bitch.” She pinned me with a look. “But we’re a team here, Yolanda. No more lone gunman stuff.”
A team? An unexpected warmth blossomed, deep in my chest. I hadn’t been a part of something since the accident. Not in person, face-to-face.
“And any more hacking and I’ll slap the cuffs on you myself,” Carrie added.
I nodded meekly. “Yes ma’am.”
She nodded for me to show them what I’d found. I was gaining more and more respect for this woman. A lot of people would have thrown away the hacked information and risked the killer going free, just to cover their asses.
I connected to the big screen at the end of the room and it filled with medical files. “Even eliminating all the men, there are over a hundred cases of polydactyly in New York,” I said. “Not many babies are born with it each year, but the victim could be any age so I’ve gone back eighty years. We have to narrow it down.”
Calahan started pacing. “He’s not going to want someone who’s had surgery to remove the extra finger. He wants to see she’s this special person of power. So remove any surgical cases.”
Over half the files disappeared. “That leaves forty-six.”
Calahan thought some more. “Put up the photos of their hands.” Images filled the screen. In most cases, the extra finger was more like a stump, branching off another finger. “Our guy’s going to want the classic case. The perfect example,” said Calahan. He went right up to the screen, looking closely at each photo. “This one!”
It was a photo of a hand with a fully jointed extra finger coming off the hand. It looked so natural, you had to blink and count carefully to see that, yes, there really were five fingers and a thumb. I brought up the details. “Clara McConnell. She’s twenty-four. Lives in Queens.” There was another photo, a headshot, and I brought it up. Clara was pretty, with long red hair and pale skin and a cute little smile that made me want to smile, too—
My stomach suddenly lurched. Seeing the photo made me realize how far I’d slipped into...cop mode, I guess. I’d become so wrapped up in the case, I’d been thinking of these people as possible victims but…. I reached out and touched Clara’s picture on my laptop screen. She was real. She was alive, somewhere out there, with friends and family and a life, and she had no idea what was going to happen to her tomorrow. I drew in my breath in horror...and instinctively, I looked at the one person who could help me protect her.
Calahan nodded to me, his jaw set. “It’s okay.” He grabbed the phone. “I’m calling the NYPD. They can have a black-and-white at her house in three minutes.”
“Have them bring her here,” said Carrie. “We’ll keep her safe until we’ve caught this fucker.”
I warmed to her even more.
While we waited for Clara to arrive, everyone took a moment to stretch their legs and get coffee. Calahan poured us both a cup from a steaming jug. “Careful,” he warned. “It’s cop coffee.”
I didn’t know what he meant until I tasted it. If coffee was music, this was someone banging steel bars together an inch from your ear. I recoiled, grimacing, but I could feel my body being bludgeoned into wakefulness. Cop coffee, it turned out, was functional.
The elevator pinged and Alison swept in, wearing a leather biker jacket over her suit and carrying a crash helmet. “Hey,” she said. “I just came from the apartment our killer rented. Search is done, nothing new.”
“You ride a bike?” I asked, shocked and a little awed.
She put the crash helmet down on her desk. “It’s faster, in traffic.”
I watched her as Calahan brought her up to speed on the spell theory. Like me, she couldn’t keep still. Except, where I fidget awkwardly, she flowed effortlessly, shifting her weight sexily from foot to foot.
And while she listened to Calahan, she gave me a long, suspicious glance.
I was right. She has a thing for Calahan! We were in competition: a beautiful, confident, half-ninja FBI agent who roared around New York on a motorcycle and...me.
At that second, Carrie stuck her head out of the door of the meeting room and hollered. “Calahan!”
All three of us rushed over there.
Carrie’s face was grim. “NYPD got to Clara McConnell’s apartment. She’s not there. Signs of a struggle.”
My stomach went into a tight, hard knot. “He already took her. Oh God, he’s keeping her somewhere and tomorrow—”
Carrie looked me in the eye. “When tomorrow?”
“Eight thirty-four am,” I said immediately. Then I swallowed. “But we don’t know where.”
