Tess Gerritsen - Keeper of the Bride

He sighed, a sound of weariness. And perhaps regret. “Last night,” he began, “shouldn’t have happened. It was a mistake.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Nina, it’s always a mistake to fall in love with the investigating cop. You’re scared, you’re looking for a hero. I happen to fall into the role.”

“But you’re not playing a role! Neither am I. Sam, I care about you. I think I’m falling in love with you.”

He just looked at her without speaking, his silence as cutting as any words.

She turned away, so that she wouldn’t have to see that flat, emotionless gaze of his. With a forced laugh she said, “God, I feel like such an idiot. Of course, this must happen to you all the time. Women throwing themselves at you.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it? The hero cop. Who could resist?” She turned back to him. “So, how do I compare with all the others?”

“There aren’t any others! Nina, I’m not trying to shove you away. I just want you to understand that it’s the situation that’s pulled us together. The danger. The intensity. You look at me and you completely miss all the flaws. All the reasons I’m not the right guy for you. You were engaged to Robert Bledsoe. Ivy League. Medical degree. House on the water. What the hell am I but a civil servant?”

She shook her head, tears suddenly filling her eyes. “Do you really think that’s how I see you? As just a civil servant? Just a cop?”

“It’s what I am.”

“You’re so much more.” She reached up to touch his face. He flinched, but didn’t pull away as her fingers caressed the roughness of his jaw. “Oh, Sam. You’re kind. And gentle. And brave. I haven’t met any other man like you. Okay, so you’re a cop. It’s just part of who you are. You’ve kept me alive. You’ve watched over me….”

“It was my job.”

“Is that all it was?”

He didn’t answer right away. He just looked at her, as though reluctant to tell the truth.

“Is it, Sam? Just a part of your job?”

He sighed. “No,” he admitted. “It was more than that. You’re more than that.”

Pure joy made her smile. Last night she’d felt it — his warmth, his caring. For all his denials, there was a living, breathing man under that mask of indifference. She wanted so badly to fall into his arms, to coax the real Sam Navarro out from his hiding place.

He reached up for her hand and gently but firmly lowered it from his face. “Please, Nina,” he said. “Don’t make this hard for both of us. I have a job to do, and I can’t be distracted. It’s dangerous. For you and for me.”

“But you do care. That’s all I need to know. That you care.”

He nodded. It was the most she could hope for.

“It’s getting late. We should leave,” he mumbled. And he turned toward the door. “I’ll be waiting for you in the car.”

NINA FROWNED at the computer-generated sketch of the suspect’s face. “It’s not quite right,” she said.

“What’s not right about it?” asked Sam.

“I don’t know. It’s not easy to conjure up a man’s face. I saw him only that one time. I didn’t consciously register the shape of his nose or jaw.”

“Does he look anything like this picture?”

She studied the image on the computer screen. For an hour, they’d played with different hairlines, noses, shapes of jaws and chins. What they’d come up with seemed generic, lifeless. Like every other police sketch she’d ever seen.

“To be honest,” she admitted with a sigh, “I can’t be sure this is what he looks like. If you put the real man in a lineup, I think I’d be able to identify him. But I’m not very good at recreating what I saw.”

Sam, obviously disappointed, turned to the computer technician. “Print it up anyway. Send copies to the news stations and wire services.”

“Sure thing, Navarro,” the tech replied and he flipped on the printer switch.

As Sam led Nina away, she said miserably, “I’m sorry. I guess I wasn’t much help.”

“You did fine. And you’re right, it’s not easy to recreate a face. Especially one you saw only once. You really think you’d know him if you saw him?”

“Yes. I’m pretty sure of it.”

He gave her arm a squeeze. “That may be all we’ll need from you. Assuming we ever get our hands on him. Which leads to the next item on our agenda.”

“What’s that?”

“Gillis is already at the hospital, pulling those treatment records. He’ll need you to interpret a few things on the encounter form.”

She nodded. “ That I know I can do.”

They found Gillis sitting in a back room of the ER, papers piled up on the table in front of him. His face was pasty with fatigue under the fluorescent lights. It was nearly midnight, and he’d been on the job since 7:00 a.m. So had Sam.

For both of them, the night was just beginning.

“I pulled what I think is the right encounter form,” said Gillis. “May 29, 5:00 p.m. Sound about right, Miss Cormier?”

“It could be.”

Gillis handed her the sheet. It was the one-page record of an ER visit. On top was the name Lawrence Foley, his address, and billing information. On the line Chief Complaint, she recognized her own handwriting: Laceration, left forearm. Below that, she had written: forty-six-year-old white male hit by bicycle in crosswalk. Fell, cut arm on fender. No loss of consciousness.”

She nodded. “This is the one. Here’s Robert’s signature, on the bottom. Treating physician. He sutured the cut — four stitches, according to his notes.”

“Have we checked out this name, Lawrence Foley?” Sam asked Gillis.

“No one by that name living at that address,” Gillis informed him. “And that’s a nonexistent phone number.”

“Bingo,” said Sam. “False address, false identity. This is our man.”

“But we’re no closer to catching him,” stressed Gillis. “He left no trail, no clues. Where are we supposed to look?”

“We have a sketch of his face circulating. We know he was wearing some sort of uniform, possibly a bellhop’s. So we check all the hotels. Try to match the sketch with any of their employees.” Sam paused, frowning. “A hotel. Why would he be working at a hotel?”

“He needed a job?” Gillis offered.

“As a bellhop?” Sam shook his head. “If this is really Vincent Spectre, he had a reason to be there. A contract. A target…” He sat back and rubbed his eyes. The late hour, the stress, was showing in his face. All those shadows, all those lines of weariness. Nina longed to reach out to him, to stroke away the worry she saw there, but she didn’t dare. Not in front of Gillis. Maybe not ever. He’d made it perfectly clear she was a distraction to him, to his work, and that distractions were dangerous. That much she accepted.

Yet how she ached to touch him.

Sam rose to his feet and began to move about, as though forcing himself to stay awake. “We need to check all the hotels. Set up a lineup of bellhops. And we need to check police reports. Maybe someone called in that bicycle accident.”

“Okay, I’ll get Cooley on it.”

“What we really need to know is — who is he after? Who’s the target?”

“We’re not going to figure that out tonight,” said Gillis.

“We need more to go on.” He yawned, and added, “And we need some sleep. Both of us.”

“He’s right,” said Nina. “You can’t function without rest, Sam. You need to sleep on this.”

“In the meantime, Spectre’s at work on God knows what catastrophe. So far we’ve been lucky. Only one bombing casualty. But the next time…” Sam stopped pacing. Stopped because he’d simply run out of steam. He was standing in one spot, his shoulders slumped, his whole body drooping.