If Looks Could Kill (32 page)

"And give up all these perks? Don't be ridiculous."

There was a small silence, and Mac knew that Danny was doing his best to finally keep his opinions to himself. That, after everything else, did make Mac smile.

"I'll talk to you soon," he promised.

"Yeah," his brother countered. "When you need something else."

"Keep digging," he commanded.

"I've missed you, too."

"I know. Oh, by the way, did you get a DOB and place of birth on her?"

"Sure. Springfield."

Mac had just been about to set his drink down to pick up a pen, ready to write down a California zip code. "Illinois?" he demanded, halted once again.

"No. Missouri. Right down by you somewhere, isn't it?"

Mac finally set his drink down. But he didn't pick up the pen. He simply sat staring out the front window into the spring dusk. "Thanks." He didn't remember saying good-bye before he hung up.

* * *

Dinah wasn't there. Chris hung up before the second beep and dragged in a quick breath of frustration. Nothing all weekend. Chris wished like hell the agent would learn to be a little more dependable, especially when she was on the shortening list of suspects in a multiple homicide. Chris wished she could talk to her, could use the agent's brash pragmatism as a balm for her escalating anxiety. She needed something to settle her back down again. Not just Sue's sanity, but the sharp edge of Dinah's tongue to shave off those suspicions and fears that had been growing like bad fungus.

Well, it would just serve Dinah right. The next time Chris talked to her, it would be recorded for posterity, whether Dinah wanted it to be or not.

It was the next thing on her list of things to do. Unzipping her gym bag, Chris pulled out a black box with attendant wires and hooked it up to the phone. A recorder that would not only take calls but would save the time and date they were made. This way she'd maybe be able to catch any surprises and find out when they were being sent. She would have preferred to have the call identifier that could have located the phone number of anyone phoning in, but the local phone system wasn't wired for it.

Chris had pulled out all that equipment she'd hoarded over successive books. Recorders, directional mikes, hidden cameras, bugs, lock picks, binoculars, and night goggles. She wasn't exactly sure what she was going to use them all for yet. She hadn't even managed to convince herself that she would need to resort to less than legal intervention, much less set up a plan.

After all, what was she going to do? Wiretap Harlan? Wear a body mike around the judge? Break into Weird Allen's house while he was down at the video shop and see if he had a new collection of rings he couldn't explain?

Chris's stomach churned just with the idea of betraying her friends, her neighbors like that. Spying on them. Suspecting them.

But she didn't have a choice. Not anymore.

That was why she was going to do some clandestine research on her computer. Why she'd already rigged her own house for sound. No matter who it was doing these things, she had to know.

If only Dinah would call.

* * *

She woke to the darkness.

At first, she thought she was still trapped in the dream. Then she smelled something.

Flowers. Gladioli.

Chris opened her eyes. Closed them again. Fought the panic that exploded in her.

She couldn't see.

Chris bolted upright and cracked her knee against her desk. She stumbled back and sent her chair tumbling, the noise ricocheting in her head like a gunshot. Disorientation cleared. Terror didn't.

The shop. She'd fallen asleep in her office rather than face that sense of prescience back at the house. She'd fallen asleep with all the lights on, just as she always did. Only they were off now.

Her heart slammed into her ribs. The reflexive screams choked her. "No, Mama, no," she muttered instinctively, her voice small and tight. Pleading. "Please don't..."

And then she felt it. Something close, indistinct, like the first ripple in a pool of water. The invisible shudder of another presence.

Someone had been here. Or was still here with her. Chris didn't wait. She couldn't fight in the darkness, couldn't so much as think. She ran.

Her hands were out, but she couldn't see them. She knew where the door to the front room was, the door that was never closed, but she couldn't find it. She tripped over the coffeemaker and sent it crashing to the floor. She fought for the light. Reaching, stumbling, sweating. Suddenly eight years old again and shattered by the feel of the darkness against her eyes.

The wall. Chris flinched at the unyielding feel of it, too well remembered. Too primally feared. Memory overriding sense and threatening to send her back into the corner. Any corner. Just away. Just safe from the darkness, from the faint, awful scent of a pursuer straight out of her nightmares.

She could smell her own sweat. She could hear the rasp of her breathing, as harsh in the black silence as a saw on fresh wood. She could see a vague form, way at the back of her memory, the watching figure. Waiting. Knowing.

She fought for calm. She was losing fast.

The office door that was never closed was closed. Chris grabbed for the handle and pulled. She didn't even think anymore of the wall switch. It was too late for that. She didn't have to see the walls to feel them, all the old phobias piling one on top of the other until she couldn't breathe. She just had to escape.

Throwing the door open, she ran. There had never been a straight path to the doorway. Chris made one, upending wreathes and sending an entire shelf of azaleas toppling into the silk flower arrangements. She never noticed. Her eyes were locked into the spill of light from the street lamp outside. Her hands were reaching for it. Her lungs were bursting with the need to scream. She didn't even see the shadow waiting there at her front door.

She wasn't paying attention to anything but the salvation of that light, the promise of all the space of a spring night. She opened the door and ran right into something solid.

That was when she finally gave in to the scream.

"Holy shit, settle down."

Hands clamped around her arms. Chris drew breath to scream again, and ended up with one of those hands over her mouth.

"It's me," Mac informed her briskly. "MacNamara. Scream again and I'm gonna lose my job."

For a minute, instinct overrode sanity and Chris fought.

"Chris, hey..."

