Hiding in the Shadows tbscus-2

by Кей Хупер

  "How about Dinah? Did Katie like her?"

  "Very much."

  The little girl was alone in what appeared to be a communal music-and-games room. She wore white pants and a Barbe T-shirt, and her long blond hair was held back from her face with pink plastic clips.

  She was more than a little doll-like herself. She was also extremely grave, accepting without a blink Karen's explanation that Faith had been sick and doesn't remember things as well as she wants to.

  Faith felt momentarily deserted when Karen left her with the little girl, then sat down on the bench beside her and said, "Hey, kiddo. What're you playing?"

  Katie frowned, wide blue eyes gazing at Faith for a long silent time before she looked back down at the keys and tapped middle C twice. "I can't play much. 'Chopsticks,' but I don't like that. Some of 'Beautiful Dreamer.' You haven't been here to teach me anything new."

  The last was said with a careful absence of accusation.

  "I'm sorry about that, Katie." Without thinking about it, Faith put her fingers on the keys and began playing a few notes. "Would you like to learn this? It's called 'Moonlight Sonata.' Isn't it pretty?"

  Music.

  Something else she hadn't remembered knowing until now.

  Katie cocked her head, listening critically. "It sounds sad."

  Faith stopped playing. "So it does. I'd forgotten that too, I guess. We'll just have to find something else I can teach you. I'll bring some music with me next time, okay?"

  "You said you would." Again, the little girl's voice was neutral, the noncommittal tone of someone who had learned early that the wrong words, the wrong inflection, could incite violence.

  Faith didn't like the way that made her feel, but all she said was, "I won't forget, Katie."

  Katie looked at her. "Where's Dinah?"

  Faith hardly knew how to answer. Keeping it simple, she replied, "I don't know, Katie."

  "Why don't you ask her?" Katie asked reasonably.

  "If I don't know where she is, I can't really do that, can I?"

  "Just close your eyes and ask her," the child said, a touch of impatience in her voice now. "You used to. It was a game you two played. You'd close your eyes and say, "Dinah, call me," and the phone would ring."

  "It would?" Faith said numbly.

  "Sure. Don't you remember that?"

  "No," Faith said. "I don't remember that."

  CHAPTER 5

  "You haven't said much since we got back," Kane said.

  That was true, but Faith was still unwilling to talk about all she had learned at Haven House. She had related only the bare bones — that she and Dinah had met there, that both had spent some time there.

  She'd told him without emotion that she had been married to an abusive man, was now divorced, and still didn't remember any of it. She hadn't mentioned the conversation with the sad little girl, the revelation that she and Dinah might have been connected more surely than she had previously imagined.

  She wasn't sure she believed it herself.

  "You haven't said much either."

  Restlessly, she moved around the living room, ending up at the piano in the corner near the French doors, which opened onto a balcony. It was dark outside, late. Too late to do anything more, to go anywhere or ask questions or get an inch closer to finding Dinah, and if Faith was maddened by that, she could only guess how Kane must be feeling.

  Then again, he'd been going through this for weeks, and by now must have learned the futility of driving himself to exhaustion, must have forced himself to accept that sleep and food were necessary, that moments of inactivity had to be endured no matter how desperately he needed to be out searching for Dinah.

  "Neither of us had much luck this afternoon," he said. "Guy couldn't tell me any more about your accident, and nobody at the shelter could tell you anything useful."

  She sat down on the piano bench and absently picked out a tune with one hand, idly watching her red-polished nails move over the keys. "I hate this," she murmured. "Not being able to do anything."

  Both hands began playing now. The quiet music kept her from hearing the ticking of the clock on the nearby wall, but it did nothing to muffle the ticking she was conscious of inside herself. The minutes and hours were slipping past so quickly. So quickly.

  After a moment, Kane crossed the room to lean against the side of the piano. "You play well."

  Made aware of what she was doing, Faith suddenly felt awkward and uncertain. Her fingers, struck a series of sour notes, and went still.

