by Jaime Rush
She sat down to work on Bromley’s hard drive, digging into her bag of chocolate-covered cranberries, keeping the front door in view. Callahan seemed to know what he was doing. At any rate, he was doing locksmith-type stuff.
Ozzie perched on a PC case. “You should have called me…you know, when the FBI crashed in.”
“I was fine, but thanks.”
She could see the red-orange glow of Ozzie’s suppressed passion, his longing. Oh, boy. She liked him, but not in that way.
He looked around at the deep yellow walls, cat clock, and maroon drapes. “Do you have a life outside this cocoon?”
She popped a cranberry up in the air and caught it in her mouth. “I go to the store sometimes.” She heard defensiveness creeping in.
“When you don’t have it delivered,” Ozzie added, raising his thick eyebrow. “I’ve seen the grocery delivery boy.”
“I chat online.”
“Personal forums, like, kinky sex or anything?”
“No. Computer stuff.” She’d found an affinity with computers, and in particular with fixing them. Out of high school she had apprenticed with a guy who taught her a lot. One day she discovered he was rigging his clients’ computers with viruses to get more business. When she confronted him, he got the eeriest glow, and she’d quit and started Disc Angel.
“But that’s not you, it’s just what you do.”
“No, it’s me.” It was the only thing she was good at. “I used to talk to my neighbors, but they got too nosy so I stopped.”
He actually asked, “Who—oh, I get it. Sure, fine. Be a hermit.”
“I’m a computer geek. It’s what I do best.”
“I’m a geek, too, but at least I’m joining clubs, getting out there.”
She patted his shoulder. “Good for you, Oz.” When he gave her a narrow-eyed look at her patronizing tone, she added, “I visit the shelter animals.”
“But they’re animals, not people.”
She didn’t want to get into how she felt when she looked into the eyes of those abandoned and neglected animals and how their glows, so simple and pure, tugged at her. She didn’t like feeling apologetic about her lifestyle.
“Ma’am,” the locksmith said, appearing in the doorway. “You’re all set.” He walked out and closed the door behind him. She went to the window to see what kind of vehicle he drove. He was nowhere in sight.
From behind her, Ozzie said, “Amy, you need a man—”
“No, I don’t.” Uh-oh, he was finally going there. “I’m fine and happy and perfectly content being celibate.” That line scared off potential suitors, especially since she was damned sincere.
“So you don’t like, ah, sex?”
“It’s fine. I just don’t like dealing with guys in general. You know, that morning after, relationship stuff.”
“Are you a…lesbian?”
“No, a vibratorian.” She had to keep herself from laughing and giving away that she was just poking fun at him. “Thanks for caring, though. You’re a good friend, Oz.”
“Friend,” he repeated.
“I’d love to chat more, but I’ve got a file to save and an hour to do it in. You know how I hate to hear a grown man cry.”
“Sure.” As he was about to leave, he turned and gave her a hug that about crushed her ribs. “Next time call me.” He let go of her just as quickly, as though she were a hot potato.
“The next time the FBI raids my apartment, you’ll be at the top of my call list.” His words touched her despite her sarcastic response.
As she sank back into her chair after locking her front door, she still felt the imprint of his arms around her. She had vague memories of being held and kissed by her parents. Her aunt, happily unmarried and independent, had never hidden the fact that she had no room in her life for a kid. Cyrus was careful about expressing affection, or perhaps he didn’t have much to offer either.
She looked at her framed print of a porcupine with the words, Aw, come on, gimme a hug! beneath. She didn’t need affection. Yes, she could have Ozzie’s affection, but that wouldn’t be fair to him, considering her lack of romantic feelings for him. Fair trade, after all, she thought with a smirk. No, she didn’t need to be held and stroked and kissed. Except in her dreams.
After e-mailing Mr. Bromley his files—she’d still had to hear him cry, but at least it was tears of joy—Amy headed out to get her Days of the New CD from the car. When she opened her door, the sight of someone standing there startled a scream out of her, which made Orn’ry screech.
