Jeffrey returned to the office and shut the door behind him. He wore a thin black Armani sweater with three bold horizontal gray stripes across his broad chest, over charcoal wool flat front pants. A pair of black leather boots was the perfect finish. His sandy brown hair was cut short with a stylish bit of length on top. He was the only straight man she knew who loved designer clothes and good hair as much as she did.
“What did you think of her?” he asked, knowing by the look on her face that she’d already formed an opinion.
“Freaky,” she said with a smile. Lydia stood and Jeffrey pulled her in to him. She took in the scent of his cologne, feeling his warm hard body against hers and the stubble on his chin against the soft smooth skin of her face. She wrapped her arms around his waist.
“How’s everybody?” he asked, pulling back from her and patting her still-flat belly. Then, not waiting for her to answer, “I really don’t think it’s a good idea to be running, do you?”
She bristled a bit, never liking much the suggestion that he knew better than she what should and should not be done.
“Maybe not, but it’s not even a month yet,” she said with a shrug, moving away from him and heading toward the couch.
He smiled and said nothing, knowing by now the futility of trying to tell Lydia what to do. He pulled a bottle of water from a small refrigerator under the bar on the far wall of his office and tossed it to her. She pulled it from the air and they sat on the cream chenille sofa arranged to look out onto his spectacular view of downtown Manhattan. She put her feet up on the glass top of the chrome-and-bleached-wood coffee table and hugged a rust-colored pillow to her chest as he filled her in on the rest of the conversation with Eleanor and some of the more relevant details of the earlier case.
“What about those hairs? Any chance they’re still floating around somewhere? DNA technology has come a long way.”
He shrugged. “Anything’s possible. I left a message for Ford McKirdy.”
“So what do you think?”
He drew in a deep breath and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’d like another crack at this,” he said thoughtfully. “There are too many unanswered questions. I know Ford feels the same way. At least, if we get involved, we know we can count on his cooperation.”
“You really think there was someone else there that night… you know, back then?”
“I really do. I’m not saying she was entirely innocent. But there was definitely someone else there. There’s more to what happened than we were ever able to piece together. I just have a strange feeling that what happened last night will shed some light on the past.”
He got up and walked across the elaborately patterned Oriental rug to the window.
“Just one thing, Lyd. Don’t get pissed.” His voice was tentative as he watched her from across the room.
“What?” she said, looking up at him with a frown.
“I only want your brain involved in this. You leave the legwork to the other people on the team.”
She nodded, since they’d already agreed that she’d do nothing to put herself in danger while she was pregnant and until they had captured Jed McIntyre. But the resentment she felt was already a stone in her heart. It pulled down the corners of her mouth and creased her brow. He walked back over and sat down beside her, putting his arm around her shoulder.
“I know this is hard for you. But it’s not forever.”
“Is there any word?” she answered, not wanting to look at him, not wanting to reveal how constantly she wondered where Jed McIntyre was.
“There’s no sign of him. The FBI has people watching us, watching your grandparents on Kauai. There’s an alert at airports and at bus and train stations. If he makes any kind of a major move, chances are we’ll know about it. He’s going to have to take a risk sometime.”
She nodded, knowing he was right. But the waiting was like a physical pain, invading her sleep, keeping her from peace and comfort. The sense of something dark and angry at her heels was always with her.
“How are your grandparents doing?” he said, trying to lighten the subject that was casting a pall over their days.
“Great,” she said with a forced smile. “They love it there. They’re looking forward to seeing us.”
They had sent Lydia’s grandparents on a “vacation” indefinitely to Hawaii after their brush with Jed McIntyre early last month. There they would stay under FBI surveillance until Jed McIntyre was behind bars again. Or until he was dead.
“Did you tell them?” he asked, and she knew he was talking about her pregnancy.
“No, I’ll tell them when we go to visit in February,” she said, leaning into him. She looked into his eyes and smiled, running her fingers though his thick hair. “It’s too soon. And I want them to hear it from both of us… together.”
She got up and walked toward the window, looking out onto the cityscape, leaning her head against the cool glass. After a tense minute, she gave a little laugh.
“What?”
“I was just thinking, at any given moment I could be watched by the FBI, Jed McIntyre, and Dax Chicago… all at once.”
“I resent being lumped in with that crew, I’ll tell you that,” said Dax, appearing at the door on cue like a bulky apparition. He walked into the office and stood next to Jeff.
“Not very good company, is it?” said Jeff, patting Dax on the back.
The buzzer on the intercom sounded.
“Jeff, there’s a Detective McKirdy on the phone for you,” Rebecca’s voice announced over the speaker.
“I got it,” Jeff said as he moved toward his desk and picked up the line.
“Hey, Ford. Rough night?” he said into the phone. He laughed lightly after a pause and said, “Well, you’ll never guess who just stopped by my office.”
Lydia looked at Dax and said, “Let the games begin.”
chapter four
The woman was afraid, small, cowering in the shadows. Lydia could practically see her chest heaving, could almost hear her ragged breathing. The woman, her skin gray, her face bleeding from a gash under her eye, clung to the tatters of her clothes as she tried to look around a concrete wall, tried to see without being seen. But she couldn’t quite commit herself to the action, as though she’d really rather not know what was on the other side of the cinderblocks. Maybe it was just as well, because on the other side of the canvas world was carnage. The sky was painted a churning of red and black, the streets were washed in blood. Bodies writhed in pain, disemboweled, decapitated, clawing at the earth. Some figures were engaged in violent sexual contact, others in the throes of death and murder… and it was hard to tell the difference. The detail was intricate, a screaming mouth, a bleeding eye, a man inserting a blade between a woman’s legs, a woman ripping the heart from her own chest. Reigning over it all, two towering black wraiths, the shadows of their ghoulish fingers leaking in the black clouds in the sky, the blood on the earth. The canvas was gigantic, nearly seven feet tall and ten feet long. Julian Ross called it a self-portrait.
Something about Julian Ross’s artwork had always resonated with Lydia. Standing now in front of the giant canvas in the white SoHo gallery space, the sounds of light traffic carrying in through the open door, the sunlight washing through floor-to-ceiling windows onto the bleached wood floors, Lydia was moved again by what she saw. What hung before her was the work of a victim, someone haunted, someone
“That’s bloody awful,” said Lydia’s shadow.
“It’s art,” said Lydia briskly, annoyed with him for always being right behind her, invading her space and her thoughts. Dax was so close she could smell the peppermint on his breath.
He snorted. “Art… as if any hack who puts a brush to canvas is an artist. That’s rubbish.”
