Кей Хупер - Hiding in the Shadows

Faith felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rise in her throat, but managed to swallow it. "Yeah, well. The last time she warned me, she was right."

"The last time?"

Faith wasn't surprised that his face was masklike in its stillness.

"Dinah told me in a dream that somebody was trying to get into my window. When I woke up, someone was."

"You know very well that had to be your subconscious, Faith. The noise you heard while you were sleeping found its way into your dreams, that's all."

"Probably," she agreed. "So I have to wonder, Kane. I have to wonder what I've seen or heard that convinced my subconscious there's another body out there somewhere." She returned her gaze to the television screen. "Unless I know there is, of course."

"How could you?"

"Exactly. How could I?"

Like Dinah's, Faith's apartment felt too empty, and Faith wasted no time in searching for her watch. But it was nowhere to be found.

"You know, now that I think about it," she said to Kane, "I don't think there was a watch among my things when they gave them back to me in the hospital."

"It could have been destroyed in the accident," he pointed out.

"Yes ... But how many people do you know who have only one watch?

"Especially a woman. They're cheap accessories."

Kane helped her search a second time, but there was no watch in the apartment. They found a small trinket box containing a few pairs of earrings, long and angry with brightly colored stones and crystals.

Faith reached up absently to touch her earlobe, finding the simple pearl stud there a far more restrained style.

"Dinah's," Kane said. "She kept a few pairs at my place, in a box in the linen closet."

Faith stared at him, horrified. "You mean I just took them? God, Kane, I'm sorry. I hadn't even realized..."

"Don't worry about it. I doubt it would bother Dinah, and it doesn't bother me."

But she knew it did bother him, and that she had unconsciously raped Dinah in yet another way definitely bothered her. She brooded about it all the way out to the construction site, even more unnerved when she realized that at some point in the last twenty-four hours, she had, without even noticing her actions, polished her fingernails again.

With Dinah's red polish.

The building inspector was surprised that Faith didn't recognize him; they had, after all, worked in the same city office for months. He was also surprised to learn of her accident, which told Faith he hadn't felt enough interest in her to notice her absence.

Since it appeared that the morning's weather report had been accurate, and distant rumbles of thunder promised more than just rain, Kane and the inspector wasted no time in going down to the half-finished lower levels of the Ludlow building to look at the foundation. Faith remained outside. She stood, actually, between the building and the gate, beyond which their car and driver waited, and the restless bodyguard paced.

What is his name, anyway? she wondered for the first time. Kane had called him something, but for the life of her she couldn't remember what it was. She supposed bodyguards grew accustomed to being ignored; if they did their job well, they were supposed to be virtually invisible to the people they guarded — or so she assumed.

A sudden gust of wind stirred her hair and chilled her despite her sweater and jacket, and she thrust her hands into her pockets. In the right pocket, she felt a thin, flexible piece of metal, and her fingers probed it curiously. There was something familiar about...

"God, I'm wearing her jacket again," she muttered to herself. "And I didn't even notice."

It scared her, made her feel she wasn't in control.

She turned her back to the building and hunched her shoulders against the growing chill. Richardson was just coming through the gate, apparently having paused to reassure the bodyguard that he was no threat. He came straight down the rutted track toward her. The grim look on his face made her heart sink.

"Where's Kane?" he asked when he reached her.

"Around back with the inspector, checking out the foundation. What's happened?" He studied her, seemingly weighing her, then said bluntly, "We've found another body."

Faith thought the world tilted. But the dizzy sensation passed quickly.

"Do you know who it is?"

"That's why I'm here." Richardson nodded toward the building. "It's the foreman of the construction crew supposed to be working here. Jed Norris. He was shot. Two bullets to the back of the head. But this one is easy to figure out. We have the gun. It's registered to Jordan Cochrane."

Richardson thought Faith was nuts when she insisted they take further steps to identify the body. He pointed out that there had been a driver's license on the body and that two of his co-workers, including his boss, Max Sanders, had identified the body. Norris had had no family in the city to perform the gruesome duty.

"Fingerprints," she said. They were back in Kane's apartment, and she was walking the floor, more agitated than Kane had ever seen her. "You can check his fingerprints."

Richardson grimaced. "The body's been out in the woods for a couple of days at least, and the animals have gotten to it. Getting fingerprints might not even be possible."

"You have to try. Please. He's not who you think he is."

"I have a victim," Richardson said, counting off on his fingers. "I have a murder weapon. I have a suspect. My job is to gather up all three and present the evidence to the D.A."

Softly, Faith said, "And I'm telling you that neither you nor the D. A. will ever understand why that man was killed until you know who he really was."

Richardson looked at Kane, who said, "Max says Norris worked for him only a little over a year. Maybe we'd better..."

"What do you expect to find?" Richardson asked them both.

"Somebody else," Faith said.

Kane shrugged. "All I know is that the foreman of my construction crew turning up dead just as a building inspector informs me that somebody deliberately sabotaged the project sounds extremely convenient."

"How far does it put you off schedule?"

"Off schedule?" Kane laughed without amusement. "Guy, the sabotage is in the foundation, and the inspector tells me it sure as hell can't be patched. It was a subtle job but damned thorough. The whole structure is undermined. We'll have to pull it down and start over. That's if the project can even continue, and I don't know that it can."

Standing by the piano and staring down at the ivory keys, Faith murmured, "Want to guess who's going to get the blame?"

Kane nodded and told Richardson, "Max got me on my cell phone on the way back here, and he's already covering his ass, saying somebody obviously hired Norris to sabotage the building and then killed him to wipe out tracks. He doesn't know about your suspect yet, but his theory could still hold together. And if it happened that way, Norris just might be more than he appears to be."

"Who would want to sabotage an office building? Why would Jordan Cochrane, for God's sake?"

"I don't know, but it has to be tied in with the rest of this, Guy. Dinah was out there at the site the day before she vanished. Cochrane's name has already turned up more than once, since he owns the warehouse where we believe Dinah was held. And so far, nearly everything we've found ties in to construction in some way. Including the names on that list." He had told Richardson about that as soon as they had arrived at Kane's apartment.

The detective sighed. "Shit. All right, I'll put the forensics team to work to get us a useable print. But, listen, I meant what I said about you staying away from the men on that list, Kane. If they are being blackmailed it's because they've done something they want to keep secret or they'd be really pissed if you came stomping into their lives yelling about it. Are we clear on that?"