Hiding in the Shadows (34 page)

In a raw voice, he said, “I saw her
body
. I see it torn and mangled every time I close my eyes. I have to plan a memorial service so everybody who knew her can say goodbye.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Kane walked to the window and stood staring out. “I told you I’d say what I had to, even if it wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”

She closed her eyes. “Yes.”

“I can’t—I don’t know how to accept this, Faith. I don’t know if I can.”

She wanted to tell him it was all right, that she would wait until he came to terms with it all. Wanted to tell him again that she loved him, had always loved him. But she hurt too much and her throat was too tight to allow her to say anything at all.

Her purse was on a chair near the door. It was all she needed, really; most of the clothing she had here didn’t fit—one way or another. And she was starting over anyway.

She picked up her purse, and she walked out.

Kane heard the door close quietly. Without turning, he said to the empty apartment, “But I don’t want you to go.”

•     •     •

It just didn’t seem like Christmas with a temperature of nearly seventy and brilliant sunshine, but the insistent carols on the radio warbled again and again that it was beginning to look that way and Santa Claus was coming and bells were jingling.…

Faith turned off the radio and thought how perfectly understandable it was that the suicide rate went up around the holidays.

Alone, she wouldn’t have been able to bear it. Thank God for Haven House, where she had spent hours helping decorate and bake and wrap presents for the kids. Thank God for Katie, who had been puzzled by Faith’s sudden inability to play the piano, but forgiving.

There weren’t many blanks left now. There was even, finally, acceptance. And gratitude.

Faith went back to trying to concentrate on the college-course catalog, silently debating whether to put her writing skills to good use in a communications field other than journalism. Or maybe advertising. Even if she had to take just general-interest courses until she made up her mind, she fully intended to sign up for the next semester. She needed to get on with her life.

She had ordered a pizza to be delivered, so when the doorbell rang she went to answer it with a twenty in her hand.

“I never take money from redheads,” Kane said.

“I was … expecting a pizza.” Faith hoped she wasn’t staring at him as hungrily as she thought she
was. Then again, maybe he’d think she was longing for pepperoni and cheese.

“May I come in?”

“Oh—of course.”

“Very nice,” he said, looking around at the comfortable overstuffed furniture and elegant but casual decorations. “This looks more like you.”

Faith was afraid to probe that remark. “I needed to … start over here. A clean slate.”

He looked at her for an unreadable moment, then said abruptly, “I saw you at the memorial service.”

“Yes. It was lovely.” She had seen him, too, but had kept to the fringes of the crowd. She had spoken to Bishop briefly; she had forced herself not to ask him anything about Kane, and he had volunteered nothing.

“It was … closure,” Kane said.

“Was it?”

He took a step toward her. “I told you I’d say what I had to this time.”

Faith swallowed hard. “Yes.”

He reached out to her, his hand sliding under her hair to lie warmly alongside her neck. “And that I won’t stop myself from touching you this time because I’m not sure you want to be touched.”

She closed her eyes and pressed herself harder against his hand in mute pleasure.

“And that I won’t let you shut me out of the parts of your life that matter,” Kane finished unsteadily, and kissed her. “Not again. Never again.”

When she could, Faith said, “I’ll never try to shut you out of any part of my life, I promise.”

He kissed her again, his hunger intense, unhidden,
his arms drawing her close, holding her as if he meant never to let her go. “What I have to say is that I love you, Faith. Whoever you were, whoever you are or will ever be—I love you. And that’s all that matters.”

Faith looked into his eyes, deep enough to see the love and the beginnings of belief, of acceptance. She reached up and touched his face, the backs of her fingers stroking gently.

“That’s all that matters. I love you, Kane.”

The pizza delivery boy thought he must have been given the wrong address, because even though he rang and rang, nobody ever came.

