Special Gifts

by Anne Stuart

  She didn’t know when the mindless fury left him, when his arms held her more closely, when he picked her up and carried her from that room of death. She was aware of the cold sting of icy snow on her face, and then he bundled her into her car, the car she’d left running in her mad dash into Phil’s house.

  She didn’t want to let go of him. She wanted to cling, to hide her face against the rough warmth of his shoulder; she wanted to cry until she fell asleep, and she wasn’t sure if she ever wanted to wake up again. But he put her hands from him, folding them in her lap, and fastened the seat belt around her shivering body. When she looked down at her coat she could see the bloodstains from Sam’s capable hands.

  He didn’t say a word as he pulled into the snowy street, his face cold and pale and grim. He drove very fast, dangerously so, but Elizabeth didn’t protest, nor did she bother to ask where they were going. She didn’t care. She was still in a numb, distant state of shock, and it took every remaining trace of energy she possessed simply to stop the tears.

  She’d had years of practice at stopping them, and it should have been an easy enough matter to halt them once more, to shove her grief and despair back inside, down deep where no one else could witness them, particularly the cold, unfriendly man who was driving with such single-minded fury.

  But the tears wouldn’t stop. They had a life of their own, and having finally gained their freedom after two years of captivity, they weren’t about to be penned up again. They slid down her cheeks, running into her collar, and when she leaned back they ran into her ears, her hair. It was too cold to cry, she thought dismally, her nose running. It was too cold to feel anything.

  For some reason she hadn’t expected him to drive her home. When the car slid to an abrupt stop, she looked up, dazed, at her tiny house in the woods, at the lights blazing from the windows.

  Sam hadn’t moved, hadn’t turned off the ignition, and she wondered briefly if he expected her to get out of the car and leave him. Leave him in possession of her only means of transportation, while she spent the night alone in a house on the edge of nowhere, haunted by visions and memories and dreams of the future.

  She had no energy to fight it. She reached for the door handle, but his hand covered hers, forestalling her. “Wait a minute.” His voice was husky, raw, and she realized those were the first words he’d spoken since she’d found him kneeling over Phil’s body. “Did you leave all those lights on?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Did you leave your door open?”

  She looked up, eyes narrowing through the blowing snow, and saw the crack of light from the thick kitchen door. “I don’t know,” she said again. “I don’t remember much about the trip over to Phil’s.” She stumbled on his name, then righted herself. “I might have. I was so caught up in seeing . . .”

  “I think someone’s been here,” he said, his emotionless voice cutting through her grief. “What do you think, swami?”

  The faint, contemptuous edge to his voice did what he had no doubt intended it to. She glared at him, torn from her self-absorbed misery, and concentrated on the house. “I don’t know,” she said again.

  “You don’t know much, do you?” he countered. “What the hell good is your so-called gift if it can’t tell you when your own house has been broken into, and it doesn’t bother to warn you that a good man’s going to be murdered until it’s too late? I presume that’s what sent you over to Phil’s? A slightly overdue vision?”

  “That’s right. What sent you?”

  He didn’t say a word, but for a moment his hand tightened painfully on hers. “I just wanted to get away from you,” he said, his voice mocking.

  It should have stopped her questions. Instead it made her stronger, knowing he was lying to her. “Where’s your car?”

  “In a ditch somewhere. I hitched to Phil’s.”

  “Well, you’re not taking my car,” she said. “Not unless I go with you.”

  For a brief moment his eyes met hers, something unbelievable flaring between them, vanishing before she could even comprehend it. “I have no intention of leaving you to be carved up like the others,” he said evenly. “I just don’t know whether you’d be safer waiting in the car or staying behind me.”

  “You think he’s still here?”

  Sam shrugged. “You tell me. Except that you can’t, right? So we’re just going to have to go with my instincts, poor as they are. And my instincts tell me that if the man who killed Phil is anywhere around, you wouldn’t be safe in a locked car. So you’re going to have to come with me. And you’re going to have to stay right behind me, and be absolutely silent, and be prepared to do everything I say without a second’s hesitation. Think you can agree to that?”

