disappear on him.
As crazy as it sounded, he was in love with her.
And it was a feeling he’d never felt this strong before. Not even with Susan. A jump-up-on-Oprah’s-sofa kind of feeling that he would’ve made fun of only a day ago.
But not now.
Now he understood.
And despite what they’d been through, he wanted her to understand, too.
“Come here,” he said, taking her hand.
She leaned forward and kissed him. “That’s more like it. But I wasn’t kidding, it’s time to get up. We have to go.”
“Why? You’ve heard from Jake?”
“No, but I’ve got a lead. At least I hope it’s one.”
“What kind of lead?”
“I won’t know until we get there,” Anna said, climbing off the bed. She went to a chair, tossed her towel aside, and picked up her panties, stepping into them. It’s funny what a night in bed can do to a woman’s modesty.
Pope watched her and couldn’t help thinking lascivious thoughts. She was breathtaking.
“Get where?” he asked. “Where are we going?”
“Allenwood.”
He sat up. “Allenwood?”
“It’s near Salcedo, about a three-and-a-half-hour drive.”
“I know. It’s where the amusement park is. Big Mountain.”
“Was,” McBride said. “The place has been closed down for nearly twenty-five years. The town couldn’t afford to demolish it, so they just let it rot.”
“And you know all this how?”
McBride strapped her bra on. “I took a little field trip while you were sleeping.”
“You what?” Pope got out of bed, approached her. “Jesus, Anna, what were you thinking? That guy could be out there somewhere. Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“And interrupt the best sleep you’ve had in a decade? I don’t think so.”
She grabbed her blouse, slipped into it, but he took hold of her arm. “Quit being so goddamn cavalier. I don’t know if what happened in here last night meant the same to you as it did to me, but I don’t want to lose you.”
She stopped, touched his cheek. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t go far. Just to the manager’s office to use the computer.” She gestured to her Glock, which lay in its holster on the dresser nearby. “And I took protection.”
Pope still wasn’t happy. But what could he say? When it came down to it, she’d probably handled herself better with the gypsy than he had. The twin defenders, too.
He released her and let her button her blouse.
“I saw him,” she said.
“Who?”
“Red Cap. The gypsy.”
“What?”
“Relax. It was in a photograph. From 1881.”
1881? What the hell?
Pope was glad Jake wasn’t around to scream, Bullshit.
McBride went to the dresser, picked up a photo, and showed it to him. A young gypsy girl. A dark-haired beauty.
“I found this in Susan’s notebook. It’s the girl from the locket. I think it’s Chavi.”
Then she turned it over, showing him a cryptic message written on the back in Susan’s handwriting, with Anna’s translation beneath it: M Zala Knows All.
Anna told him about a morning spent searching the Internet and about an entire collection of photographs she’d seen online, one of which included Red Cap.
“You sure it was him?”
She picked up a sheet of paper and handed it across to him. “He’s younger, but it’s him, all right.”
It was a computer print-out of another photograph. The quality wasn’t the best, and the face looked even more deformed, but it was, without a doubt, the same man who had attacked them in Pope’s upstairs hallway.
“I don’t get it. How could he still be alive?”
“How does he do anything he does? Maybe Antonija Zala can tell us.”
“Who’s that?”
She gestured to the name scrawled on the back of the photograph. M Zala. “Hopefully someone who knows her.”
“There are probably dozens of Zalas all over the world,” Pope said. “What makes you think this one’s related?”
“Because she lives in Allenwood and I don’t like coincidences. Besides, I’ve got nothing else.”
Pope thought about this, then nodded. “I’ll take a shower and get dressed.”
He started for the bathroom, but when he got to the doorway, McBride said, “By the way, have you ever done any photography?”
He turned. “Not really, why?”
“I saw a portrait of Jonathan O’Keefe-the one who took the photos? Rumor has it that he and Chavi were lovers.”
“So?”
“He had your eyes.”
Pope smiled, holding her gaze. “That explains a lot,” he said.
4 1
Jake Worthington was about a block from home when his cell phone rang.
He groaned, hoping it wasn’t someone from the office. After leaving Danny and McBride at the motel, he’d worked straight through the night on the Fairweather case, waiting for the crime scene techs to send him the latents off the gypsy’s stun gun. Then he ran them through the office’s automated fingerprint identification system, waited a good three hours for the results — and got a big fat donut.
No matches. Nothing.
He had killed the time by filing reports and filling out the paperwork to facilitate the interstate transfer of the two goons who had attacked Danny, cursing his dumb-ass cousin for getting involved with these idiots in the first place.
The rest of the time was spent spinning his wheels, thinking about all the shit he’d seen in the last several hours and how his whole concept of reality had been stood on its head. By the end of the night, all he wanted to do was crawl into bed and get a couple hours’ shut-eye before it all started over again.
He dug his cell phone out of his pocket, hoping it was Ronnie. Married for eighteen years, they’d known each other since they were kids, and he never got tired of hearing her voice.
But it was Danny’s name on the screen.
He clicked the receive button. “What’s up, Cuz?”
“You have any luck with those prints?”
“We got zilch,” he said. “If this guy was ever printed, it wasn’t in this century. Or the last one, either.”
There was silence on the line, and for a moment Jake felt as if he were in a cell phone commercial about dropped connections-except he could hear Danny breathing.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asked.
“I wasn’t gonna tell you this, but Anna found a photo of our guy in the Powell University archives.”
Jake felt his pulse start to elevate. “And why the hell wouldn’t you tell me something that major?”
