The Awakening of Dr. Brown

pale face and a pair of eyes that no longer reminded him even remotely of a dead woman’s…eyes so charged with emotion they left him feeling as though he’d received a jolt of electricity. He felt shocked and confused…and no longer certain the emotion he’d seen in those violent eyes was anger.

Chapter 3

“Why does it have to be me?” Ethan said to Father Frank in a low voice, half grumbling, half honest bewilderment. “You’re the one who should be doing this. You’re the group’s organizer and spokesman. I never said a word. What in the hell made her pick me?”

The two of them were alone in the conference room; the other delegates of Citizens’ Alliance had long since been herded away by the relentlessly frosty secretary, and Patrick Kaufman had gone to consult with his client about arrangements for meeting with her chosen delegate. Father Frank was sitting in one of the conference chairs, leaning back with his arms folded across his belly, looking remarkably at ease and cheery, Ethan thought, for a man who’d just had a meeting of critical importance blow up in his face.

He, on the other hand, found it impossible to sit still. At the same time restless and wary, he paced with the slow and tentative edginess of a cat exploring unfamiliar territory. When he got no immediate answer to his question Ethan threw the priest a glance and found him smiling.

“What?” he demanded with a small uplift of shoulders and hands. For Ethan, who prided himself on his easygoing and unflappable nature, it was a gesture of extreme annoyance.

Father Frank shook his head, in the maddeningly smug way of someone who knows the solution to a particularly vexing riddle. “To answer your first question, simply, it has to be you because you’re who Phoenix picked. She’s calling the shots right now, in case you haven’t noticed. It appears she’s called our bluff. Maybe she knows we don’t want publicity over this any more than she does-that it won’t get us what we’re after, which is action, fast. We’re lucky she’s at least willing to work with us-with you, anyway. As for why you-” He broke off, once more shaking his head, though his smile was more wry, now, than smug. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?”

Ethan did have a clue, actually, but it embarrassed him to say it. He waited, scowling, for his former college roommate to do so instead.

The priest obliged with a sigh. “You’re a guy. As in, young, impressionable, and above all, the opposite gender.”

Ethan snorted in a wholly ineffective attempt to disguise his discomfort. “You’re a guy, Kenny’s a guy, half the tenants are guys.”

“I’m a priest, in case you’ve forgotten. And it’s pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that Kenny’s only got eyes for Ruthie. The tenants are after her blood, so that leaves you. Besides, as I said, you’re young, good-looking-”

“Impressionable. You said impressionable.”

“Yeah, I did.” Father Frank was silent for a moment. “I think it’s pretty safe to say Phoenix is someone who’s accustomed to having her way. She’s used to being the one in control. That’s why she walked out just now. Things had gotten out of hand-she wasn’t in control. She thinks-”

“She thinks that with me, she will be.” Ethan pulled out the chair next to the priest’s and sank into it. After a moment he said in a soft, chagrined growl, half to himself, “I’m not sure she isn’t right. She’s Phoenix, for God’s sake.” He leaned forward earnestly; he and Frank Mendoza went back a long way, and he’d long since gotten over the impulse to apologize for his language lapses. “You think you’re the only one who had a crush on her all through high school? She was…” He lifted his hand and waved it helplessly, unable to find the words.

“She was the classic rebel, the Bad Girl,” Father Frank said, in the gentle tone of reminiscence. “But there was something untouched-and untouchable-about her, too. Every girl wanted to be her, every guy wanted to have her, but nobody ever could. A potent recipe for an icon.”

Ethan nodded. But he didn’t feel comfortable explaining, even to his closest friend, that with him, where Phoenix was concerned it hadn’t ever just been about sex appeal. That had been part of it, of course; he’d been a normal adolescent male. But raging hormones couldn’t have accounted for the way he felt when he listened to her music. The stirrings in his soul that even now he couldn’t give a name to. The hours he’d spent with his guitar and a Walkman portable stereo, softly playing and singing along.

“I gotta tell you,” he said ruefully, leaning toward his friend, the priest, in the classic manner of a confessing sinner, forearms on his knees, hands clasped together between them, “she still has it. You know? When she walked in, I have to tell you, my pulse rate shot up.”

Father Frank laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, more like college roommate than priest to sinner. “Just means you’re alive, my friend. And about the rest-” He broke off momentarily as the conference room door opened to frame the secretary’s patrician form, then continued in a hurried aside as they both rose to follow her. “Don’t underestimate yourself. That woman may not know it yet, but I think this time Phoenix may have bitten off more than she bargained for.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Patrick Kaufman asked in a neutral tone.

Phoenix ignored him while she carefully selected a cheroot from the rosewood humidor on the bookcase shelf behind his desk and lit it with the matching rosewood-and-silver desk lighter that sat beside it. She puffed out a cloud of fragrant smoke before she said with an audible hiss, “Yess.”

Patrick shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He glanced at his watch and murmured, without even a hint of sarcasm, “I suppose you’d like me to leave you two alone?”

That was the great thing about Patrick, Phoenix thought. She could browbeat him all she wanted, even usurp his private office in the middle of a working day, and it never had the slightest effect. She wondered sometimes what went on behind those pale, rabbity eyes, whether a real heart pumped inside that narrow chest.

“Yes, thank you, Patrick,” she said with exaggerated sweetness. “And while you’re at it, tell Miss Freeze to turn on the voice mail machine and get lost, too, would you please?” She let her voice drop an octave to its customary purr. “In situations such as this I find it’s best to work in…privacy.” Around the cigar her lips formed a seductive smile.

Which, naturally, had no effect whatsoever on Patrick. “I’ll suggest to Mrs. Fitzhugh that she take an extended lunch,” he said dryly, punctuating that with the snap of his briefcase lock.

Alone in the lushness of burgundy, brass and mahogany, Phoenix took the cheroot from her lips and gazed at it with satisfaction. She didn’t smoke-had given it up years ago, in fact, with reasonable ease, never having been all that serious about it to begin with. But, she thought, it was amazing what a prop like that did for her self- confidence. Almost like having a microphone in her hands.

Well, hell yes-it is. It’s the same. Just the same… She closed her eyes and concentrated on slowing her breathing. She inhaled the sweet, heavy perfume of cigar smoke…psyching herself… calming herself…preparing. Because it was the same, this moment, waiting here in the plush privacy of Kaufman’s office for that young, gentle-looking doctor to join her. No different from all the moments before, so many of them, waiting in the wings for that moment when she would erupt onto a stage before a stadium filled with thousands of screaming fans. Same butterflies, same pounding heart, same adrenaline rush. Somehow, that made it easier-a familiar and therefore much more manageable fear. Whether of one or fifty thousand, an audience was an audience.

Ethan’s first thought when he smelled cigar smoke was that Patrick Kaufman’s meek and mild exterior hid some unexpected depths. Phoenix appeared to him only as a silhouette, standing behind Kaufman’s big mahogany desk with her back to a bank of windows framing a pale noonday sky, so he didn’t see, at first, that it was she who was responsible for the cigar smoke. Until she stepped forward, gesturing with what appeared to be a twig held between her thumb and forefinger, then lifted it and put it between her lips.

“Hey, Doc.” Her rusty voice was muffled only slightly by the cigar. “Glad you decided to take me up on my offer. Have a seat.”