'I suppose so.'
'Good.' He settled into Nellie's recliner and pushed it all the way back. 'I'll just bed down here while you go up with Vicky.'
He turned on the reading lamp next to the chair and reached for a magazine from the pile next to the dish full of the Black Magic chocolates. Gia felt a lump swell in her throat at the thought of Nellie's childlike glee at receiving that box of candy.
'Need a blanket?'
'No. I'm fine. I'll just read for a little while. Good night.'
Gia rose and walked toward the door.
'Good night.'
Leaving Jack in a pool of light in the center of the darkened room, she hurried up to Vicky's side and snuggled against her, hunting sleep. But despite the quiet and the knowledge that Jack was on guard downstairs, sleep never came.
Jack...he’d come when needed and had single-handedly accomplished what the New York Police Department had been unable to do: Made her feel safe tonight. Without him she would have spent the remaining hours till daylight in a shuddering panic.
She fought a growing urge to be with him, but found herself losing. Vicky breathed slowly and rhythmically at her side. She was safe. They all were safe now that the alarm system was working again.
Gia slipped out of bed and stole downstairs, taking a lightweight summer blanket with her. She hesitated at the door to the library. What if he rejected her? She’d been so cold to him...what if he...?
Only one way to find out.
She stepped inside the door and found Jack looking at her. He must have heard her come down.
'Sure you don't need a blanket?' she asked.
His expression was serious. 'I could use someone to share it with me.'
Her mouth dry, Gia went to the chair and stretched herself alongside Jack; he spread the blanket over both of them. Neither spoke. There was nothing to say, at least for her. All she could do was lie beside him and contain the hunger within her.
After an eternity, Jack lifted her chin and kissed her. It must have taken as much courage to do that as it had taken her to come down to him. Gia let herself respond, releasing all her pent-up need. She pulled at his clothes, he lifted her nightgown, and then nothing separated them. She clung to him as if to keep him from being torn away from her. This was it, this was what she needed, this was what had been missing from her life.
God help her, this was the man she wanted.
16
Jack lay back in the recliner and tried unsuccessfully to sleep. Gia had taken him completely by surprise tonight. They’d made love twice—furiously the first time, more leisurely the second—and now he was alone, more satisfied and content than he could ever remember. For all her knowledge and inventiveness and seemingly inexhaustible passion, Kolabati hadn't left him feeling like this. This was special. He’d always known that he and Gia belonged together. Tonight proved it. There had to be a way for them to get back together and stay that way.
After a long time of drowsy, sated snuggling, Gia had gone back upstairs, saying she didn't want Vicky to find them both down here in the morning. She’d been warm, loving, passionate...everything she hadn't been the past few months. It baffled him, but he wasn't fighting it. He must have done something right. Whatever it was, he wanted to keep doing it.
The change in Gia wasn't all that was keeping him awake, though. The events of the night had sent a confusion of facts, theories, guesses, impressions, and fears whirling through his mind.
Vicky's description of the yellow eyes…until then he’d almost been able to convince himself that the eyes outside his window had been some sort of illusion. But first had come Gia's casual mention of the putrid smell in Nellie's room—the same odor that had invaded his apartment? Then the mention of the eyes. The two phenomena together on two different nights in two different locations could not be mere coincidence.
A link existed between what had happened last night at his apartment and Nellie's disappearance tonight, but Jack was damned if he knew what it was. He’d been disappointed when he could not find any of the herbal liquid he’d found in Grace's room last week. He couldn't say how, but he was sure the odor, the eyes, the liquid, and the disappearances of the two old women were connected.
Idly, he picked up a piece of chocolate from the candy dish beside his chair. He wasn't hungry, but he wouldn't mind something sweet right now. Trouble with these things was you never knew what was inside. He could use the old thumb-puncture-on-the-bottom trick, but that didn't seem right on a missing person's candy. He dropped it back in the bowl and returned to his musings.
Jack reached down and checked the position of the little Semmerling where he’d squeezed it and its ankle holster between the seat cushion and armrest of the recliner. It was still handy. He closed his eyes and thought of eyes...yellow eyes...
And then it struck him—the thought that had eluded him last night. Those eyes...yellow with dark pupils...why they’d seemed vaguely familiar to him: They resembled the pair of black-centered topazes on the necklaces worn by Kolabati and Kusum and the one he’d retrieved for their grandmother!
He should have seen it before! Those two yellow stones had been staring at him for days, just as the eyes had stared at him last night.
His spirits rose slightly. He didn't know what the resemblance meant, but now he had a link between the Bahktis and the eyes, and perhaps the disappearance of Grace and Nellie. It might well turn out to be pure coincidence, but at least he had a path to follow.
Jack knew what he'd be doing in the morning.
Chapter Eight
Monday
1
Gia watched Jack and Vicky playing with their breakfasts. Vicky had been up at dawn and delighted to find Jack