  She laced them together in her lap. "I didn't even know I played at all until today. Does Dinah?"

  "No." He smiled faintly. "She claims to have a tin ear, says music is just a lot of noise to her. So I consider it remarkably generous of her that she usually manages to stay in the same room when I practice."

  Faith thought that in Dinah's place she would put up with more than noise if it meant spending time with Kane. But she wasn't the one in love with him, she reminded herself. That was Dinah. Dinah's memories of intimacy she remembered, Dinah's emotions she felt. Not her own. Of course not her own.

  Trying to think about something else, she recalled the afternoon's vivid dream. Abruptly, she said, "Isn't it possible that Dinah's disappearance has little to do with her work or my past, that she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and got into trouble?"

  "Of course it's possible. It's what the police believe, since they've been unable to turn up any evidence to prove otherwise. But I don't believe that. And I don't think you do either."

  Faith hesitated. "Did... Was Dinah ever attacked by a dog?"

  Surprised, Kane said, "Never, as far as I know. In fact, animals were pretty much crazy about her. Why?"

  "I... had another dream today. When I took a nap after lunch. How was she dressed the day she vanished? Was she wearing jeans and a blueish sweater?"

  "Yes." He straightened, fingers drumming restlessly on the polished surface of the piano. "What was the dream, Faith? What did you see?"

  "Nothing helpful, that's why I didn't mention it sooner. It was too dark to know where she was. She parked the jeep near a building and... and crept closer. She was very wary, excited, anxious. Maybe even scared. And then a big dog came out of nowhere and attacked her."

  "You're sure she was attacked?"

  Faith remembered the hot breath of the animal, the tearing teeth and the way its claws had raked her flesh, and swallowed hard. "I'm sure."

  His expression was grim. "Yesterday you were sure she was being tortured."

  "Kane, all these ... memories, these flashes from Dinah's life and experiences, are out of sequence. I can't tell what the proper order is supposed to be, if something happened weeks or months ago-ester-day. But I think it was the night she disappeared because I'm certain she was attacked, and you would have known about it if it had happened before that night. I think the attack was a part of whatever led us to her disappearance."

  "And the torture?" He bit out the words.

  "I still believe she is... was being tortured. I believe her captors want some kind of information from her that she isn't willing to give them."

  "How can you know that? How can you?"

  She didn't flinch from the rough demand, but it took all her resolution to meet his haunted eyes.

  "I don't know how, not really. They told me at the shelter that Dinah and I seemed like sisters from the moment we first met, that we were instantly and maybe inexplicably close. And I can't explain that any more than I can explain any of the strange things I've experienced since I came out of the coma. But I know, I'm absolutely convinced, that what I'm seeing in these flashes is real. Somehow, there's a connection between me and Dinah, a tangible bond that exists."

  "Then why can't you tell me where she is?"

  "... don't know. I'm sorry."

  "Have you tried?" Kane leaned toward her across the piano, his voice intense. "Have you made any attempt to reach her directly?"

  Katie's b
lithe assertion that she could do just that rose in her mind, but Faith shied away from it. What if she tried and failed? What if the attempt somehow severed the tenuous connection she knew existed?

  "Faith?"

  She felt trapped, cornered by his force, his need to reach Dinah.

  "I don't know how," she whispered.

  "There must be a way. Concentrate, Faith. Close your eyes and think about Dinah."

  She didn't want to. With her eyes closed, the blank darkness of her mind was far more frightening, and in gazing into that was not something she willingly faced. But Kane had asked of her, demanded it of it her, and she couldn't refuse him.

  So she closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on Dinah, made herself think of nothing except the question of where Dinah was. Nothing else.

  "Nothing ... There's no proof," Dinah said.

