Nest

by Terry Goodkind

  “Are there any security cases you’re working on that would make someone want you dead? Maybe the case you had in Dallas?”

  Kate shook her head. “I don’t think so. The cases I deal with are generally petty theft and white-collar crime. There are sometimes bigger criminals involved, like in Dallas, but that guy is in the custody of the army.”

  “You sure they still have him?”

  “I would have heard had he been released.”

  AJ sighed into the phone. “Well, right now what has me the most concerned is that I don’t know what’s going on or why. Someone killed John, and now this guy who murdered Wilma has your name in his pocket. Until we can start connecting the dots, I’d feel a lot better if you were sleeping at my house where I know you will be safe.”

  “Isn’t it outside of police policy for an officer to be unofficially protecting someone in their home?”

  AJ huffed a laugh. “Get real. We’re already well outside department procedure and official policy here. I’m certainly not going to report that I have you staying at my house.

  “Don’t be stubborn about this, Kate. I don’t like thinking about you asleep all alone in your house right now. I think the real guy who killed your brother is still out there and now this second killer had your name in his pocket. I don’t know why. Until we can catch the guy who killed John, come stay at my house where Mike and I will know you’re safe, all right?”

  Kate couldn’t help thinking about John’s killer having photos of her, or the way she had thought she saw something out the kitchen window and the way she felt when she had tried to go to sleep after putting her gun on the nightstand. It had probably been some trash blowing around in the wind. But still …

  “What kind of pizza are you having?”

  AJ chuckled. “Whatever kind you want. Name it. As long as it’s Mike’s special vegetarian pizza that he says builds strong bodies. There’s plenty. He always makes several. It’s enough to have leftovers for a few days.”

  “AJ … I had several messages left for me on my home phone.”

  “From who?”

  “Jack Raines. He wants me to call him. I haven’t yet.”

  Kate leaned her shoulder against the doorframe. She saw one of the KDEX security personnel down at the far end of the hall. He was standing at ease, hands clasped in front, watching her. Plainclothes security was watching all the executives.

  “AJ, I’m hearing crickets again.”

  “Why does he want you to call him?”

  “He only said that it was important.”

  “How did he jump from me telling him about John—without me giving him John’s name—to calling you?”

  “That’s what had me concerned. He mentioned that he was an acquaintance of my Uncle Everett, though. So maybe that has something to do with it.”

  “The same Uncle Everett who was murdered a few weeks ago?”

  “That would be the one. But we have different last names.”

  “If you have different last names, how did Jack Raines connect your uncle to you?”

  “I don’t know. Everett’s lawyer contacted me about the will, so maybe the lawyer told him about me. Maybe he only wants to talk to me about my uncle for some reason. Maybe that’s all it is.

  “Or maybe my uncle could do what John and I can do. You said that Jack Raines’s book claimed this ability is hereditary, that it runs in families.”

  “That could be it,” AJ said, deep in thought. “He said he’s working on a second book that was going to go into more detail about it. Maybe he wants to interview you for research into that book. Did he say anything else?”

  “He left three messages. In the third one he said that it was very important that he speak with me. He said he didn’t want to explain why on an answering machine. He asked me to call him as soon as possible.”

  “So why haven’t you called him?”

  Kate hesitated. “I don’t know. I guess with all the things that have been happening I’m suspicious of everything. I wanted to talk to you about it first.”

  “Call him. I think he’s one of us. I think he’s someone we can trust. I really do. He understands about people like John—like you. He could end up being a great help to us in understanding what you did last night with those photos.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Yes. You were right about the couple. We got their confession. It went down just about like you said it did—the rape, the knives, all of it.”

  Kate wanted to bring up what the reviews from law enforcement people and criminal profilers had said about A Brief History of Evil, but if she was going to have dinner with the Janek family and spend the night, it would be better to talk to AJ about it then. They could even go over the reviews online together. Maybe AJ had an explanation for them. Maybe these reviewers were people in the law enforcement bureaucracy, and, as AJ had explained before, such people resented the kinds of things Jack Raines had brought up in his book. Or maybe she would be shocked by them.

  “How about I come over and have dinner with you, we talk about it, and then afterward we can go in your office and call Mr. Raines together?”

  “Perfect. I’d really like to talk to him again. And thanks, Kate.”

  “For what?”

  “For not giving me all that ‘I don’t need protection’ crap.”

  Kate smiled. “I don’t know that I need protection as much as I’d like more of Mike’s cooking and Ryan’s conversation.”

  AJ laughed. “See you when you can get here. —Oh, and the neighbors across the street are having a fiftieth-wedding-anniversary party. It’s going to be a big shindig. They have a large family with lots of children and grandchildren. Besides the ones who live here, they have friends and relatives coming in from around the country. So, sorry, but you’ll probably need to park a block or two away.”

  “All right.” Kate glanced up at the clock again. “I’ll be leaving work soon.”

