thought that this could happen.”
Jane stared at her, mystified. Why was she trying to make it look as though they’d already had an affair? What did it buy her? She should want to get out of here. Jane’s heart beat faster. Something was wrong.
Carey moved to his dresser and opened the box on top where he kept small things he didn’t want to think about—single cuff links, loose screws, keys that fit nothing. As he reached into his pocket to find the key, he said coldly, “Please don’t imply that something went on between you and me. It’s bad enough that you’re here in the first place, but you’re not going to—”
Jane raised her hand and shook her head. “Please. Stop.” She tried to sound annoyed, but she was feeling a growing fear. “There’s no point in discussing this. Let’s leave this woman alone so she can get dressed and go.”
The woman glared at her. “Not ‘this woman,’ ” she said. “Susan Haynes.”
Jane’s body grew tense as she stared at the woman. She couldn’t know that it was the name Jane had seen on the machine for making false credit cards. But she shouldn’t be saying it. She should not want Jane to hear any name.
Jane saw the woman’s hand slip under the bedsheet and grasp something hidden underneath, and she drew in a breath as she recognized the shape of it. As the hand began to come up off the bed, Jane was aware of Carey, still turned away to put the key in the small wooden box on his dresser.
Jane’s right hand shot out beside her and plucked a golf club out of Carey’s bag. The three-iron flew up inside her grasp until the handle reached her hand. She tightened her grip and swung it downward, hard.
Jane’s eyes caught everything during the instant when the shining club swung down. She saw the woman’s eyes read the trajectory, fix on Jane’s eyes, and convey the terrible message: Not you … him! The gun had already begun its move to the left toward Carey, so Jane’s swing sliced through empty air and onto the wooden footboard of the bed.
The club struck on the metal shaft, and the heavy head broke off, bounced once on the bed, and fell to the floor. Jane saw the woman’s thick lips curl upward as the gun continued its rise toward the back of Carey’s head.
Jane screamed, “No!” as she hurled herself toward the woman. She jabbed out at her with the only object she had. She felt the long, thin metal shaft stab into the woman’s body below the rib cage. The woman shrieked and shrank backward, but the pistol swung around toward Jane’s face.
Jane had committed herself. She could only push the shaft of the broken golf club harder, up under the rib cage and into the heart. The woman clawed at it, tried to push it out, then fell backward.
Jane watched Carey hurtle across the bed, kneel beside the fallen woman, touch her carotid artery, put his ear on her chest. He turned to stare at Jane, and his face was a mixture of horror and incomprehension.
“She’s dead,” he said. “I can’t … Why would she—”
“She was staying near you because she thought I would call and tell you where I was,” said Jane. She looked away so she did not have to see the expression of shocked understanding forming on Carey’s face. As she surveyed the room, she tried to sound calm. “Since the easy way wasn’t working, I’ll bet she planted something in here …” Her voice sounded as though it belonged to someone she didn’t know.
Carey stood up, his big hands held toward her, the fingers open in an unconscious gesture as though he wanted to stroke her and soothe away her hurt. “Oh, my God, Jane … I let her in. Days ago, before I knew—or thought I knew—that she was out of her mind.” He seemed to have an afterthought, and it startled him. “I didn’t sleep with her, I just didn’t think—”
She came to him, put her arms around him, and rested her head on his shoulder. “I know,” she whispered. “I got fooled, and you got fooled.” It felt wonderful to be in his arms, familiar and new at the same time and, most of all, safe. She wanted to close her eyes and stay like this, but she could not. She released him and frowned thoughtfully at the dead woman on the floor as she walked around the bed.
Carey stood stiff and still, staring at the body. “This is what it is, isn’t it? It’s not just helping somebody run away.” He paused. “That was what you were trying to tell me that night before you would marry me. That some day I might have to watch my wife stab somebody to death in our bedroom.”
She stared at him, her face expressionless, waiting.
His eyes flicked away from her toward the body on the floor, and Jane could tell he was seeing its last moments again and that what he had seen was different from what she had seen. Jane had seen the cruel eyes narrowing, and quick hands in motion and then a gun muzzle that looked cavernous, and Carey had seen the beautiful, smooth, living white skin being pierced, running with fresh, bright blood, and then turned into this cold, waxy effigy of a woman.
Jane said, “Say what you’re thinking. In a few minutes it will be too late.”
Carey held up his hands, his eyes full of pain, but he was not able to find the words he wanted. He seemed to know he had to try. “I love you.” So he had discovered it too, she thought. That was what you said when you couldn’t say anything else. He tried again. “You’re the best person I ever met … and this was the worst thing I’ve ever seen anyone do. And you did it for me, and that makes me feel awful, and grateful, and sick. And if we somehow get through this, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you never do anything like it again. No more fugitives.”
She turned her face for a second. Then she picked up the telephone, unscrewed the earpiece, removed a small electronic transmitter, set it on the floor, and stepped on it. “So much for that mystery. We’ll probably be finding these for months.” Then she sat on the edge of the bed and screwed the earpiece back on.
Carey came closer. “Maybe I should be the one to talk to them,” he said. “I’m the one who knew her.” He held his hand out for the telephone.
Jane set the receiver back on its cradle, then looked at Carey sadly. “I’m not calling the police.”
“Why not? It was self-defense.”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “This is a time when we don’t have the right kinds of answers for the questions they would ask. This woman was a professional killer. If the gun has ever been registered, it wasn’t to her. And if we get our names and pictures in the newspaper, there will be other people coming—ones who knew her, maybe others who have been looking for me.”
“Then who are you calling?”
“Nobody.” She watched his eyes. They looked as though they were gazing into the emptiness for the first time: there was nobody to call, no agency or institution that could do anything now but hurt them, no friend they could burden with this knowledge, because the risk it carried was too great. Jane said, “Here’s what you do. Go right back to the hospital. Check on your patients again, haunt the nurses’ stations, read charts, write notes. Act as though you had never left. Don’t come back until after ten.”
He shook his head in amazement. “You think I can leave you here alone?”
Jane stood and walked toward him. “Neither of us wanted this, but here we are. We’re in trouble. I know the way out, and you don’t.” She pushed him toward the doorway, hard. “So go. We have to use every second.”
He stopped, took a last look at her, then turned and walked down the hallway toward the stairs.
At ten thirty, Carey McKinnon unlocked his front door and stepped into his house. He called, “Jane?” but there was no answer. He discovered that he did not want to raise his voice and try again. It took an extreme act of will to ascend the stairs and enter the bedroom. For a moment it seemed as though he had lost his senses. There was no corpse, no blood. The bed had been made with crisp new sheets and blankets. The floor had been scrubbed. It was as though nothing had happened.
Gradually, he began to sense that he was not alone. He whirled and saw Jane standing in the doorway. She was wearing a blue dress with a flower print that he had always liked, but which she hardly ever wore. At her feet was a small leather overnight bag. She said, “Come on. We’re not sleeping in that room tonight. You’re going to take me to a hotel.”
He waited. “That’s all you’re going to say about it?”
She shrugged, picked up the overnight bag, and handed it to him. “I’ll just say it’s the last thing you’ll hear from me tonight that includes an order, or the word ‘no.’ ” She turned and walked down the hallway of the old house toward the stairs.
“What about tomorrow?”
He could hear the smile returning to her voice as she said over her shoulder, “Ask me tomorrow.”
