by Кей Хупер
"Your breaking case?"
"Just broke wide open."
"Then go. And good luck."
"I don't like leaving, Kane ... not with all this going on."
"We'll be fine. I'll ring this place with security, so don't worry about us. We'll be safe and sound here. "
"Listen to Richardson. Don't make yourself a bigger target than you already have."
"Noted. Go pack, Noah."
It seemed for a moment that Bishop had more to say, but finally he shook his head and went to pack.
When they were alone once again, Faith took a long breath and said, "So he's not liable. I had wondered about that."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Sure you do. But if you have to have it spelled out — I mean that this time Bishop's famous bullshit detector failed him. Or does it work only when he touches somebody? Anyway, he believed you."
"And you don't."
"No. I don't. I think you have no intention of sitting here surrounded by security while other people look for answers. You intend to find out who killed Dinah, even if that means standing in the line of fire."
His voice remote, Kane said, "You'll be safe here, I promise you that. No more bombs. No more intruders. You can move your things into the spare bedroom, stay there until we get the other room repaired. No one will hurt you, Faith."
Too late.
But all she said was, "So you expect me to stay In a nice, safe cocoon while you go after them alone? That is not going to happen, Kane."
"No?"
"No."
He shook his head. "Don't try to fight me on this, Faith. I'll win."
She drew a breath. "My memory may be nothing but shadows, my legs may be shaky, and I may scare easily these days — but I have just as much right as you to go looking for the people who destroyed my life."
She rose to her feet, holding the blanket tightly around her, and added, "I'll get changed and see what can be salvaged in the bedroom."
She passed Bishop in the hall, and Kane heard her bid him a simple farewell. The agent came into the living room carrying his luggage.
"I always forget how quickly you pack," Kane commented.
"Years of experience. I've called a cab, so I should be on my way shortly. I'll check in with Richardson to keep abreast of the investigation. But if I am stuck at Quantico or elsewhere longer than I expect, I'll still fly down for the funeral or memorial service."
Kane didn't want to think about that. "I'll let you know. When it's set, I mean."
"Good." Betraying an unusual restiveness, Bishop said, "I wouldn't leave if it were anything else. You know that."
"I know that. You've been looking a long time, God knows. Maybe this time ..."
"Maybe. And maybe it'll be another dead end."
He let out a short laugh.
Conscious of all his own regrets, Kane said abruptly, "Don't give up. Don't stop looking, Noah."
"I'm the ruthless, cold-hearted bastard of a federal agent, remember? I'll use anything and anyone I have to in order to achieve my ends."
Kane was silent for a moment, then said, "That still rankles after all these years? From what you told me, she was so distraught she would have said anything then. You were the closest target, so you got the blame."
"I deserved the blame."
"You were doing your job."
"No." Bishop looked at him with a hard sheen in his eyes. "I went way beyond doing my job."
"You were trying to stop a killer."
"And instead, I allowed him to kill again."
"Allowed him? Noah..."
"Never mind. It's the past, dead and buried. I don't know why the hell I brought it up. Right now, I'm worried about the present."
Bishop hesitated, reluctant to interfere but unable not to. "You can say it's none of my business, but I would have to be blind and stupid not to notice how things are between you and Faith. And I'm neither."
"I don't know what you mean." Kane heard the echo of his earlier denial to Faith, and wondered if everything he felt was branded on his forehead like neon. "And you're right. It's none of your business."
Bishop was no more warned off than Faith had been. "She got under your skin — and you're angry at her for making you betray Dinah."
"You're full of shit."
Bishop smiled. "Am I? Maybe about some things, but not this. All I'm saying is that you can't beat up yourself or Faith because of what you feel, especially now. I can't believe Dinah would consider it a betrayal that the friend she tried so hard to help might find a place for herself in your life."
"There's no question of that."
"No?"
"No. I don't feel anything for her. Not anything like that. She's just ... a tool I can use to help me find out who killed Dinah. Nothing more."
Deliberately, Bishop said, "It's hell having a guilty conscience, isn't it?"
"You don't know what you're talking about, Noah."
"I'm sure you'd like to think so."
"Leave it alone, all right? Just leave it alone."
Kane didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to think about it. And most of all, he didn't want to have Noah's probing spider sense focused on him.
"I can't do that, Kane. It goes against the grain with me to walk away and let a friend tear himself to pieces just because he's human. And that's all it is I you know. You're human. Dinah's gone. She's been gone for weeks, and if you're honest with yourself you'll have to admit that deep down inside you knew she wasn't coming back."
"Just shut up, all right?"
"It's the truth and you know it. You gave up on Dinah, Kane, even though you kept going through the motions, kept telling yourself it wasn't true. But it is true. She's gone, and even while you were searching for her, another woman got under your skin."
Kane allowed some of the rage inside him to boll over. He was on his feet before he realized he had moved, hands clenched into fists, so desperate to strike out it was a sick pain in his gut.
