Thea Harrison: True Colors

“All right,” said the operator, her voice gentling. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You said you’re in a cab, correct?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Have your driver pull over and give me your location. I’m going to get a unit dispatched to you. Make sure you wait in the cab with the driver until they arrive. Then you’ll have a police escort to the station. Okay?”

Alice’s world stopped spinning just a little. She whispered, “Yes, okay.”

Less than ten minutes later, a cruiser pulled up behind the cab, lights flashing, but siren off. Alice paid the cab driver as one of the officers, a policewoman, walked up to them. Alice climbed out of the cab.

The policewoman said, “Alice Clark?”

“Yes,” Alice said.

“I’m Sergeant Rizzo. My partner is Officer Garcia. We’re here to escort you to the 94th Precinct.”

“Thank you,” Alice said. She had cooled down after her headlong run through the streets, but her clothes were still clammy with sweat and the temperature was plummeting fast. The winter storm had definitely arrived. She wrapped her coat tight around her as she started to shiver.

“You’re welcome.” The policewoman walked with her to the cruiser.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” Alice said. “I don’t even know if this was necessary.”

“Not at all,” said Rizzo. The Sergeant opened the back door and gestured for her to climb in. “From what I understand, you might have been facing a smart, violent killer. You can’t be too careful.”

As Alice settled gingerly into the backseat, Garcia twisted around to smile at her through the protective grille. “We’ve got a message for you that might set your mind at ease. We just heard from the WDVC—the Wyr Division of Violent Crime. Detective Gideon Riehl has arrived at the 94th and is waiting for you there. He says to tell you he’s big and blond, and he’s sorry he scared you.”

Alice sagged as Garcia’s words sank in. “Oh gods, thank you.”

Reaction set in as Garcia drove through the thickening storm. Alice huddled in her coat and shook so hard she felt like she might fly apart at the joints. A succession of images from the past hour flashed through her mind with silent urgency.

Haley’s expression had been blank, as if she had died overcome with surprise. Or perhaps her expression was blank only because she was dead, and she had suffered unimaginable fear and pain in her last moments. Had she looked into her killer’s face and known she was going to die?

Had she looked into her killer’s face and known him?

Alice wiped her face with the end of her scarf. Haley worked—had worked—at the same elementary school as she did. Someone was going to have to call Alex, who was not only the leader of their group but the principal of Broadway Elementary. Someone was going to have to contact Haley’s parents. She supposed the police had an established protocol for such things, but Haley was—had been—an only child. The news of her loss was going to be a crippling blow. Maybe the police would let Alice help.

And Peter. They hadn’t released the details of his death, only that he had been attacked and killed. They might not have found David yet. But as early as two days ago, when Alice and Haley had talked of Peter in hushed voices in the teacher’s lounge, Alice had known.

The nightmare had returned.

Though the Friday evening was still young, traffic had thinned to a trickle as visibility was reduced to yards. A winter storm advisory urged emergency travel only and even the most determined holiday shoppers abandoned their pursuits.

The world had turned barren and so treacherous it leached away the electric welcome of lights shining in the dark. The wind howled as though it was populated with invisible wolves on the hunt. It drove the snow with such force tiny needles of ice attacked any exposed skin.

There were two kinds of storms, Alice thought. One was a friendly kind that you could enjoy watching out the window with a cup of tea. It crashed around in the sky with theatricality but no real malice.

This storm was the other, the killing kind. There are horrors that exist in the night, the bitter wind said, horrors that only children and demons can see. There are horrors that exist in the mind as well, that only the individual can bear witness to. The winter wind sang of things that the mind did not quite remember but that fear never forgot, filled as people are with the haunts and tragedies that make up the shadows of their lives. We can’t endure them, the wind whispered, for when the light and warmth are truly taken we are left shivering naked in the dark. Then we hear a nearby husky chuckle that tells us we are prey.

Not even the lights of the 94th Precinct could offer Alice any comfort as the square brick-and-stone building appeared suddenly, a great, hulking, shadowed mass in the gray-and-black night. Faceless evil destroyed her friends and stalked her community. The grief and fear were crushing.

Then there was this, a different kind of reason to shake, an impossible sense of knowing about someone she didn’t know at all. The conviction invaded her bones and assaulted her skeptical, resisting soul.

She didn’t want a mate. She didn’t even like to date. All of those questions everybody asked, the same ones, over and over. What do you do for a living? What do you do for fun? What do you like to eat? Are you seeing anybody else?

Did anybody ever answer those questions truthfully on the first date?

Alice’s tendencies followed her shy Wyr nature. She was a quiet person who liked solitary pursuits. She enjoyed reading, quilting, long walks and biking in parks, camping and books on tape. Her idea of going renegade was to make a radical departure from a food recipe. While she adored all fifteen of the quirky, rambunctious children in her classroom, she often spent her evenings at home recovering from the intense social interactions of the day. She got her social needs met by the routine get-togethers of her group, other teachers at lunch, periodic phone calls and letters to her parents and, oh gods, Haley .

The gigantic menacing stranger—what had Garcia called him? Detective Gideon Riehl. He couldn’t be who she thought he was. She had to be suffering from some kind of internal system malfunction, a strange by-product from all the stress of the last few days.

Wyr were deadly when they turned criminal. By definition, anyone who worked in the New York Police Department’s elite WDVC lived a violent, dangerous life. In order to bring down criminal Wyr, the members of the WDVC had to be better, more efficient killers than the Wyr they hunted. Alice couldn’t imagine anyone more unlike her. No wonder he had terrified her.

Had he felt something when he’d first laid eyes on her? Did he share the same, insane conviction that she was his mate? If he hadn’t, she had to worry about herself. If he had, then she had a whole lot of other things to worry about.

She caught sight of Detective Riehl’s unmistakable, immense figure as he paced in front of the precinct’s doors. He was bare-headed, his battered leather jacket unzipped. Apparently he was immune to the brutal blizzard shrieking around him. Riehl turned as Garcia pulled the patrol car over to the curb. He was already striding forward as the cruiser slowed to a smooth stop.

A powerful insanity took over Alice as she watched him approach. He moved his massive body with athletic, sure fluidity, those impossibly long legs of his making short work of the distance between them. His light-colored gaze fixed on her with the same unnerving intensity as earlier, but instead of filling her with panic, this time she knew that he was her only shelter from the killing storm.

Her gaze clung to him, her breath sawing in her throat as she groped for a handle, only belatedly remembering there weren’t handles in the back of a police car when Riehl reached out and gently opened the door for her. His icy gaze steady, he held out both powerful hands to her.