  "Then we'll have to get proof," Faith retorted. She chewed on a thumbnail for a moment. "But carefully. These guys play for keeps, Dinah. "

  "You don't have to tell me that. If what we suspect is true, they've already killed to protect their secret. They won't hesitate to kill again. "

  "Oh, it's true all right. I'm positive of that. So we need insurance, something we can use for bargaining power if we find ourselves in a corner"

  "Faith ..." Dinah hesitated, but only briefly.

  "Look, I know how much you've lost. I know how angry you are..."

  "No, you don't. You don't know." Her voice was harsh, clipped. "They took everything away from me, Dinah. Everything. And they got away with it. The god damned bastards got away with it."

  "Which is all the more reason why we have to be careful now. We have to be sure, Faith. We have to get proof, and it has to stand up in court. Otherwise, you'll never get your justice."

  "Justice?" Faith looked at her with an odd little smile. "Yes, of course. Justice."

  "Faith..."

  The scene shifted dizzily, and she found herself back in that dark, damp room, her wrists bound to the arms of the chair. Her hands were numb, and when she looked down at them through blurred eyes, she saw that the wires had cut into her flesh almost to the bone. Scarlet blood dripped steadily onto the floor.

  Idly, she wondered how much she had left.

  "Tell me." The man's voice was astonishingly quiet, almost mild. She tried to peer up at him, but the dimness and her swollen eyelids made it impossible to see anything but a shadow looming over her. "All you have to do to stop the pain is tell me what I want to know, Dinah."

  Mute, she shook her head wearily.

  The closed fist swung at her, the blow so brutal it rocked her head back with almost enough force to break her neck. One more like that, she thought dizzily, and he'll never get his damned answer.

  An oath out of the darkness was evidence that the unseen watcher agreed with her.

  "Careful!" he growled. "She can't tell me what I want to know if she's dead."

  She wanted to point out that it was just a matter of time, that her life was dripping out onto the cold concrete floor, but couldn't allow herself to speak because if she opened her mouth, she would scream. She couldn't scream. Wouldn't scream.

  "Just answer the question, Dinah. Just tell us where to find it, and we'll let you go. "

  If she'd been able to summon the energy, she would have laughed. Let her go? She was never going to leave this cold, damp room, not on her own two feet. She would never see the sunlight again. Never see Kane again.

  Didn't they realize that she knew that?

  Another blow, possibly less brutal but at the moment she was no judge of degree; the pain was constant, radiating throughout her body in hot waves. What they had already done to her was killing her; these sadistic blows were merely finishing the job.

  "This isn't working," the man doing the actual beating said unemotionally to the watcher. "I told you it wouldn't."

  Then start breaking her fingers.

  "She won't feel it. Her hands are numb."

  "Then start breaking something she will feel..."

  The shadow loomed over her, reaching, and Dinah tried desperately to think of something else, anything else ... Kane. Oh, God, Kane, I wish...

  Again the scene shifted, and this time she found herself burying down a vaguely familiar halfway.

  "Faith?" Dinah caught up with Faith, her frown clear evidence of worry.

  "Did you find anything?"

  "No," Faith replied. "Nothing. But there'll be another chance to look, sooner or later." Both women kept their voices low, and neither relaxed until they reached the stairwell and hurried down.

  "We're running out of time" Dinah said.

  "Something else," Faith said. "I think my phone's been tapped.

  "What?"

  "It's just a feeling, but I think so."

  Dinah said nothing for several flights, then, as they reached the parking garage, she grasped Faith's arm to bait her "I've got a feeling too, and it's a bad one. We've gone as far as we can alone, Faith. We need help."

  "I don't trust the cops, Dinah, you know that."

  "I know that. But there's a federal cop I know I can trust. "

  "I trust federal cops even less."

  "But you trust me. And I trust him," Dinah said.

  Faith bit her lip in indecision, then shook her head. "Not yet, please. I want one more chance to find the evidence we need. It's important to me." It was Dinah's turn to hesitate, but finally she nodded. "Okay, a few more days..."

  "A week. I need at least a week."