  “Do you think it was the Colorado Slasher?”

  “You mean, do I think Phil was killed by the same person or persons who’s been killing the women around here? Yes. And I don’t know if he’s lying in wait for you. But I think he’s been here.”

  Elizabeth shuddered, a very faint tremor shimmering across her chilled body. She couldn’t tell if Sam was right or not—she’d been through too much in the past few hours to allow for any kind of emotional or psychic reserve. She could only do as he said and hope she’d put her faith in the right man. Otherwise, she was dead.

  She thought she didn’t care, but she did. She didn’t want to die, and she especially didn’t want to die at Sam Oliver’s hand. For the first time in her life she wanted warmth and sunshine and laughter and love. But she knew full well that safety lay on the other side of a dark tunnel, and she’d have to traverse that darkness before she made it into the light. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going into the house and see whether someone’s been there. Whether someone’s still there. If he is, then he’s dead.” His voice was flat, certain, and Elizabeth had no doubts at all. “If he isn’t, we get a few things and take off. Come on.” He released her, sliding out of the car, leaving it running. She followed suit, coming up behind him, unable to resist a nervous glance over her shoulder. The woods around her house seemed darker, the trees taller, menacing, moving in on her. Even the swirling snow seemed part of a conspiracy.

  Sam had a gun in his hand. A large, efficient-looking gun, and she hadn’t the faintest idea where it had come from. She hadn’t felt it when she’d clung to him so desperately a short while ago. She’d always hated guns, but now, for the first time in her life, she viewed one with something bordering on affection. Not that she thought it would do any good. It didn’t seem as if the man who had killed Phil Grayson could be stopped by something as mundane as a bullet.

  For a moment she didn’t comprehend what had happened to her house. Sam was too tall, his big body blocking her view as he moved, slowly, carefully, into the icy house. “Stay behind me,” he muttered, his voice a mere thread of sound. “And close the door.”

  “But what if we need to run?”

  “What if he needs to run?”

  For a moment Elizabeth thought that was an excellent idea, and then she remembered Phil’s body. She nodded, forgetting that he couldn’t see her, but it didn’t matter. He expected complete acquiescence, and she was smart enough to give it to him.

  It took them less than a minute to ascertain that her house was trashed, shredded, and completely deserted. Sam began to curse, fluently and lengthily, as he picked through the ripped sofa cushions, the smashed furniture. “He’s gone,” he said flatly, tucking the gun back in the low-riding waistband of his jeans.

  Like a zombie Elizabeth walked into the hallway, to the linen closet that had held the only things of value she owned. And then she stopped, sinking down onto the pile of shredded quilts with an animal moan of pain.

  He’d ripped and destroyed every one of Granny Mellon’s handmade quilts. The lace pillowcases, the stuffed feather pillows, the crocheted bedspreads, were mere ribbons of thread and material. He’d worked quickly, but efficiently, wiping out the only physical thing she care
d about. She reached a trembling hand down to touch the remnants of a bear-claw quilt, and she saw the dark brown smear of dried blood across her fingers. Phil’s blood.

  She felt Sam’s presence behind her, felt his impatience, but she didn’t look up. “We have to get out of here,” he said grimly. “He’ll be back.”

  “Why?” She ran a desultory hand through the precious old cottons. “He’s already destroyed everything.”

  “And taken the only thing of importance, that damn shoe. But he knows we saw it. He may have it, but he’ll have to wipe us out, too.”

  There was one section, deep down beneath the pile of rags, that looked more or less intact. She began throwing the torn quilts aside, reaching down to pull out one small quilt that had been overlooked. It was small, in faded shades of pink and blue, in a tumbling-blocks pat0tern, and it had belonged to Elizabeth’s mother, and to Elizabeth when she was a baby.