  As she slipped her phone into her pocket, the security officer started toward her. The security personnel were supposed to blend in and be rather invisible. In his dark gray suit and striped blue tie, Bert looked like he could be any of the businesspeople who worked at KDEX or regularly visited, which was the point, except that perhaps he looked a little too bulky to fit comfortably into the suit. As he came toward her, he looked like he wanted to talk to her about something.

  Kate met him halfway down the hall. “What’s up, Bert?”

  “There’s a guy waiting for you in your office.”

  Kate tilted her head toward the man. “A guy. In my office.”

  “Says his name is Jack Raines.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  “How did he get in the building?” Kate asked after a moment of silent brooding as she rode up in the elevator with Bert.

  Security was supposed to be heightened. Granted, an author hardly seemed like a security threat, but still …

  Bert glanced over at her. “I assumed you knew him or maybe that he was coming.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  For the first time, concern darkened his coarse features. “He told Carlos down at the security desk that he flew into Chicago as soon as he heard about your brother’s death. He said it was shocking and awful. He said he was upset, and he could only imagine how upset you were. He asked if you were okay. He said that under the circumstances he couldn’t understand why in the world you were at work. To tell you the truth, that’s kind of what all of us have been thinking.”

  Kate looked at the man’s face reflected in the polished brass panel studded with two vertical rows of buttons. “Better to sit home all alone and cry?”

  Bert arched an eyebrow. “I guess you have a point. Anyway, he asked Carlos where and when the funeral was taking place. He has a bouquet of flowers. He asked if they had a vase to put them in and asked if they could hold his carry-on bag at the security station. Carlos said yes about holding the bag but said he would have to
ask you about a vase. Then he sent the guy up.”

  “I see,” Kate said, her gaze returning to the doors.

  “Is this some kind of problem?”

  “No, it isn’t that,” she said. “It’s just that I wasn’t expecting him and since I didn’t put him on the schedule I’m surprised that security let him come up.”

  “Carlos would have stopped him if he seemed at all like he was any kind of trouble,” Bert said, his tone echoing her own tension. “To the contrary, Carlos talked to him for a bit and thought he was a nice guy. Do you want me to escort him from the building?”

  Kate waved a hand in a dismissive gesture as the elevator came to a stop and the doors glided apart. Jack Raines had a lot of bad reviews of his book. Maybe he was an awful writer, but that was no reason to treat him like an intruder and throw him out. She and AJ did want to talk to him, after all.

  Still, the whole thing didn’t make any sense. Why was he there and what did he know about her? How did he know about her? There were too many missing pieces and unexplained connections to suit her. She guessed that there was only one way to get to the bottom of it.

  After taking a few steps toward her office, Kate turned back. “Do me a favor, Bert?”

  “Do you want me to go in with you?” he guessed, obviously concerned. “Or maybe go wring Carlos’s neck?”

  “No, no, it’s okay. I’ve heard of Mr. Raines before—he’s an author and he wrote a book I’m interested in, that’s all—but I’ve never met him and it’s getting late and it’s been a long day. Maybe you could hang around out here for a bit in case I want a way to cut the conversation short so I can go home?”

  “Miss Bishop, besides our regular duties of watching for anything suspicious in the building, everyone in security has orders to keep an eye on all the executives. You’re my gal today. Consider us engaged until you want to leave. After I escort you to your car, then, if you want, you can give me back the engagement ring. If not, and you want, I’ll go home with you and sit in your living room all night while you sleep.”

  Kate smiled as she nodded. “Okay, thanks, Bert. And I’ll be staying with a friend tonight.”

  First Bert, then AJ. It was reassuring to know that both at work and away from work she was going to be well protected until they got to the bottom of things.

  Bert looked like a sentry at a guard post as he stood with his back to the opposite wall not far away—far enough not to look intrusive, but close enough to watch over her office. He clasped his hands in a relaxed manner.

  When Kate walked into her office, the man waiting inside stood and she was abruptly face-to-face with Jack Raines.

  She knew the instant that she looked up into his eyes that this man was a stone cold killer.

  And yet, at the same time, he wasn’t.

  His eyes revealed traits both terrible and tender. He looked crazy dangerous. He looked calm and compassionate. In his eyes she saw barely restrained violence. In his eyes she saw a reasoned, resolute, intelligent man. It was all somehow mixed together in a way that was at once terrifying and captivating. He frightened her and at the same time made her feel safe.

  Looking into his eyes took her breath away.

  It was such a bewildering emotional reaction, unlike any she had ever had before, that she could only stare.

  She had been expecting to see a dreary, drab author.

  Jack Raines was anything but dreary and drab.

  He gazed back, seeming equally transfixed. The way he looked at her made her feel as if he was gazing into her soul, taking the measure of her character.

  “I can’t help being overwhelmed whenever I see eyes like yours,” he finally said under his breath, almost as if he didn’t realize he was saying it aloud.

  “Eyes like mine?”

  He nodded. “Even though I’ve seen eyes like yours before, I’m never fully prepared whenever I see them again.

  “But I was especially not prepared for yours.”

  Kate didn’t know quite what to do. It wasn’t like her to be at such a loss for words.