Cyrus blinked. “It’s just me.”
She forced a smile. “Come in.”
“They fixed your door already.”
“Yes, thanks. Chatty guy with lots of personality—not. He was one of them, wasn’t he?”
“It’s not the kind of thing you can call a regular locksmith over for.” He gave her the usual kiss on top of her head, as affectionate as he ever dared to be. “How are you, besides jumpy?”
Her voice cracked when she said, “I’m okay. What’d you find out?”
“I talked to a friend at the FBI.” He took a seat and she perched on the coffee table in front of him.
She tried to stay calm and not look too concerned about the stalker who’d been about to eviscerate her. The stalker who’d looked at her like he would die for her. She caught herself leaning toward Cyrus as though she could hear the words faster if she were a few inches closer.
“His name is Lucas Brown. He’s been on their radar for some time now in connection to fourteen brutal murders. All cute brunettes in their late teens and early twenties.” He gave her a look that added, Like you.
“Cute?” she said. “I’m definitely not his type.”
He crossed his arms in front of him as though accusing her of using sarcasm as a barrier. “The murders he was suspected of were scattered all over, so there wasn’t any solid connection. The FBI tracked him here. He started acting erratically, and they figured he was on the hunt. They had to wait until he made a move, which he did by breaking into your apartment. If they hadn’t been here…well, I don’t even want to imagine.”
Why did that seem so…not right? “How come there’s been nothing in the news? Lots of scandals and all manner of scumbagism, but nothing about this major serial killer the FBI apprehended.”
“Scumbagism?” His eyebrows quirked. “Do you know the kind of public outcry there would be if it was discovered a suspected killer had been in their midst and no one was warned? Of course, if they’d been warned, Lucas Brown would have fled, and they would have had to start all over again. The FBI is keeping this low key. The important thing is that it’s over.”
“What about Lucas?” She swallowed hard and pushed out the words, “Is he dead?”
“Sig 229 in the neck will do it every time.” He studied her. “It’s what he said that’s got you a little freaked out, isn’t it? About you being a…what? Outsider?”
“It wasn’t that so much as what he said about my dad’s death.”
Cyrus pressed his fingers together. “All that stuff he told you was a load of bull manufactured by a sick mind. Brown has a history of psychiatric problems, including psychotic schizophrenic. Paranoia. Nonsensical ramblings about spies and phone taps.”
He gave her a sympathetic look. “I know you always had trouble believing what your father did. Me, too, for a while. But he had psychiatric problems of his own. Not like this Lucas guy, but deep depression. Remember the nightmares that sent him screaming out the door?”
She shivered. All too well. “He dreamed people were in his head trying to kill him.”
They both grew silent for a moment.
Finally Cyrus said, “Sweetheart, he loved you very much. At the end, he just wasn’t thinking straight.”
That’s what hurt so much. She’d grown up believing he hadn’t loved her enough to push on, to get help. She believed she wasn’t good enough to live for. “No matter how depressed he was, he had a five-year-old daughter
who loved and needed him. It never made sense that depression would take away his sense of responsibility. If I wasn’t enough to live for…okay, take your life. But at least make arrangements for your kid. And leave a suicide note.” She looked into his eyes. “You would have told me—you’d tell me now—if there was more to my father’s death, wouldn’t you? My dad who showed me the stars and then shot himself where he knew I’d find him. The dad who said he loved me and then left me!” Anger washed into her voice.
Cyrus leaned forward, bracing his arms on his thighs. “Did Lucas imply he was murdered?”
“Not exactly. That would explain Dad’s behavior, though.”
And his glow. She hadn’t known what the colors meant then, and thought the glimmer of violet blue meant despair. Years later she’d come across a man climbing over the railing at a bridge. With the conviction of someone who had lost a loved one to suicide, she’d talked him into seeking help instead. His glow had been a deep yellow. Her father’s had been the color of anger. Angry people didn’t take their lives. Unless, as Cyrus had suggested, she hadn’t remembered it right.
