“Sure,” the girl murmured, staring at the fire. “So do you.”
Kate barely heard her. Her attention was riveted on the fax the legal services secretary had forwarded with a note saying
PETER SAT IN his bedroom, in a small chair by the window, the black duffel bag in his lap, his arms wrapped around it. He was wearing the same clothes he had worn in the night—black slacks and sweater. The slacks were dirty. He had vomited on the sweater. The sour smell of puke and sweat and fear hung around him like a noxious cloud, but he didn't care to change, didn't want to shower.
He imagined he was pale. He felt as if all the blood had been drained out of him. What flowed through his veins now was the acid of guilt, burning, burning, burning. He imagined it might burn him alive from the inside out, turn all his bones to ash.
Edwyn had come to tell him about the arrest of the caretaker, Vanlees, and had found him in the music room, smashing the baby grand piano with a tire iron. Edwyn had called Lucas. Lucas had come with a little black bag full of vials and needles.
Peter had refused the drugs. He didn't want to feel numb. He'd spent too much of his life feeling numb, ignoring the lives of the people around him. Maybe if he'd dared to feel something sooner, things wouldn't have come to this. Now all he could feel was the searing pain of remorse.
Looking out the window, he watched as Kovac nudged the nose of his car against the bumper of Edwyn's Lincoln, then backed up and turned around. A part of him felt relief that John Quinn was leaving. A part of him felt despair.
He had listened to the conversation on the other side of the door. Noble and Brandt making excuses for him, lying for him. Quinn asking the definitive question: Were they protecting him for his sake or for their own?
Time passed as he sat in the chair, thinking back, reliving all of it from Jillian's birth, on through his every devasting mistake, to this moment and beyond. He stared out the window, not seeing the news vans, the reporters waiting for an appearance by him, a sound bite from him. He hugged the duffel bag and rocked from side to side, coming to the only conclusion that made sense to him.
Then he checked his watch, and waited.
KATE STARED AT the fax, a chill running from the top of her head down her entire body. Her brain picked out key words:
“What's wrong with you?” Angie asked.
“Nothing,” Kate said automatically, tearing her gaze from the article. “I just felt a little dizzy for a minute there.”
“I thought maybe
“I don't know. What's the Zone like?”
The smile vanished. “It's dark and empty and it swallows you whole and you feel like you'll never get out, and no one will ever come to get you,” she said, her eyes bleak again. Not empty but bleak, afraid, full of pain—which meant there was still something in her to save. Whatever had happened to her in a childhood that culminated with the suspicious deaths of her parents, some scrap of humanity had survived. And it had survived the last days in “the Devil's basement,” wherever that was.
“But sometimes it's a safe place too,” she said softly, staring at the blood that ran in rivulets all over her left hand, back and front and around her wrist. “I can hide there . . . if I dare.”
“Angie? Will you let me get a cold cloth for your hand?” Kate asked.
“Don't you like to see my blood? I do.”
“I'd rather not see it dripping on my carpet,” Kate said with a hint of her usual wry tone, more to spark some fire in Angie than out of any real concern for the rug.
Angie stared at her palm for a moment, then raised it to her face and wiped the blood down her cheek in a loving caress.
Kate eased away from the desk and backed toward the door.
The girl looked up at her. “Are you going to leave me?”
“No, honey, I'm not going to leave you. I'm just going to get that wet cloth.” And call 911, Kate thought, moving another step toward the door, afraid now to leave the girl for fear of what she might do to herself.
The doorbell rang as she stepped into the hall, and she froze for a second. A face appeared at one of the sidelights, a round head above a puffed-up down jacket, trying to peer in through the sheer curtain. Rob.
“Kate, I know you're home,” he said, petulant, knocking, his face still pressed to the window. “I can see you standing there.”
“What are you doing here?” Kate asked in a harsh whisper, pulling the door open.
“I heard from the office you weren't going in. We need to talk about this—”
“You can't pick up a telephone?” she started, then caught herself and waved off the argument. “This isn't the time—”
Rob looked stubborn. He moved a little closer. “Kate, we
Kate clamped her teeth against a sigh of exasperation. “Could you lower your voice?”
“Why? Is it a neighborhood secret you're trying to avoid me?”
“Don't be an ass. I'm not avoiding you. I've got a situation here. Angie's shown up and she's in a very fragile mental state.”
His little pig eyes rounded. “She's
“Not yet. I don't want to make things worse. She's got a knife and she's willing to use it—on herself.”
“My God. And you haven't taken it away from her, Ms. Superwoman?” he said sarcastically as he pushed past her into the hall.
“I'd rather keep all my appendages attached, thanks.”
“Has she hurt herself?”
“So far, it's just surface cuts, but one will need stitches.”
“Where is she?”
Kate motioned to the den. “Maybe you can distract her while I call 911.”
“Has she told you where she's been? Who took her?”
“Not exactly.”
“If she goes to a hospital, she'll clam up out of resentment. It could be hours or days before we get the information out of her,” he said in an urgent tone. “The police have made an arrest. The press conference is starting soon. If we can get her to tell us what happened, we can call Sabin before it's over.”
Kate crossed her arms and considered. She could see Angie still sitting on the couch, drawing patterns with her fingertip on the palm of her bloody hand. If paramedics came and hauled her away, she would react badly, that was a sure bet. On the other hand, what would they be doing to her? Trying to drag what they wanted out of her while she sat bleeding and vulnerable.
Trying to catch a killer.
She heaved a sigh. “All right. We try, but if she gets serious with that knife, I'm calling.”
Rob squinted at her. The toothache smile. “I know it pains you, Kate, but sometimes I
“WHAT'S HE DOING here?” Angie blurted out the words as if they gave her a bad taste in her mouth.
Rob gave her the toothache smile too. “I'm just here to help, Angie,” he said, sitting back against the desk.
She gave him a long, hard stare. “I doubt it.”
“It looks like you've had a little trouble since we saw you last. Can you tell us about that?”
“You want to hear about it?” she asked, eyes narrowed, her hoarse voice sounding almost seductive. She raised her hand and slowly licked the blood from her palm again, her gaze locked on his. “You want to know who did
