by Nora Roberts
She obeyed. He had shaken her more than he realized. She tried to comfort herself with the fact that they were no longer arguing about marriage. But he had reminded her of something she’d allowed herself to forget for hours.
“All right. He was a night stocker at a market, and he listened to the show. He’d call in on his break, and we’d talk a little. I’d play his requests. One day I did a remote—I can’t remember where—and he showed up. He seemed like a nice kid. Twenty-three or -four, I guess. Pretty,” she remembered. “He had a pretty, sort of harmless face. I gave him an autograph. After that he started to write me at the station. Send poems. Just sweet, romantic stuff. Nothing suggestive.”
“Go on.”
“Boyd, really—”
“Go on.”
The best she could do was a muttered oath. “When I realized he was getting in too deep, I pulled back. He asked me out, and I told him no.” Embarrassed, she blew out a breath. “A couple of times he was waiting out in the parking lot when I got off my shift. He never touched me. I wasn’t afraid of him. He was so pathetic that I felt sorry for him, and that was another mistake. He misunderstood. I guess he followed me home from work, because he started to show up at the apartment. He’d leave flowers and slip notes under the door. Kid stuff,” she insisted.
“Did he ever try to get in?”
“He never tried to force his way in. I told you he was harmless.”
“Tell me more.”
She rubbed her hands over her face. “He’d just beg. He said he loved me, that he would always love me and we were meant to be together. And that he knew I loved him, too. It got worse. He would start crying when he called. He talked about killing himself if I didn’t marry him. I got the package with the ring, and I sent it back with a letter. I was cruel. I felt I had to be. I’d already accepted the job here in Denver. It was only a few weeks after the business with the ring that we moved.”
“Has he contacted you since you’ve been in Denver?”
“No. And it’s not him who’s calling. I know I’d recognize his voice. Besides, he never threatened me. Never. He was obsessed, but he wasn’t violent.”
“I’m going to check it out.” He rose, then held out a hand. “You’d better get some sleep. We’re going to head back early.”
***
She didn’t sleep. Neither did he. And they lay in the dark, in silence; there was another who kept vigil through the night.
He lit the candles. New ones he’d just bought that afternoon. Their wicks were as white as the moon. They darkened and flared as he set the match against them. He lay back on the bed with the picture pressed against his naked breast—against the twin blades of the tattooed knives.
Though the hour grew late, he remained alert. Anger fueled him. Anger and hate. Beside him the radio hummed, but it wasn’t Cilla’s voice he heard.
She had gone away. He knew she was with that man, and she would have given herself to that man. She’d had no right to go. She belonged to John. To John, and to him.
She was beautiful, just as John had described her. She had deceptively kind eyes. But he knew better. She was cruel. Evil. And she deserved to die. Almost lovingly, he reached down a hand to the knife that lay beside him.
He could kill her the way he’d been taught. Quick and clean. But there was little satisfaction in that, he knew. He wanted her to suffer first. He wanted her to beg. As John had begged.
When she was dead, she would be with John. His brother would rest at last. And so would he.
Chapter 10
The heat was working overtime in the precinct, and so was Boyd. While Maintenance hammered away at the faulty furnace, he pored over his files. He’d long since forsaken his jacket. His shoulder holster was strapped over a Denver P.D. T-shirt that had seen too many washings. He’d propped open a window in the conference room so that the stiff breeze from outside fought with the heat still pouring through the vents.
Two of his ongoing cases were nearly wrapped, and he’d just gotten a break in an extortion scam he and Althea had been working on for weeks. There was a court appearance at the end of the week he had to prepare for. He had reports to file and calls to make, but his attention was focused on O’Roarke, Priscilla A.
Ignoring the sweat that dribbled down his back, he read over the file on Jim Jackson, KHIP’s all-night man. It interested and annoyed him.
Cilla hadn’t bothered to mention that she had worked with Jackson before, in Richmond. Or that Jackson had been fired for drinking on the job. Not only had he broadcast rambling streams of consciousness, but he had taken to nodding off at the mike and leaving his audience with that taboo of radio. Dead air.
He’d lost his wife, his home and his prime spot as the morning jock and program director on Richmond’s number-two Top 40 station.
When he’d gotten the ax, Cilla had taken over his duties as program director. Within six months, the number-two station had been number one. And Jackson had been picked up for drunk and disorderly.
As Althea stepped into the conference room carrying two dripping cans of soda, Boyd tossed the Jackson file across the table. Saying nothing, she passed one can to Boyd, popped the top on the second, then glanced at the file.
“He’s clean except for a couple of D and D’s,” Althea commented.