“Think about it: who would have wanted to murder your dad? He did administrative work for the Army. And he was a nice guy. Nothing was taken from the house, and it was his gun.”
She hadn’t realized she was waiting for some revelation until her body slumped in disappointment. “But how did Lucas find out?”
“Maybe he met someone who knew your dad or found some old papers. His mind creates a conspiracy theory. Killing women might be part of his delusion.”
“Maybe,” she echoed, getting to her feet.
“If you need to talk…”
She shrugged. “There’s nothing more to say. Lucas is dead and there doesn’t seem to be any way to find out more.”
“Let it go. Try to forget it ever happened.”
After he left, she sat on the floor and spun the constellation globe. When she was seven she’d taped a picture of her dad over his favorite constellation, Ursa Major. He was smiling in the picture, young and handsome.
She tried to convince herself that what Cyrus said must be true. It made sense, right? Well, sort of. So why couldn’t she quite make herself believe it? Because Lucas said she hadn’t felt right about her father’s suicide, she realized, and there was no logical way for him to know that.
The thought that her dad hadn’t consciously decided to abandon her tightened her chest. If he hadn’t just selfishly killed himself, that changed everything.
Everything you think you know is going to change.
She rubbed the stars on the charm bracelet he’d given her as a child, real silver stars and bright plastic beads that she’d had redone on a silver chain. She remembered how they’d lie in the grass together and he’d show her the constellations. He told her stories about her mom. Sometimes she’d hear him talking to her mom when he thought she was asleep. It broke her heart to hear him cry.
She needed to know more about Lucas Brown. She pushed off the sofa and went to her computer to do a search on his name. Tons of stuff came up but nothing relevant. There seemed to be only one other place to go, and that was the man whose name was on the slip of paper Lucas had given her.
She looked around at her cocoon, as Ozzie had called it. He was right. This was her safe haven. Going out in the dark was not something she liked to do.
Forget about all this. Go back to your nice, quasinormal life. Dig up lost data. That’s what you’re good at.
She went back to work, beginning diagnostics on another drive. She cranked Linkin Park and belted out the lyrics to “Crawling.” The words died on her lips, though, and her fingers stilled. Her mind drifted to Lucas, to his breath on her ear and his urgent warning. The third time it happened, she gave up. She wasn’t going to be able to push this into the back of her closet.
Amy closed her door and steeled herself to step into the darkness, even if it was a bright spring day. What she would tell Bill Hammond, she had no idea; something would come to her. She got to the bottom of her stairs when a woman with long blond hair and the smile of someone who knew a secret handed her a flyer.
“Come alone and tell no one,” she said, her smile intact. “Make sure you’re not followed.” She floated down the walkway and stuck another flyer in a door-jamb, giving her a glance before heading on to another door.
Amy would have laughed—hell, conspiracy theories, Make sure you’re not followed—except it didn’t seem so awfully funny anymore. She watched the woman for a minute before pulling her gaze to the flyer in her hand. The four-color brochure depicted ethereal stained-glass works and announced the artist’s appearance the next day at the Blue Rain Gallery, in West Annapolis, near the historic area. Even though she’d lived here for the last nineteen years, she’d been to that part of town only a few times.
When she walked to another door and plucked the flyer the woman had stuck there, however, she discovered that it wasn’t for the gallery at all. She looked around. That one and all the other flyers announced the opening of a car wash. The deluge of flyers, then, was a cover. Her finger slid across the edge of the one she’d been given—a message meant just for her.
CHAPTER 4
The next day, Amy opened her refrigerator door, stared at the rows of organic yogurt, and pulled out one along with the container of fresh strawberries. When the toaster dinged, she lifted out the Pop-Tart and set it on a plate, then heaped yogurt and fruit on top. She glanced at the clock: noon, the usual breakfast time for one who worked into the night and slept all morning. She hadn’t slept, though. She felt as though she’d ingested four cups of Fair trade French roast coffee on an empty stomach.