  She clutched it to her breast like a talisman, feeling the earth shift and settle once more beneath her feet. “He doesn’t have the shoe,” she said.

  She hadn’t realized the sheer rage that Sam had been holding in check until he reached down and hauled her upright, yanking her around to face him. She still clung to the quilt with the devotion of a child to her security blanket, and she did her best not to quail in sudden fright. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I mean I took the shoe with me when I ran,” she said, her fingers kneading the ancient material. “It’s under the seat of the car.”

  “Hell,” Sam said bitterly. “Let’s get out of here.”

  She tried to pull away. “I need to get some clothes.”

  “Forget it. He trashed your clothes, too. We’ll get you something when we get there.”

  “When we get where?” She stumbled along after him, the quilt held tightly in her hands.

  “Home,” he said. “Washington.”

  Washington. Where Alan had drowned. “I don’t want to go.”

  “Tough. You can’t stay here—you’d be dead before morning. We’re getting out of here now.”

  “But what about Phil . . . ?”

  “Phil’s beyond help. If we’re going to do anything about avenging him, we’re going to have to get to Washington.”

  “Is revenge necessary?”

  “Yes,” Sam said bleakly. “Absolutely essential.” And without another word he pulled her out of her wrecked house to the still-running car. And she knew as she handed him the Baggie-encased shoe from beneath the front seat and settled back for another dangerous ride through the snow that she would never see her house, her haven for the past two years, again. Pulling the crib quilt around her, she shut her eyes, unwilling to watch the house disappear in the swirling snow. Unwilling to say goodbye.

  MUHAMMED ALI Reza watched them go. If he’d been a man with emotions he would have cursed, but emotions were a luxury for lesser men. He’d made a mistake—several, in fact—but he had every intention of righting them swiftly.

  The policeman hadn’t been much help. He’d been much better trained than Ali Reza would have suspected, and he understood pain. In the end it had been more of a formality than the hope of gaining any real information. He’d died well, and Ali Reza honored him.

  The woman, when he killed her, would cry and scream and beg for mercy. She’d turn those devil eyes on him and fill them with tears; she’d plead and whine and moan. If he wanted to take his time with her he’d have to do something about her eyes first. He wouldn’t be able to enjoy his work if she watched him.

  There was no hurry. He knew where they were going—a simple search of Grayson’s house had come up with a name and an address for the tall man. Besides, things were getting too hot in this miserably cold climate. Alarm bells were going to go off in the slow-working brains of the Denver police when a man turned up butchered in the same fashion as those other women. A man who was in a position to know too much about the killer.

  It couldn’t be helped. He’d considered burning the place, but he didn’t have the proper equipment, and a fire might simply have called attention to Grayson before Ali Reza was ready for that to happen. And he’d been in too much of a hurry to find the woman, and the shoe. But in the end he’d missed her.

  He’d learned patience, and thoroughness, years ago. He would put those two virtues into practice. And in a matter of days he’d be back in the warmth of Italy, with only wistful dreams to tease him. But first he had to make plans for Washington.

  SHE LOOKED LIKE a whipped puppy, Sam thought, staring at his companion as she lay sleeping. He wondered how he looked. Probably just as bad. The flight attendants tended to eye him warily as they moved up and down the aisle, and they were very swift and generous with the Johnny Walker when he requested it. He’d seen that look in people’s eyes before. He’d happened to accompany a divorced friend to the Washington zoo on custody day and found himself watching polar bears not long after the New York scandal of a child that had been eaten by one of the big white monsters. People were flocking around the tightly enclosed pen of the Washington polar bears, a crowd of voyeurs, and it was easy enough to guess what they were all thinking. You had only to look in their eyes, at their nervous, edgy expressions.

  The flight attendant with the name Clarice printed above her generous chest was looking at him with just that expression. Fright, and a kinky fascination, and she leaned a little too close when she brought him his second Johnny Walker. If she was aware that the battered-looking waif asleep beside him belonged to him, she dismissed the notion as unworthy of her attention. Her smile was breathtaking, revealing perfect teeth, and her perfume was expensive and immediately recognizable. He hated it.