Carrie looked at her watch. “Then you have less than twenty-four hours to find out.”
I looked around me in horror. Carrie, Calahan, Alison...they were all looking at me.
I was Clara’s only chance. And I had no clue how I was going to figure it out.
31
Calahan
I KNEW something was up as soon as I arrived at her apartment. I’d been there enough times that I was learning her ways: normally, I’d knock and there’d be a delay while she woke herself up from being deep. But today, the sharp little buzz of the door unlocking came instantly, like she’d stabbed the button in frustration.
My second warning was that she was still in her suit. Hell, I wasn’t complaining: it meant I got to see those luscious thighs and the way her white blouse clung to the full curves of her breasts. But wearing a suit wasn’t Yolanda’s way. She was more comfortable in jeans and a hoodie. It was past ten at night: she’d come home from the FBI office over twelve hours ago. Why hadn’t she changed into something more...her?
Then I saw the chalkboards. Every square inch was packed tight with equations. Chalk dust was thick as mist in the air and more was smudged on her clothes. She must have filled the boards and wiped them clean again a dozen times. My chest tightened. She hadn’t gotten changed because she hadn’t stopped working since she got home.
She glanced up at me, then scowled at the chalkboards. “I can’t get it,” she snapped. “I have no idea how to figure out the location part.” She ran her fingers through her hair, leaving white chalk smudges. “And without that, we can’t stop Clara’s mu—”
Her throat clamped down as she tried to say murder. I crossed the room in three big strides, the protective need welling up inside me. Now that she’d seen Clara’s face, the case was even more personal. And she was burning herself out trying to solve it. I could see the exhaustion in her eyes: she’d been doing complex math for twelve hours straight, most likely without even stopping to eat. “You need to take a break,” I told her.
“What I need is to solve this!” she snapped, and hurled a piece of chalk at the chalkboards. It shattered, leaving a white starburst. “But I’m not smart enough,” she said bitterly.
I squatted down in front of her. “The hell you’re not,” I growled. “You’re working too hard. You need some downtime.”
“We can’t afford downtime,” She turned the chair and started to move past me, towards the chalkboards.
I grabbed the chair and held it fast, my temper flaring. I wasn’t mad at her, I was mad at myself. I’d involved her in this thing and now it was destroying her. What if she pushed herself to
o hard and her mind snapped? I’d never forgive myself if something happened to her. “You need a break!” I told her.
And just for a second...she saw. I was so worried about her, so frustrated with myself, that I couldn’t hide it. She looked into my eyes and she must have seen just how much I cared. Her own gaze softened.
I looked away, my face going hot. Dammit!
“Coffee?” she mumbled hopefully.
“No. Enough coffee. You drink more coffee than anyone I’ve ever met! What you need is to get out of your head. Turn that big brain of yours off for a few minutes.”
She blinked at me. “I...I don’t know how to do that,” she said slowly.
And I realized she really didn’t. I could see it in her eyes: her brain had been spinning all day, gaining momentum like a flywheel. Without the satisfying pleasure of solving the problem, she didn’t know how to spin it down and in the meantime, it wouldn’t let her sleep, or rest. She’s never had this, before. She’s never come across a problem she can’t solve.
I squatted there staring into those beautiful, lush green eyes, helpless. I’d always known I wasn’t right for her. I’d always known that she was a genius and I was a big, dumb lunk. But I’d never felt more out of my depth. I didn’t know what it was like to have a brain like hers: how the hell could I help her shut it down?
Unless...unless a big dumb lunk was just what she needed, right now.
I knelt in front of her and lifted my hand, palm facing her. “Hit me,” I said.
“What?!”
“Hit me,” I said again. “Hit my palm with your fist. It’s what I do, when I need to wind down, I pound a punch bag.”
She shook her head, “I’m not really….” She trailed off. I’m not really the hitting things type.
“Maybe you need to be, now and again,” I told her stubbornly. “Now hit me.”
She sighed in frustration and then gave my palm a half-hearted tap.
Hold Me in the Dark Page 15