If you loved

HIDING IN THE SHADOWS

you won’t want to miss a taste of her next heartstopping thriller
,

SENSE OF EVIL

available from

BANTAM BOOKS

PROLOGUE

T
he voices wouldn’t leave him alone
.

Neither would the nightmares.

He threw back the covers and stumbled from the bed. A full moon beamed enough light into the house for him to find his way to the sink in the bathroom.

He carefully avoided looking into the mirror, but was highly conscious of his shadowy reflection as he fumbled for a drinking cup and turned on the tap. He drank three cups of water, vaguely surprised that he was so thirsty and yet … not.

He was usually thirsty these days.

It was part of the change.

He splashed his face with the cold water again and again, not caring about the mess he was making. By the third splash, he realized he was crying.

Wimp. Spineless coward
.

“I’m not,” he muttered, sending the next handful of water to wet his aching head.

You’re afraid. Pissing-in-your-pants afraid
.

Half-consciously, he pressed his thighs together. “I’m not. I can do it. I told you I could do it.”

Then do it now
.

He froze, bent over the sink, water dribbling from his cupped hands. “Now?”

Now
.

“But … it’s not ready yet. If I do it now—”

Coward. I should have known you couldn’t go through with it. I should have known you’d fail me
.

He straightened slowly, this time looking deliberately into the dim mirror. Even with the moonlight, all he could make out was the shadowy shape of his head, dark blurs of features, faint gleam of eyes. The murky outline of a stranger.

What choice did he have?

Just look at yourself. Wimp. Spineless coward. You’ll never be a real man, will you?

He could feel water dripping off his chin. Or maybe it was the last of the tears. He sucked in air, so deep his chest hurt, then let it out slowly.

Maybe you can buy a backbone—

“I’m ready,” he said. “I’m ready to do it.”

I don’t believe you
.

He turned off the taps and walked out of the bathroom. Went back to his bedroom, where the moonlight spilled through the big window to spotlight the old steamer trunk set against the wall beneath it. He knelt down and carefully opened it.

The raised lid blocked off some of the moonlight, but he didn’t need light for this. He reached inside, let his fingers search gingerly until they felt the cold steel. He lifted the knife and held it in the light, turning it this way and that, fascinated by the gleam of the razor-sharp serrated edge.

“I’m ready,” he murmured. “I’m ready to kill her.”

*    *    *

The voices wouldn’t leave her alone.

Neither would the nightmares.

She had drawn the drapes before going to bed in an effort to close out the moonlight, but even though the room was dark, she was very conscious of that huge moon painting everything on the other side of her window with the stark, eerie light that made her feel so uneasy.

She hated full moons.

The clock on her nightstand told her it was nearly three in the morning. The hot, sandpapery feel of her eyelids told her she really needed to try to go back to sleep. But the whisper of the voices in her head told her that even trying would be useless, at least for a while.

She pushed back the covers and slid from her bed. She didn’t need light to show her the way to the kitchen, but once there turned on the light over the stove so she wouldn’t burn herself. Hot chocolate, that was the ticket.

And if that didn’t work, there was an emergency bottle of whiskey in the back of the pantry for just such a night as this. It was probably two-thirds empty by now.

There had been a few nights like this, especially in the last year or so.

She got what she needed and heated the pan of milk slowly, stirring the liquid so it wouldn’t stick. Adding in chocolate syrup while the milk heated, because that was the way she liked to make her hot chocolate. In the silence of the house, with no other sounds to distract her, it was difficult to keep her own mind quiet. She didn’t want to listen to the whispering there, but it was like catching a word or two of an overheard conversation
and
knowing
you needed to listen more closely because they were talking about you.

But she was tired. It got harder and harder, as time went on, to bounce back. Harder for her body to recover. Harder for her mind to heal.

Given her druthers, she would put off tuning in to the voices until tomorrow. Or the next day, maybe.

The hot chocolate was ready. She turned off the burner and poured the steaming milk into a mug. She put the pan in the sink, then picked up her mug and carried it toward the little round table in the breakfast nook.

