Кей Хупер - Hiding in the Shadows

He grasped her wrist and pulled her hand away from her face. "Maybe you should take a break for a few hours. I can take you back to the apartment..."

We don't have a few hours. Dinah doesn't have a few hours.

"I m fine." She carefully avoided any glance at the hand still holding her wrist, and even managed a smile. "But we don't seem to have accomplished much, really. Speculation, supposition, guesses. Maybe we're right, but even if we are, it doesn't get us any closer to finding Dinah."

Kane's fingers tightened around her wrist for a moment. Then his gaze went to that connection between them and he frowned slightly. He leaned back, releasing her wrist. "We have to figure out who's got Dinah, and to do that we need to find whatever it is you found once before." His voice was abrupt. "The best possibility is that you'll remember what you found or where you found it. Why don't we visit the office where you worked and see if that jars your memory?"

Faith nodded and rose to her feet. There was a clock near the door, and she could hear it ticking. Or maybe she imagined it. Ticking.

"You knew your job." Marianne Camp, Faith's supervisor in the department where she had worked, was matter-of-fact. "You had some prior experience working for a construction company, and that gave you a solid base from which to handle your duties here."

Faith wondered if she had done something to annoy the woman, or if her attitude was so chilly with all those she supervised. Then again, maybe she didn't view aftereffects of a coma as a good reason not to return to work.

Kane smiled at her. "And those duties, Mrs. Camp?"

"Secretarial, for the most part." The supervisor shrugged, possibly impatient to leave on her lunch break, since it was nearly noon. "Entering data into the system, filing paperwork, coordinating the schedules of the various inspectors."

"Was I friends with any of my co-workers?" Faith asked.

"Not as far as I was aware," she replied stiffly.

"You kept to yourself. Very quiet and dependable." Kane said, "According to what you told me, Mrs. Camp, you spoke to Miss Parker for about five minutes before she left the office the day of her accident."

"Yes."

"Do you remember what you talked about?"

"After all these weeks? Not really. I should imagine it was something to do with the paperwork she had stayed late to complete."

"I see. Do you always remain late yourself if someone else is working after hours?"

"Usually but not always. I had paperwork of my own to take care of."

Kane glanced at Faith as she shifted slightly in the other visitor's chair then said to the supervisor, "Were are you both working on the same project?"

"No, Mr. Macgregor. No one in my department is assigned a specific project the way you mean. We take care of work as it comes in, on a rotation basis. As I recall, Miss Parker was transcribing three different field reports and collating inspection forms from at least half a dozen construction sites. It was by no means an unusual workload."

"Would you happen to know which construction sites those were, Mrs. Camp?"

"Not specifically." Her voice was different.

"Could you find out for us?"

"I don't see how, Mr. Macgregor. There's no reason for our files to show which clerk handled the various pieces of paper."

Faith spoke up then. "Why was I late, Mrs. Camp?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"You said I was dependable. So why did I have to stay late to complete that paperwork? Didn't I have time to get it done during regular hours?"

The supervisor frowned at her. "You took a long lunch that day. Two hours."

"Do you know why I did that?"

"You said you had a doctor's appointment."

There was the faintest emphasis on the second word.

Slightly dry, Faith said, "I guess I didn't have a note."

"No."

There didn't seem to be much more they could ask, so after thanking the supervisor for her time, Kane and Faith left her tiny office.

"Good question," he said as they stood in the hallway outside the suite of offices that made up the Office of Building Inspections and Zoning. "It never occurred to me to wonder why you stayed late that day."

"The answer doesn't seem to help us much." She shrugged. "I didn't have a doctor's appointment that day, at least not with Dr. Murphy, so I could have been lying to Mrs. Camp about why I took the long lunch. But we don't have a clue what I might have been doing, or where I went, and after so many weeks it's doubtful we'd find anyone who might have seen me and remembered, even if we knew who to ask."

"And you don't recognize this hallway?"

Faith looked around again. The Office of Building Inspections and Zoning was on the fifth floor of the busy downtown office building, and up and down the hall on this floor and others were more city offices. The hallway itself was generic, almost featureless and without charm, and struck no chord of memory within Faith.

"This isn't the hallway I saw in that memory," she told Kane. "At least, not this floor."

"My guess is that they all look virtually alike, but we can check a couple on the way down."

As Kane had predicted, the other floors they checked were all but identical, and by the time they reached the lobby, Faith was certain it was not this building she and Dinah had been in when she had found ... whatever it was she had found.

A morning filled with questions, and precious few answers. Faith said, "I think we should talk to Dinah's other lawyer, Mr. Sloan. Especially since you didn't know about him before."

"I definitely want him to explain why he didn't come forward when Dinah disappeared," Kane agreed grimly.

They got into the car, and for a moment he stared through the windshield without moving.

"Kane?"

A muscle tightened in his jaw. "I don't... I can't feel her anymore."

The desolation in his voice went through Faith like a knife and left her aching. For him, for Dinah. And for herself.

"She's gone further and further away from me with every day that's passed. I think about it, and I realize I can't remember the sound of her voice. I glimpse a blond woman on a street corner and my heart stops, yet I have to concentrate to remember her face."

"Kane..."

He turned his head and focused on her. "I have to find her," he said. "Before I lose her completely."

There was nothing she could say to that except, "We'll find her, Kane. We will."

After a moment he nodded, accepting that reassurance because, she thought, anything else was simply unbearable.

"Yes," he said.

She kept her voice steady. "I have Mr. Sloan's card, so I know the address of his office."

Kane started the car, his actions automatic.

More coolly now, as though he regretted the impulsive, emotional confidence, he said, "I'm willing to bet he won't tell us anything useful."

"Maybe, but it's a base we have to cover."

"Agreed. But I know lawyers. He won't talk."

As it turned out, Kane was only half right.

Edward Sloan was in his early fifties but looked ten years younger. He was trim and athletic, dressed well without ostentation, and had the trained, evenly modulated voice of an orator. And despite visibly restless clients in his outer office, he agreed to see Faith and Kane immediately.

"How can I help you?" he asked when they were seated before his sleek, modern desk. The question might have been directed to both of them, but his eyes were on Faith.

So she was the one who replied. "Mr. Sloan, do you have any idea if Dinah Leighton was working on a particular story when she disappeared?"

"No. She never talked to me about her work."

Kane said, "She used your services whenever she wanted her actions to remain very quiet."

"Is that a question, Mr. Macgregor?" Sloan smiled faintly. "Yes, I was her confidential attorney."