  Elizabeth muttered something in her sleep, and he turned to look at her, dismissing Clarice’s annoying attentions. Her normally pale skin was almost dead white, and he could see the salty residue of tears on her cheeks. The mauve shadows beneath her eyes had darkened, and her mouth was slightly open and vulnerable looking in sleep. At some point she’d braided her tangled brown hair and tucked it behind her, but it was coming loose, hanging over her shoulder. She was still clutching that damn quilt, wrapped up in it like it was a cocoon, and he told himself he should be irritated. Instead he was glad she was able to find at least a temporary peace. It was going to be a lot longer for him.

  He hadn’t expected her reaction. When she’d raced into Phil’s house and stopped, staring at him, at Phil’s body, with horror and shock and fear, he’d known that she had to suspect him. It would have been stupidly trusting not to consider that he might have done it, and the one thing he couldn’t say about Elizabeth was that she was either stupid or trusting. Particularly toward him.

  But he’d also known that if she’d run from him, if she’d accused him, he would have lost it. He didn’t know what he would have done, and fortunately he hadn’t had to find out. Instead of running, she’d turned to him for comfort, taking him completely off guard. In doing so she’d released his own grief. And he didn’t know if he’d ever be the same again.

  They’d lucked out when they got to the airport. He’d been fully prepared to order an Army plane, but he hadn’t wanted to. He hadn’t wanted the wait; he hadn’t wanted the questions. There was more to this whole messy situation than met the eye, and he didn’t know who would give him straight answers to straight questions and who might overreact if he got a bit too close to a sticky situation.

  Paranoia had become second nature to him, and he trusted no one. Let’s face it, he thought, I’m in the wrong business if I value any sort of mental health. But he’d made his choice decades ago, and it was too late to back out.

  The commercial jet was the first to fly out since the storm abated, and even at three-fifteen in the morning it had been full. Too many people with delayed flights, he supposed, but he would have thought all those skiers would have hated to leave fresh powder. He hadn’t skied in years, and he could scarcely imagine feeling free enough, lighthearted enough, to spend a day speeding down a
mountain. Maybe he’d get a chance to do it once before he died. Maybe he wouldn’t.

  He pulled strings with ruthless efficiency, getting the two of them on that first flight, managing to keep the gun he had no intention of relinquishing to airport security. Right now he didn’t trust anyone at all, and he wasn’t going anywhere unarmed.

  They’d land in Dulles sometime after dawn, then go straight back to his apartment while he figured out what the hell their next step was. And who he was going to trust.

  “Sam?” Her voice was soft, scratchy, barely audible over the sound of the jet, and it startled him out of his abstraction. He didn’t remember her calling him by name before. Usually it was a scathing “Colonel Oliver.” He liked the sound of his name on her lips. And he must be half drunk and half asleep to be thinking about such idiocy.

  “Yeah?” he said, his voice cool and unencouraging.

  “What’s going to happen to Phil?”

  Damn, he thought, trying to ignore the sudden cramp in his gut. It wasn’t as if he’d forgotten. He’d just managed to block it for a while. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want him left there for too long.” Her brown eyes were deeply troubled behind the thin-lensed glasses that he suspected she didn’t really need. “I mean . . .”

  “I know what you mean. I’ll call in an anonymous tip when we land. Okay?”

  “Won’t they need us for questioning?”

  “Not if we can help it. Not right now. They’ve botched up the entire investigation so far. They can just have one more unsolved murder on their books for a while. We’ll get back to them as soon as we have a few answers.”

  She nodded, leaning back against her seat and pulling her faded quilt tighter around her. She was wearing one of her usual drab outfits, the pale colors washing her out even more, and he wondered for a brief, indulgent moment, how she’d look in something more vibrant. Something red.

  “Are you all right?”