  Obviously against her better judgment, Dinah agreed. "A week then. But after that, I call out the troops. Understand?"

  "All right. Now let's get out of here before the wrong person spots us together." They split up just outside the stairwell, each going to her own vehicle quickly and quietly. Faith started her car and watched Dinah's jeep pull out of its parking place; she hesitated a few moments to give the other woman time to leave the garage. The place seemed full of shadows, and, suddenly nervous, she locked her car doors.

  Faith glanced at the big purse beside her on the front seat and murmured, "I'm sorry, Dinah. But you'd try to stop me. And I can't let them get away this time. I just can't ..."

  Faith opened her eyes with a start, bewildered to find herself on a couch. She was half propped on a pillow and covered with a blanket, and had the confused sense that far too much time had gone by.

  "Faith?" Kane sat down on the edge of the couch near her hips and reached to touch her face, his own strained and pale. "Jesus, don't ever do that to me again."

  "Do what? What happened?"

  "You were out cold," he said. "I asked you to concentrate on trying to reach Dinah, and the next thing I knew you were toppling off the piano bench, limp as a dishrag and completely unresponsive. If it hadn't been for a strong pulse and the fact that you were breathing with no trouble, I would have called EMS."

  "How long was I out?"

  "More than an hour. It's near midnight." Kane drew a breath and leaned back, his hand falling away from her face. "Noah's told me stories about this. Some of the genuine psychics he's encountered go into a trancelike state in which all the vital signs slow down. As if the body needs to draw on its resources, tap in to whatever energy is available to use those extra senses. That's what seemed to be happening with you, so I didn't interfere. How do you feel? "

  Faith took stock of her physical condition and realized she felt all right, just a little tired. Her emotional state, however, was another matter entirely. Going into that "trancelike state" had been like falling into a deep, black hole, and the terror of completely losing her grasp on the here and now was not something she would willingly repeat.

  "I'm okay," she said. "But please don't ever ask me to do that again."

  Kane nodded, but his eyes were eager. "Did it work? Did you reach Dinah?"

  Faith shied away from telling him further details about Dinah being tortured. There was no reason for him to hear that. No reason at all.

  In
stead, she concentrated on the other two scenes.

  "Faith?"

  She shook her head. "I didn't reach Dinah the way you mean, the way you wanted me to. There were just ... more flashes, more scenes from the past. But more helpful this time, I think."

  "Helpful how? What did you see?" She told him as much as she could remember about the two memories, which seemed to prove that she and Dinah had indeed been working together on some kind of investigation.

  She tried to recall all the details, but so much was frustratingly vague, and she was unhappily aware that there were now even more questions. Including the nagging one about what it was she had hidden from Dinah. And how she had been able to hide anything at all if she and Dinah had been able to communicate as easily as Katie claimed.

  She's just a little girl, and probably got it only half right ... Faith went still for a moment, wondering if that thought was hers or someone else's. She didn't know, couldn't tell.

  "So it must be connected somehow with my past, with what happened in Seattle," she said finally, forcing her mind back. "That must be why I was so determined that they wouldn't get away with it again. We were looking for evidence, and I had found something, something small enough to hide in my purse — and I didn't tell Dinah about it, at least not then."

  "And you have no idea what that evidence was?"

  Faith shook her head. "It was ... it was almost as if I were watching a movie. Just looking on and listening in while we talked. I don't know what she was thinking, what I was thinking. All I know is that I had found something, and for some reason I didn't want her to know I'd found it, at least not until I could ..."

  "Could what?"

  She groped for the elusive knowledge, and finally sighed in defeat. "I don't know. I just don't know. I'm sorry."

  "Think carefully, Faith. Was there anything at all that could help us figure out where Dinah is?"

  Unwillingly, she thought of that cold, damp place with its concrete floors and shadowy walls, thought of the two men interrogating Dinah, one unemotionally efficient in dealing out agony and the other urgently insistent on getting information from her before she died.