Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

“Good God! I was in Las Vegas? Not on some damn mountain? I knew I was never on a mountain! Damn mountains, particularly Alps. But, Garry, I had a . . . wife? Lover?”

“Yes and no. Even you realized you couldn’t commit to marriage while your life was in danger, and you finally told her that. Freed her just recently. You also told me if anything ever happened to you, I had a mission: to find the first woman who deceived you and gave you a grief you couldn’t lose and set you on the path of espionage.

“You were unconscious after that murder attempt in Vegas, and then amnesiac. I used every resource I had from our active espionage days to smuggle you out of the United States to the Swiss clinic. I even set it up so that your Las Vegas love saw your house emptied of all your possessions and occupied by a stranger.”

“That was brutal.”

“She’s a tenacious young woman. I needed to be brutal. Then I installed you in that Swiss clinic at great expense and manipulation and set about trying to trace Kathleen O’Connor. The Kathleen O’Connor from twenty years ago in Northern Ireland.”

“Kathleen O’Connor. The name means nothing.”

Garry’s now mustache-less face grimaced. “‘Kitty the Cutter’ is what your ex-girlfriend named her.”

“And what is the ex-girlfriend’s name?”

“Temple. Temple Barr.”

Max winced to remember kissing Revienne’s temple and feeling an odd tenderness, a moment of fugitive memory.

“Oh, God. Why didn’t I remember that there was someone?”

“You’d decided to let her go, Max. Another man loves her, one she became attracted to when you disappeared before, for almost a year. You knew it was too dangerous to associate with her when we were making inroads, finally, on uncovering the Synth.”

“The . . . sinth? Is that some Star Wars thing?”

Garry chuckled sadly. “So odd how you remember all the minutiae of our crazy modern world and nothing significant to your current situation and life. The Synth is a presumed international cadre of spies and magicians. That’s a very natural mating of interests, as you and I prove. We’re going to the airport, but we have a small private jet at our disposal, so we don’t risk exposure. I’ve got the proper forged passports. The flight will be long.”

“My duffle bag—” He wasn’t used to baggage and had dropped it at the scene.

“The musically inclined Hans scooped it up while we were tussling before pulling the car away. It’s on the front seat. Any weapons in it?”

“Just clothes and grooming items.”

“Apparently not a razor,” Gandolph commented dryly.

“Don’t you like my Pirates of the Caribbean look? It took a very expensive electric razor to cultivate this unkempt appearance.”

“The question is, did Dr. Schneider appreciate it?”

Max grew thoughtful. “I don’t suppose I care at the moment. How could I forget the ‘love of my life’?”

“Hopefully, or sadly, you may not forever. Meanwhile, we’re on the trail of the woman who ruined your life.”

“To extract justice?”

“She’s dead too.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“Closure,” Garry said.

Closure.

Maybe it took a memory to see any point in that, Max thought.

Dancing in the Dark

At night the underwater lights in the Circle Ritz backyard pool made the aquamarine rectangle gleam like a glimpse into Atlantis.

Temple sat in the temperate night air, on a lounge chair, watching Matt do his laps.

“Now I know what the expression ‘bronze god’ means,” she commented dreamily. “Will that spray-on tan fade fast?”

He lifted his wet head from the water, his blond hair silvered in the moonlight.

“I sure hope so. Why do you think I’m swimming in chlorine? I want to wash that dance show out of my hair and off my epidermis.”

“Why? You won.”

He dived and resurfaced at the edge near her chair, crossing his bronzed arms on the edge to hold himself up.

“Yeah, and the show raised $180,000 for the kids’ cancer fund, so it was worth the hassle, although not the attempts on my life. And that doesn’t include being mobbed by tween girls from thirteen to ninety-three after the final show.”

“It was great that Glory B. won the women’s vote. She was so grateful. You could see her maturing on the spot. What a wonderful moment. All the contenders won something—self-confidence, renewal, fresh job opportunities.”

“Fresh commercial temptations.”

“So your perfectly highlighted blond head hasn’t been turned?”

“Lord, they want me to do spray-tan TV ads.”

“You’d make more money for good causes, including a house fund maybe.”

“Not spray-tan anything. I’ll let my agent handle it. Tony knows my bottom line is human dignity, even though I’ve played fast and loose with it lately. At least my dance gig exposed and stopped one very sick man from harming more people. I never dreamed my radio advice could get someone killed.”

“Your advice didn’t kill her. Her husband did.”

“He was insanely bitter about so much. He’d fit the Barbie Doll Killer’s stalker profile.”

“Hank Buck was a local problem. I think Molina got a lead on that Barbie doll case during this dance show stalking. She has to win that one. Her kid’s bedroom was targeted with one of the mutilated dolls.”

“Now that she knows her homegrown stalker isn’t Max.” Matt tilted his head to watch Temple. “You must be pleased about that. You always told Molina he wasn’t the villain she thought.”

“Yeah. I wish Max knew she was coming around to reason about him. If there’s a Max out there to know anything.”

“You think he’s . . . dead?”

“I hope not.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Oh, Mr. Radio Shrink! You are so not going to trick me into missing Max mode! Not now, when I want to go over the Temple tango moves as soon as you get out of that water, dry off, and dance me back to our lovely pied-à-terre.”

He laughed and let the flat of his hand hit an arc of sparkling water toward her chair. “You don’t like to swim.”

“Not in pools. Along the turquoise Riviera . . . that’s different.”

“You’re an expensive little sea nymph.”

“Darn right.” She sighed. “Rafi really wants a relationship with Mariah. He’s got a head start. I hope her mother will cooperate.”

“This injury has broken down her resistance to reality. Like Kitty the Cutter’s slash did mine.”

“Really? That was . . . liberating?”

“It’s liberating to confront that some people want to hurt you, for no reason you can see, and you don’t have to hurt back. ‘Hurt’ was too much a part of my so-called nuclear and extended family in Chicago. We don’t have to keep up the tradition.”

“We’re supposed to head north and meet your family and mine someday soon.”

“Someday soon. You don’t want to come into the water with me? It’s as silken and warm as unchilled wine.” He lifted a hand. “Come on.”

“I’m dressed.”

“Clothes dry.”

“My hair.”

“Is perfect, dry or wet.”

“I paddle like a springer spaniel.”

“I’m a merman from shining, sunken Atlantis. I’ll hold you up, and you’ll breathe underwater.”

“Really?”

“No. Don’t breathe underwater. But come with me.”

His hand pushed closer.

Temple sighed, stood, kicked off her slides, and went to squat by the pool’s edge. “You are a very metaphysical guy, you know that?”

He grasped her hand and pulled her down. “Shut your eyes and think two stars to the right and straight on till morning.”

He pulled her forward into the alien element. The water was tepid and as silken as he said. She sank in it until her chin broke water and he buoyed her up. She gasped with surprise at the buoyancy, the way cares seemed to float up from her like bubbles.