  More than anything, she wanted to reach out and put her hand on his arm, to test if he was real. Given what she saw in his eyes, she had trouble believing he could be real, much in the same way that it was disorienting to see a statue in marble that was so lifelike, so filled with force of personality, that you simply had to touch the cold stone to convince your brain that it wasn’t flesh and blood.

  She resisted the unexpected impulse to touch him.

  He seemed to grasp her unease and smiled. It was an easy smile, genuine and warm.

  “I’m sorry.” He held out his hand. “I’m Jack Raines.”

  “Kate Bishop,” she said half under her breath as she looked down at his big hand. Finally she took his hand and shook it.

  His grip was reassuringly firm but not too tight. It somehow conveyed more than any other handshake she’d ever had. His touch seemed to reveal the same mesmerizing contradictions she saw in his eyes.

  She remembered shaking hands with Matt Fenton, the crooked head of shipping in Dallas she had eventually turned over to army intelligence. She had told Theo that shaking hands with him had made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

  Jack Raines’s handshake and smile were the polar opposite of that experience. Even so, neither his eyes nor the warmth of his handshake entirely disarmed her. She was already suspicious of too many things to be so simply put at ease.

  “What do you mean about eyes like mine, Mr. Raines?”

  “I think you know what I mean,” he said with a ghost of a smile.

  “I do?”

  His smile grew a little broader, softening the incisive glint in his eyes, giving her his answer in no uncertain terms.

  Kate felt the first genuine wave of fear under the gaze of this man. He put her off balance unlike any man she had ever met before. AJ had read in Jack Raines’s book that there was a rare kind of predator who would be able to look into her eyes and recognize her ability.

  She wondered if this was one of those rare predators. She wondered if he was looking at her as prey. Was she a mere mouse in a meadow, gazing up at a raptor plummeting down toward her?

  And yet his eyes were markedly different from those of the cold-blooded killers she had seen in photos, even if he did share traits with them.

  But then again, she was no expert in such matters, so how was she to know that such a rare predator wouldn’t strike her in this very way? She was suddenly acutely aware of the distance to the door of her office, and Bert out in the hall.

  What was perhaps most surprising was that Jack Raines seemed to be a man not the least bit interested in the affectation of a conversational dance, and by the way he started without any pretense, he wanted her to know as much. She didn’t know if that represented benevolent purpose, or a window into lethal intent.

  Whatever he was, she knew that she had never met a man like him before. Most men had always struck her as rather dull and hollow or, at most, one-dimensional. None had ever sparked anything in her, any kind of emotional response. She often wondered if it was just her. She often feared that there was something missing in her and she was simply incapable of caring.

  In the back of her mind, though, she had always thought that a man like this, with eyes possessing such mystique, a man who could have such an effect on her, must exist, but until that moment she had never met one.

  Kate finally forced herself to break his gaze to take her hand back in order to close the door. She retreated into her analytical mode and deliberately made herself ignore his eyes in order to take in the rest of him, much the way she had done with the photos at AJ’s house the night before.

  By habit, she noted where his hands were as she mentally measured his distance from her.

  He wore blue jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. It fit him well. In fact, it fit him perfectly.

  He was a little taller than her, with a pleasing build—muscular, but not overly so li
ke Mike, AJ’s husband. His neat, light brown hair went astonishingly well with his spellbinding brown eyes. He wasn’t sporting the shaggy stubble or beard that seemed to be in fashion, allowing her to see the clean lines of his features.

  He looked to be the sort of man who made his own decisions rather than rely on trends to dictate his style. Everything about him seemed deliberate, from the way his hair fit his features to the way his jeans fit his form. That lack of style conformity made him stand out, not because he was odd-looking—quite the contrary—but because he was so uniquely his own man.

  He was probably the most exquisite, arresting, bewitching man she had ever met. It felt like a knot tightened in her core.

  “Why are you here?” she asked, trying not to sound rude.

  “Because you didn’t return my messages.”

  She didn’t want to get into the reasons as to why not, so she didn’t explain. He had a leather jacket draped over one arm, and in the other, like he might have cradled a precious newborn, he held a bouquet of flowers wrapped in a paper cone.

  He seemed to realize that he hadn’t been very considerate in the way he had started the conversation, so as he offered her the flowers he started over.

  “I’m sincerely sorry about your brother’s death. Please forgive me for showing up unannounced and unexpected like this.”

  “Then why did you? Did you come just to offer your sympathy? Or because I haven’t returned your call yet?”

  He straightened a bit. “No, no, it’s not like that at all. I came because I’m worried for your safety.”

  It wasn’t the kind of answer she had been expecting. Kate took the flowers he was holding out and set them on the desk.

  “How would you know about my brother’s death, if you don’t mind me asking? For that matter, how do you know me?”

  He drew in a deep breath as he glanced around her office and slowly let out a sigh as if trying to think how to condense a thousand things down into what was most important. “I came here to help you if I can.”

  That didn’t answer her question. She wondered if he was being evasive or simply didn’t know how to find a way to put into words what appeared to be not only complicated, but meaningful to him.