"What the hell's wrong with you? Christ, Noah, Dinah's barely cold. She's lying on a slab in the morgue, hurt in so many god-awful ways I could hardly recognize her as the woman I loved. Her final days were spent in a hell of agony I can't even imagine, and when those bastards were finished with her they shut her away her worst nightmare, leaving her to die alone and terrified, to bleed to death or smother in the dark grave of that tiny room beneath the ground."
"We don't know for sure she died in that room. Maybe she never suffered that final terror," Bishop said quietly.
Kane barely heard him. His voice rose, anguished, as he asked the contemptuous questions that had been whispering in the back of his mind for days now.
"What kind of man do you think I am? Do you think it's so easy for me to forget her, to just push her aside because a fresh new piece walks in the door? Do you think any other woman could take Dinah's place? That I could ever feel for anyone else a tenth of what I felt for her?"
"Kane..."
"I loved her. Do you understand that? I loved her."
"I know."
"I wake up every god damned night aching inside because she's not here. Because she hasn't been here in so long. I hate myself because I gave up on her even before they found her body, even before I knew she was gone. I'm furious at her because she kept so much of herself out of my reach, furious at myself because I wasn't able to reach her. And now... now I'll never be able to. She's gone. She's gone."
"And Faith?"
"Faith?" A hard laugh escaped his lips. "I thought she was a connection to Dinah. That's all. For a while, I even thought — even believed — that some part of Dinah was alive in her, had rubbed off on her somehow. I'd see her find Dinah's nail polish without really looking for it, as if she knew just where Dinah kept it, see her eat the same things Dinah did in just the same way. I'd smell Dinah's perfume on her, hear her use the same phrases, the same tone of voice, turn her head the same way ... and I let myself believe Dinah wasn't really
gone."
"Are you so sure that's what it was? All it was?"
"Of course I'm sure. Do you really think I could feel anything else? For her?"
"It's all right to feel, Kane."
"No, it's not all right! God damn you, it's never going to be all right!"
In the hallway, unseen by the two men, Faith crept away, into the bathroom where she had been about to shower. She closed the door and turned on the water to shut out even the distant rumble of Kane's raised voice, and stared at her pale face in the mirror.
Odd. She'd never before realized that pain could be a visible, suffering thing in someone's eyes.
She looked away, then focused on her hands lying tense on the vanity top. Dinah's red nail polish coated her neat oval nails. Nearby was a bottle of Dinah's perfume, which she had so unthinkingly used.
The terrible anger in his voice.
She looked at the blouse and slacks on the hamper, the clean clothing she'd found unharmed in the closet and had meant to wear after her shower, and realized she had no idea whether it was her clothing or Dinah's.
"I'll know if it doesn't fit," she murmured to herself. "Her clothing doesn't fit me. At least there's that."
The horrible revulsion in his voice.
She picked up the bottle of perfume and shut it away in the cabinet of the vanity. Then she began to remove her nail polish. She swiped the cotton ball roughly back and forth against her nails, frantic to get the red color off.
There was a queasiness in the pit of her stomach, and she felt light-headed, dizzy.
"I didn't do it deliberately," she murmured, avoiding the reflection of that stricken woman in the mirror. "I didn't even realize I had..."
Kane sat on the couch with his head in his hands for a long time before he was finally able to look at his friend. "Jesus. I'm sorry," he said.
"Don't be. You needed to let it out."
"Maybe." Kane felt exhausted. "But I didn't need to act like it was all your fault."
"It's nobody's fault."
"I'd really like to blame somebody, Noah." Kane knew his smile was twisted.
"Because you've been lucky enough to find two women you could feel so much for? I'd say fate was smiling on you for that, pal."
Kane linked his fingers together and stared at them. He didn't want to say it, but the words seemed forced up from some wellspring of emotion he had finally tapped. "I can't be in love with her, Noah. I can't. I still love Dinah."
"You'll always love Dinah," Bishop said quietly. "It isn't a betrayal of her memory to also love someone else."
"Then why do I hate myself for it?"
After a moment, Bishop said, "Guilt is easier to feel than acceptance."
"Bastard," Kane said.
"It's true. Dinah's gone. You're still here. And life goes on." He smiled. "Clichés, but also truth. You have to go on with your life. Plan her memorial service, Kane. Try to discover who killed her and see to it they're punished for what they did. Then let her go. Say goodbye."
"I don't know if I can do that."
"You've been letting go of her for weeks now." He watched that truth settle over Kane, saw the slight nod of reluctant agreement, and was satisfied.
The intercom buzzed then, announcing that Bishop's cab had arrived, and Kane got up to see his friend to the door.
"Keep in touch," he said. "Oh, I will. And you do me a favor, okay?"
"I can."
"Take care of yourself. And take care of Faith."
"I'll do my best."
When Bishop had gone, Kane went to the end of the hallway to the bedrooms and listened. He heard the shower and felt a twinge of relief that Faith had been occupied and had missed his tirade.
He really wasn't ready to face her with his tangle of emotions.
They had already abbed at her once or twice.
CHAPTER 11
"I came as soon as I heard about the explosion. Kane, what on earth is going on?" Sydney sounded as shaken as she looked. They had spoken the day before by phone, after the discovery of Dinah's body had hit the news, but Kane had warned her not to come to his apartment because of the media camped outside.