Orn’ry flapped his wings and squawked. “Popcorn!”
He didn’t talk very clearly, but she recognized the request for food. She poured in fresh birdseed and changed the water. “I’ve got to go out for a while. Be good.” She pointed at him. “Don’t make me cover you.” Luckily she had only one apartment butting up against hers.
She’d decided to wait on talking to Bill Hammond. She grabbed the flyer from where she’d stuck it on the fridge. “Let’s see what this is about first.”
As soon as she reached for the door, Orn’ry started making his plaintive sound. Once the door opened, he went into screech mode, and she quickly left. She headed for the Blue Rain Gallery, not with trepidation but a desperation that thrummed through her veins. That’s where she would find the truth—or at least the beginning of it.
They call us Offspring.
They. Who were they? Who was Lucas? More importantly, why did the thought of him being dead leave a hollow feeling in her chest?
She was actually wearing civilized clothing instead of the cotton pants and tank tops she usually wore. As she pulled out of her allotted space, she caught the movement of a car in the rearview mirror. The man behind the wheel had dark sunglasses and bushy hair. When she turned left, so did the car. It fell back, though, and other cars filled in until she couldn’t see it anymore. Still, her gaze flitted to the mirror as often as it watched what was ahead of her during the drive.
When she reached the designated address, she saw the white car drive past. Just as her heart started thumping, she saw that the man behind the wheel didn’t resemble the one she’d seen leaving her lot. He had wispy blond hair and, more important, wasn’t looking at her.
“You’re getting good and paranoid now, Amy girl.”
The building had once been a Victorian two-story home that, like others in the area, was now converted to commercial space. Blue neon limned the windows and set off the white exterior.
As she walked toward the entrance, her tongue felt like a towel in her mouth. A man stood inside the front window, and he was so still that she wondered if he was a statue. Bells tinkled when she pushed the door open. She expected harp music to match the cool blue lighting instead of U2’s soulful song “One.” Light poured through stained-glass panels depicting nature scenes that were painfully exquisite.
A deer nuzzled her fawn in one, and a rabbit and wolf played together in another, both set against an outer-space-like background.
People milled about, talking softly as though they were in church, and indeed that was the way this place felt. A bearded man was describing his near-death experience that inspired a piece that featured dolphins swimming in a pink vortex. He acknowledged her with a smile. She stared back, watching for some signal. After several uncomfortable moments he turned away. Hell, he probably thought she was a stalker.
The man standing inside the window was real. At least she was pretty sure he was. His bright blond hair, spiked like flames, caught the sheen from the blue neon. His body was perfection, at least six-foot-three, thick muscles and hard lines encased in black pants and a tight bronze shirt. He continued to watch the parking lot, though his eyes flicked toward her once.
No one approached. She’d wait, be patient…as impatience screamed through her veins. She turned her attention to the large room filled with artwork of various mediums: statues of lovers melting in a goodbye embrace; a painting of a woman crying over lost love perhaps, her tears turning into a bloody pool. A painting of a couple looking lovingly into each other’s eyes, making her think: Someday one of you will die and the other will be left alone.
Most of the art was of a sensual nature, though all very tasteful. She glanced back to the man in the window. He was gone. Letting out a long sigh, she continued to look around. Maybe she’d misunderstood what the girl handing her the flyer had said. Maybe it was her own desperate need for information—or worse, her own delusions of conspiracy—that made the girl’s words sound the way they had. She couldn’t think of a damned thing that sounded anything like “come alone and make sure you’re not followed,” though.
The soft buzz of conversation calmed her nerves—until she saw a collection of paintings on the far wall.
No.
No frickin’ way.
But there they were, as real as the wall they were hanging on: images from her erotic dreams. Heat seared her cheeks. The man’s face was in shadow here, too, but her face was clearly defined, even down to her dark green eyes and the freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks. These were sexy and romantic and everything her dreams were, painted against surreal backgrounds of blues, greens, and glittering gold. The beauty took her breath away. So did the bizarreness of seeing them here.