Almost there, she was stopped in her tracks by a wave of red-hot pain that washed over her body with the suddenness of a blow. Her mug crashed to the floor, landing unbroken but spattering her bare legs with hot chocolate.

She barely felt that pain.

Eyes closed, sucked into the red and screaming maelstrom of someone else’s agony, she tried to keep breathing despite the repeated blows that splintered bones and shredded lungs. She could taste blood, feel it bubbling up in her mouth. She could feel the wet heat of it soaking her blouse and running down her arms as she lifted her hands in a pitiful attempt to ward off the attack.

I know what you did. I know. I know. You bitch, I know what you did—

She jerked and cried out as a more powerful thrust than all the rest drove the serrated knife into her chest, penetrating her heart with such force, she knew the only thing that stopped it going deeper still was the hilt. Her hands fumbled, touching what felt like blood-wet gloved hands, large and strong, that retreated immediately to leave her weakly holding the
handle of the knife impaling her heart. She felt a single agonized throb of her heart that forced more blood to bubble, hot and thick, into her mouth, and then it was over.

Almost over.

She opened her eyes and found herself bending over the table, her hands flat on the pale, polished surface. Both hands were covered with blood, and between them, scrawled in her own handwriting across the table, was a single bloody word.

HASTINGS

She straightened slowly, her entire body aching, and held her hands out in front of her, watching as the blood slowly faded, until it was gone. Her hands were clean and unmarked. When she looked at the table again, there was no sign of a word written there in blood.

“Hastings,” she murmured. “Well, shit.”

Read on for a peek at

ONCE A THIEF

Kay Hooper’s page-turner featuring a dangerously charismatic master jewel thief, available from

BANTAM BOOKS

Museum exhibit director Morgan West is days away from unveiling the much-anticipated Mysteries Past show—a priceless jewel collection on loan from millionaire Max Bannister. But when Morgan discovers that a criminal mastermind is waiting and watching for just the right time to strike, the stage is set for a complex game of cat-and-mouse …

B
arely feeling the cold, hard marble beneath her
feet, Morgan darted through one of the two big archways without immediately knowing why she’d made the choice. Then she realized. There had to be more than one of them and they’d be after the most portable valuables, wouldn’t they? Jewelry, then—and a large display of precious gems lay in the direction she hadn’t chosen.

Along her route were several larger and less valuable—to the thieves—displays of statuary, weapons, and assorted artifacts, many large enough to offer a hiding place.

She made another desperate turn through an archway that appeared to house a room dimmer than some of the others, and found herself neatly caught. A long arm that seemed made of iron rather than flesh lifted her literally off her feet, clamped her arms to her sides, and hauled her back against a body that had all the softness of granite, and a big, dark hand covered her mouth before she could do more than gasp.

For one terrified instant, Morgan had the eerie
thought that one of the darkly looming statues of fierce warriors from the past had reached out and grabbed her. Then a low voice hissed in her ear, and the impression of supernatural doings faded.

“Shhhh!”

He wasn’t a security guard. The hand over her mouth was encased in a thin, supple black glove, and as much of his arm as she could see was also wearing black. Several hard objects in the vicinity of his waist dug into her back painfully. Then he pulled her impossibly closer as running footsteps approached, and she distinctly felt the roughness of wool—a ski mask?—as his hard jaw brushed against her temple.

Better the devil you know than the one you don’t
 … The thought ran through her mind, but for some reason she didn’t struggle in the man’s powerful embrace—probably because she didn’t know the devil out in the hallway any better than she knew this one. Instead, she concentrated on controlling her ragged breathing so that it wouldn’t be audible, her eyes fixed on the archway of the room. She realized only then that she’d bolted into a room with only one door. Her captor had literally carried her back into a corner and in the shadows behind one of the fierce warrior statues, and she doubted they were visible from the doorway.