“Revenge is high on the list for this kind of harassment. Could be he’s carrying a grudge because she replaced him in Richmond and outdid him.” Boyd took a swig of the warming soda. “He’s only had the night spot in Denver for three months. The station manager in Richmond claims Jackson got pretty bent when they let him go. Tossed around some threats, blamed Cilla for undermining his position. Plus, you add a serious drinking problem to the grudge.”
“You want to bring him in?”
“Yeah. I want to bring him in.”
“Okay. Why don’t we make it a doubleheader?” She picked up the file on Nick Peters. “This guy looks harmless—but then I’ve dated harmless-looking guys before and barely escaped with my skin. He doesn’t date at all.” She shrugged out of her turquoise linen jacket and draped it carefully over her chair back. “It turns out that Deborah has a couple of classes with him. Over the weekend she mentioned that he pumps her for information on Cilla all the time. Personal stuff. What kind of flowers does she like? What’s her favorite color? Is she seeing anyone?”
She reached in her skirt pocket and drew out a bag of jelly beans. Carefully, and after much thought, she selected a yellow one. “Apparently he got upset when Deborah mentioned that Cilla had been married before. Deborah didn’t think much of it at the time—put it down to his being weird. But she was worried enough to mention it over the weekend. She’s a nice kid,” Althea put in. “Real sharp. She’s totally devoted to Cilla.” Althea hesitated. “Over the course of the weekend, she told me about their parents.”
“We’ve already covered that ground.”
“I know we did.” Althea picked up a pencil, ran it through her fingers, then set it aside again. “Deborah seems to think you’re good for her sister.” She waited until Boyd looked up. “I just wonder if her sister’s good for you.”
“I can take care of myself, partner.”
“You’re too involved, Boyd.” She lowered her voice, though it couldn’t have carried over the noise outside of the closed door. “If the captain knew you were hung up, personally, with an assignment, he’d yank you. He’d be right.”
Boyd kicked back in his chair. He studied Althea’s face, a face he knew as well as his own. Resentment simmered in him, but he controlled it. “I can still do my job, Thea. If I had any doubts about that, I’d yank myself.”
“Would you?”
His eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I would. My first priority is my assignment’s safety. If you want to go to the captain, that’s your right. But I’m going to take care of Cilla, one way or the other.”
“You’re the one who’s going to get hurt,” she murmured. “One way or the other.”
“My life. My problem.”
The anger she’d hoped to control bubbled to the surface. “Damn it, Boyd, I care about you. It was one thing when you were infatuated by her voice. I didn’t even see it as a problem when you met her and had a few sparks flying. But now you’re talking serious stuff like marriage, and I know you mean it. She’s got trouble, Boyd. She is trouble.”
“You and I are assigned to take care of the trouble she’s got. As for the rest, it’s my business, Thea, so save the advice.”
“Fine.” Irked, she flipped open another file. “Bob Williams—Wild Bob—is so clean he squeaks. I haven’t turned up a single connection with Cilla other than the station. He has a good marriage, goes to church, belongs to the Jaycees and for the last two weeks has been accompanying his wife to Lamaze classes.”
“Nothing’s turned up on the morning guys.” Boyd took another swallow of the soda and wished it was an ice-cold beer.
“KHIP’s just one big happy family.”
“So it seems,” Boyd mumbled. “Harrison looks solid, but I’m still checking. He’s the one who hired her, and he actively pursued her, offering her a hefty raise and some tidy benefits to persuade her to move to Denver and KHIP.”
Althea meticulously chose a red jelly bean. “What about the McGillis guy?”
“I’m expecting a call from Chicago.” He opened another file. “There’s the maintenance man. Billy Lomus. War veteran—Purple Heart and a Silver Star in Nam. Did two tours of duty before the leg mustered him out. He seems to be a loner. Never stays in one place more than a year or so. He did drop down in Chicago for a while a couple years back. No family. No close friends. Settled in Denver about four months ago. Foster homes as a kid.”
Althea didn’t look up. “Rough.”
“Yeah.” Boyd studied her bent head. There weren’t many who knew that Althea Grayson had been shuffled from foster home to foster home as a child. “It doesn’t look like we’re going to have much luck inside the station.”
“No. Maybe we’ll do better with McGillis.” She looked up, face calm, voice even. Only one who knew her well would have seen that she was still angry. “You want to start with Jackson or Peters?”
“Jackson.”
“Okay. We’ll try it the easy way first. I’ll call and ask him to come in.”
“Thanks. Thea,” he added before she could rise, “you have to be hit before you can understand. I can’t turn off my feelings, and I can’t turn back from what I’ve been trained to do.”