It was still dark outside, the world composing itself in shadows and shapes. Chris heard the first train of the early morning rumble through at the edge of town and felt the damp air on her sweaty face. Reality crept back over the ragged glass of terror. She shuddered and went quiet.

Carefully Mac took his hand away. He didn't let go of her arm. Chris did her best not to flinch away, knowing damn well he was all that kept her upright.

"I've been knocking for ten minutes," Mac explained. "I figured you must have fallen asleep. I was just about to go on in." He bent a little closer to peer at her. "You're not just glad to see me, are you?"

Chris's giggle sounded just a little too hysterical for her as she shook her head. An explanation for what had awakened her. Still nothing for what she'd felt in that office.

"The lights..." she managed, her voice scratching like a badly drawn bow. "They went off. I... I think someone was in there."

Mac didn't bother with remonstrances about safety and staying where she was. He simply shoved her far enough out of the way for safety and reached around to pull the Glock .40 from the back of his shorts.

"Watch her," he said, crouching on his way into the store.

"Glad to," another male voice answered.

Chris managed to straighten and wipe her hands against her pants legs. "Who the hell are you?" she demanded. He was short, stocky, bald, with a beaut of a shiner beginning to show even under the street lamp. "And what the hell are you two doing at my shop at this hour of the night?"

His smile was as irrepressible as a child's. "Dick Franklin," he introduced himself easily. "And I believe I was on my way to be booked for breaking and entering."

"Breaking and entering? Where?"

"Your house. I'm a free-lance reporter from St. Louis."

That was all she needed. Chris didn't even bother to groan. She simply sank down right there on the sidewalk and put her head into her hands.

Luckily for him, Franklin had the sense to keep his thoughts to himself.

Mac returned no more than three minutes later. "In the mood to redecorate in there?" was all he said.

Chris never lifted her head. She was shaking so badly she wouldn't have been able to stand right then if she'd wanted to.

"I find azaleas pretentious," she retorted, eyes wide open, her field of vision limited to shoes and shadows. It didn't help. It didn't matter. She couldn't move. That feeling of eyes in the darkness wouldn't go away. She knew Mac had been unsuccessful. Even so, there had been something. It gnawed at her like a rat.

"Nobody in there but the phone tap," he said. "When did that arrive?"

She struggled for a calming breath and at least a semblance of control. "Tonight. Why were you in the neighborhood?"

Chris half expected Mac to inform her it was time to buck up and attempt to get her on her feet so she could get on home. Much to her everlasting astonishment, he did neither. He resettled his gun and joined her on the pavement. She wasn't sure what the reporter did.

"I told you," Mac said. "I came to visit you."

Chris didn't move. "In your underwear."

She imagined that he looked down at the torn T-shirt and running shorts he was wearing. From her position, she could now see a length of hairy leg and battered running shoes. It made her want to laugh. But then, if she did, she wasn't going to stop.

"I was having some trouble sleeping," he admitted. "Went down to the office to check up on some stuff when the B-and-E call came in."

Chris motioned limply. "Him."

"Him."

"Too bad I had to miss it. I have a Beretta that would have been perfect for him."

That earned her a small pause. "You have a gun?"

Then she did chuckle. She even managed to keep it fairly sane. "L. J. left out a whole lot in your orientation, didn't he? He's the one who taught me to use it. Don't worry, I only keep it as a research tool. There wasn't anybody inside the shop just now, was there?"

"Not when I got there. Why did you think somebody was there?"

She shuddered, even though the night was fairly warm. "I felt something when I woke up... at least I think I did. And the lights were off. I never would have done that."

Another pause. Beyond Chris's field of vision a car scrunched to a sudden stop and a door opened. A pair of hard-soled shoes hurried across the street. Chris figured that Curtis had finally decided to make an appearance. She wondered where he'd been napping when the chief had gotten the call.

"Tell you what," Mac offered. "Why don't I let Curtis take care of Mr. Franklin here, and you and I can go someplace and talk."

Chris squeezed her eyes shut, her stomach lurching with something she couldn't put a name to yet. Something she didn't want to face. "Kozy Kitchen isn't open yet."

"We'll think of something."

She just nodded, her head still in her folded arms.

"Chris?" Curtis greeted them all, pulling to a stop at the edge of the sidewalk. "That you? What happened?"

"Anything to that call?" Mac asked.

"Aw, it was another prank. Probably Billy Rae Trumbell again. She OK, chief?"

"She's fine, Curtis," Chris assured him dryly without moving. "She's just paying obeisance to the ancient concrete gods in thanks for front doors."

Curtis shuffled just a little bit before he offered a slightly bemused, "You attendin' the service too, Chief?"

"A person should never pray alone," Mac retorted easily from where he still sat. "Why don't you escort the prisoner on in, Curtis? I'll be there in a while to talk to him."

It took Curtis a minute to sort things out, but in the end Chris and Mac were left to sit out on the sidewalk in front of her store as the night began to pale toward morning.

"This probably isn't a good idea," Chris said, finally lifting her head. Then she saw why Mac was still sitting with his back to the store window, his arms atop his knees, and realized that she really hadn't been the only one wishing her gods were porcelain instead of concrete.

"You want to go back in?" he asked wiping at his forehead with a shaking hand.

"No."

"Home?"

"No."

He nodded. "Good. I'm not in the mood for a walk yet, anyway."

Chris actually managed a dismal laugh. "I do know the feeling. How'd you know I was here?"

"Curtis. He's been spending a lot of time parked in front of your house. He saw you come over earlier."

"You really have been keeping an eye on me."