This morning, she came despite that.
"The police are still investigating," he told her. "Guy Richardson thinks whoever killed Dinah wasn't happy when I put a bounty on his head, and tossed a bomb into my bedroom to remove the threat of it."
Sydney frowned. "Didn't you say Faith was sleeping in your room?"
"Yeah. She woke up and heard someone at the window. Otherwise she'd be dead too."
Kane had been listening for Faith but she had not yet emerged from the bedroom.
"Then the bomb could have been meant for her?"
"Could have. But with her memory like Swiss cheese, and no real evidence that she was the intended target, it's just as likely I was."
Sydney sipped her coffee for several minutes.
"Kane, that reward ..."
"What about it?"
"Well, maybe Guy is right. Maybe offering that money put a giant target on your back."
"Then it's accomplishing at least one of my goals — it's making somebody very, very nervous. And nervous men make mistakes, Syd. If he's running around trying to kill me, he's not hiding — and I have a better chance of spotting him."
She looked at him searchingly. "Getting yourself killed won't bring Dinah back."
"I know that. I don't have a death wish, if that's what you're thinking. I'm just trying to flush the bastard out into the open."
"Kane ... I'm so sorry about Dinah. I know I said it yesterday, but I don't think either of us was making much sense, and..."
"I know, Syd." His sister's sympathy was like salt rubbed into a gaping wound, and he felt guilty accepting it from her. He wondered what she'd think of him if she knew that in his heart he'd given up on Dinah weeks ago.
"Will there... Have you thought about a funeral? Made any plans?"
"No, not really. The medical examiner won't release her body until after the autopsy, probably a week or more. She wanted to be cremated, had it in her will, I think. So I guess a memorial service would be better." He heard the detached tone of his voice and wondered if his calm sounded as precarious as it felt.
"I can make the arrangements if you'd like, Kane. You have enough on your plate right now and... and I'd like to do something for Dinah."
His impulse was to accept, but he disliked leaving others to perform the difficult chores he knew he should do himself. "I'll think about it, Syd, thanks. Let's wait a couple of days before we decide anything."
"Probably best," she murmured. "Besides, she may have left specific instructions as to what she wanted. Have you heard from her attorney?"
"No, not yet."
"Are you her executor?"
Kane frowned. "I'd be surprised if I was, since we were involved only about six months before she disappeared. She never said anything about making changes to her will."
"But she didn't have any family still living, did she?"
"No. She had Conrad Masterson, though, and my guess would be that he's her executor, since he handled her money. I know she trusted him."
"Then maybe he'll know what she wanted done."
"Maybe so." More to himself than to her, he said, "I wonder if killers really do show up at the funerals of their victims."
"That's a morbid thought."
He looked at his sister and managed an apologetic smile. "Isn't it. Sorry."
Before Sydney could comment, Faith came into the kitchen. She looked about fifteen years old, with her hair pulled back with a wide elastic headband and wearing faded jeans and a too-large white sweatshirt.
No makeup at all, and Kane noticed immediately that she'd removed the red nail polish.
Even more than young, she looked ... exposed.
Completely vulnerable, stripped of even the few defenses she had managed to erect since waking up with her past a blank page.
"Hi," she said, her voice
more subdued than Kane had yet heard it, her gaze fixed on his sister.
"Hello, Faith."
Kane didn't try to approach her, but poured a cup of coffee for her and pushed it across the work island toward her.
She kept her eyes fixed on the cup as she dumped sugar and cream in it, then carried it to the table and sat down across from Sydney.
"I hear you had a close call last night," Sydney said.
Faith's pale lips moved in an imitation smile. "Close enough. If he hadn't made a noise or two getting the window open ..."
"But you didn't see who it was?"
"No."
"So it really could have been Kane the guy was after."
"I suppose so. Detective Richardson seems to think it's possible."
"Kane, I hope you mean to increase security around here. Those guards of yours have their hands full with the media outside."
"I'm calling the security company right after breakfast. A dozen more men and a couple of dogs on each shift ought to do the job."
Faith sent him a quick glance. "Won't the other tenants in the building object?"
It was Sydney who replied. "Probably not. Kane's their landlord."
Faith hadn't realized he owned the building. Or perhaps the entire complex.
He said, "I doubt they'd say much anyway if the object is to keep them safer."
Faith thought he had a point.
After breakfast, Faith and Sydney shared the cleaning chores while Kane got on the phone to his security company. They ignored the dishwasher by tacit consent, both needing to be occupied by the simple physical actions of washing, drying, and putting away the dishes. It wasn't until the women were alone together that Sydney asked a quiet question.
"How is he doing, really?"
Faith didn't know how to answer that except by being honest. "He hasn't said much to me. I think ... he talked to Bishop."
"They've been friends a long time. If anyone could help.."
Faith wondered if anyone could, but all she said was, "I don't know what to say to him."
Sydney leaned a hip against the counter and kept her gaze on the plate she was drying. The delicate charm bracelet she wore tinkled softly.
"There isn't much you can say, I guess. Me either. All we can do is sympathize with someone else's pain. And be here, in case he needs us."