She only sighed. “Just watch your step, partner.”
He intended to. And while he was watching his step, he was going to watch Cilla’s. She wouldn’t care for that, Boyd thought as he continued to study the files. From the moment he had told her that he loved her, she’d been trying to pull back.
But she wasn’t afraid of him, he mused. She was afraid of herself. The deeper her feelings for him went, the more afraid she became to acknowledge them. Odd, but he hadn’t known he would need the words. Yet he did. More than anything he could remember, he needed to have her look at him and tell him that she loved him.
A smile, a touch, a moan in the night—it wasn’t enough. Not with Cilla. He needed the bond, and the promise, that verbal connection. Three words, he thought. A simple phrase that came easily, often too easily—and could change the structure of people’s lives.
They wouldn’t come easily to Cilla. If she ever pushed them through the self-doubts, the barrier of defense, the fear of being hurt, she would mean them with all of her heart. It was all he needed, Boyd decided. And he would never let her take them back.
For now he had to put aside his own wants and needs and be a cop. To keep her safe, he had to be what she feared most. For her sake, he couldn’t afford to think too deeply about where their lives would go once he closed the files.
“Boyd?” Althea poked her head back in the door. “Jackson’s on his way in.”
“Good. We should be able to catch Peters before he checks in at the station. I want to—” He broke off when the phone rang beside him. “Fletcher.” He held up a hand to wave Althea inside. “Yeah. I appreciate you checking into it for me.” He muffled the phone for a moment. “Chicago P.D. That’s right,” he continued into the receiver. “John McGillis.” Taking up a pencil, he began making notes on a legal pad. In midstroke he stopped, fingers tightening. “When?” His oath was strong and quiet. “Any family? He leave a note? Can you fax it? Right.” On the legal pad he wrote in bold letters: Suicide.
In silence, Althea lowered a hip to the table.
“Anything you can get me. You’re sure he didn’t have a brother? No. I appreciate it, Sergeant.” He hung up and tapped the pencil against the pad. “Son of a bitch.”
“We’re sure it’s the same McGillis?” Althea asked.
“Yeah. Cilla gave me the information she had on him, plus a physical description. It’s the same guy. He cashed himself in almost five months ago.” He let out a long breath. “Slit his wrists with a hunting knife.”
“It fits, Boyd.” Althea leaned over to check his notes. “You said McGillis was obsessing on Cilla, that he’d threatened to kill himself if she didn’t respond. The guy over the phone is blaming her for the death of his brother.”
“McGillis didn’t have a brother. Only child, survived by his mother.”
“Brother could be an emotional term. A best friend.”
“Maybe.” He knew it fit. What worried him was how Cilla would react. “The Chicago police are cooperating. They’re sending us what information they’ve got. But I think it might be worth a trip east. We might get a lead from the mother.”
Althea nodded. “Are you going to tell Cilla?”
“Yeah, I’m going to tell her. We’ll talk to Jackson and Peters first, see if we can make a connection to McGillis.”
***
Across town, Cilla dashed from the shower to the phone. She wanted it to be Boyd. She wanted him to tell her that he’d found John McGillis happily stocking shelves in Chicago. With her hair dripping down her back, she snatched up the phone.
“Hello.”
“Did you sleep with him? Did you let him touch you?”
Her damp hands shook as she gripped the receiver. “What do you want?”
“Did you make promises to him the way you made promises to my brother? Does he know you’re a whore and a murderer?”
“No. I’m not. I don’t know why—”
“He’ll have to die, too.”
Her blood froze. The fear she thought she’d come to understand clawed viciously at her throat “No! Boyd has nothing to do with this. It’s—it’s between you and me, just as you’ve said all along.”
“He’s involved now. He made his choice, like you made yours when you killed my brother. When I’m finished with him, I’m coming for you. Do you remember what I’m going to do to you? Do you remember?”
“You don’t have to hurt Boyd. Please. Please, I’ll do anything you want”
“Yes, you will.” There was laughter, too, long, eerily lilting. “You’ll do anything.”
“Please. Don’t hurt him.” She continued to shout into the phone long after the connection went dead. With a sob tearing at her throat, she slammed the receiver down and raced to the bedroom to dress.
She had to talk to Boyd. To see him, face-to-face. To make certain he was unharmed. And to warn him, she thought frantically. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, lose someone else she loved.
With her hair still streaming wet, she dashed down the stairs and yanked open the door. She nearly ran over Nick Peters.
“Oh, God.” Her hands clutched at her chest. “Nick.”
“I’m sorry.” With fumbling hands, he pushed up his glasses. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I have to go.” She was already digging in her purse for her keys. “He called. I have to get to Boyd. I have to warn him.”
“Hold on.” Nick picked up the keys, which she’d dropped on the stoop. “You’re in no shap
e to drive.”
“I’ve got to get to Boyd,” she said desperately, gripping Nick by his coat. “He said he would kill him.”
“You’re all worked up about the cop.” Nick’s mouth thinned. “He looks like he can handle himself.”
“You don’t understand,” she began.
“Yeah, I understand. I understand just fine. You went away with him.” The note of accusation surprised her, and unnerved her enough that she glanced toward the black-and-white sitting at her curb. Then she shook herself. It was foolish, absolutely foolish, to be afraid of Nick.
“Nick, I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to talk right now. Can we get into this later, at the station?”
“I quit.” He bit off the words. “I quit this morning.”
“Oh, but why? You’re doing so well. You have a future at KHIP.”
“You don’t even know,” he said bitterly. “And you don’t care.”
“But I do.” When she reached out to touch his arm, he jerked back.
“You let me make a fool of myself over you.”
Oh, God, not again. She shook her head. “Nick, no.”
“You wouldn’t even let me get close, and then he comes along and it’s all over before you let it begin. Now they want me to come down to the police station. They want to question me.” His lips trembled. “They think I’m the one who’s been calling you.”
“There has to be a mistake—”
“How could you?” he shouted. “How could you believe I’d want to hurt you?” He dropped the keys back into her hand. “I just came by to let you know I’d quit, so you don’t have to worry about me bothering you again.”
“Nick, please. Wait.” But he was already striding off to his car. He didn’t look back.
Because her knees were weak, Cilla lowered herself to the stoop. She needed a moment, she realized. A moment to steady herself before she got behind the wheel of a car.
How could she have been so stupid, so blind, that she couldn’t see that Nick’s pride and ego were on the line? Now she had hurt him, simply by being unaware. Somehow she had to straighten out this mess her life had become. Then she had to start making amends.
Steadier, she rose, carefully locked the door, then walked to her car.
***
She hated police stations—had from the first. Fingering her plastic visitor’s badge, she walked down the corridor. It had been scrubbed recently, and she caught the scent of pine cleaner over the ever-present aroma of coffee.
Phones rang. An incessant, strident whirl of sound punctuated by voices raised to a shout or lowered to a grumble. Cilla turned into a doorway, to the heart of the noise, and scanned the room.
It was different from the cramped quarters where her mother had worked. And died. There was more space, less grime, and there was the addition of several computer workstations. The clickety-clack of keyboards was an underlying rhythm.
There were men and women, jackets off, shirts limp with sweat, though it was a windy fifty-five outside.
On a nearby bench, a woman rocked a fretful baby while a cop tried to distract it by jiggling a pair of handcuffs. Across the room, a young girl, surely just a teenager, related information to a trim woman cop in jeans and a sweatshirt. Silent tears coursed down the girl’s face.
And Cilla remembered.
She remembered sitting in a corner of a squad room, smaller, hotter, dingier, than the one she stood in now. She had been five or six, and the babysitter had canceled because she’d been suffering from stomach flu. Cilla’s mother had taken her to work—something about a report that couldn’t wait to be written. So Cilla had sat in a corner with a doll and a Dr. Seuss book, listening to the phones and the voices. And waiting for her mother to take her home.
There had been a water cooler, she remembered. And a ceiling fan. She had watched the bubbles glug in the water and the blades whirl sluggishly. For hours. Her mother had forgotten her. Until, suffering from the same bug as her sitter, Cilla had lost her breakfast all over the squad room floor.
Shaky, Cilla wiped a hand over her damp brow. It was an old memory, she reminded herself. And not all of it. After she had been sick, her mother had cleaned her up, held her, taken her home and pampered her for the rest of the day. It wasn’t fair to anyone to remember only the unhappy side.
But as she stood there she could feel all too clearly the dragging nausea, the cold sweat, and the misery of being alone and forgotten.
Then she saw him, stepping from another room. His T-shirt was damp down the front. Jackson was behind him, his hat in place, his face sheened with sweat and nerves. Flanking him was Althea.
Jackson saw her first. He took a hesitant step toward her, then stopped and shrugged. Cilla didn’t hesitate. She walked to him to take his hand in both of hers.
“You okay?”
“Sure.” Jackson shrugged again, but his fingers held tight on hers. “We just had to clear some things up. No big deal.”
“I’m sorry. Look, if you need to talk, you can wait for me.”
