Iris Johansen - Blind Alley

She stared up at him, anger ebbing away, replaced by that odd breathlessness she'd experienced once before.

“Don't look at me like that,” he said thickly. His hand left her shoulder and moved up to cup her cheek. “God, you're beautiful. You have so many expressions. . . .”

Her skin was tingling beneath his touch yet she couldn't seem to move away. “Everyone has expressions.”

“Not like you. You light up, you cloud, you sparkle. . . . I could watch you for the next millennium and not get tired of—” He drew a deep breath and his hand slowly dropped away from her. “Go to bed. I'm not behaving well and it could get worse.”

She didn't move.

“Go to bed.”

She took a step closer and tentatively touched his chest.

“Oh, shit.” He closed his eyes. “Now you've done it.”

His heart was beating so hard beneath her palm. . . .

His eyes opened and he stared down at her. “No.”

“Why not?” She took another step. “I think I want—”

“I know you do.” He drew a deep shaky breath and took a step back. “And it's killing me.” He turned and headed for the door. “Sex maniacs are like that.”

She barely remembered calling him that. “Where are you going?”

“To get some air. I need it.”

“You're running away from me.”

“You're damn right.”

“Why?”

He stopped at the door to look back at her. “Because I don't screw schoolgirls, Jane.”

She could feel the heat flush her cheeks. “I didn't say I wanted to screw you. And that's not a very pleasant way of—”

“I didn't want to make it pretty. I'm trying to discourage you.”

“You act as if I attacked you. I only touched you.”

“That was enough. When it's you.”

She lifted her chin. “Why? After all, I'm only a schoolgirl. Not important enough to be of any account.”

“No more than the black plague was during the Dark Ages.”

“Now you're comparing me to a plague?”

“Only the devastation factor.” He studied her expression. “Have I hurt you? Christ, I keep forgetting you're more fragile than you pretend.”

“You couldn't hurt me.” She stared at him defiantly. “I wouldn't let you. Even though you tried your best. Let's see, you called me a plague, a schoolgirl, Cira.”

“I did hurt you.” He didn't speak for a moment and when he did the harshness was gone from his voice. “Look, I never want to hurt you. I want to be your friend.” He shook his head. “No, that's not true. We may be friends someday but there's too much in the way right now.”

“I can't imagine being friends with you.”

“Ditto. That's the problem. Oh, what the hell. I'm just digging myself deeper.” He slammed the door behind him as he left the house.

“I never want to hurt you.”

But he had hurt her. She felt rejected and uncertain and lonely. She had acted instinctively, compulsively, and he'd refused her.

It was only her pride, she told herself. She was far from ignorant, but she didn't know anything about sex on a personal level. He obviously wanted to have nothing to do with a novice.

Well, she wasn't to blame. He was attractive and she'd responded to him. And it wasn't as if she'd been alone in that attraction. He'd touched her and made her feel—

And then the bastard had treated her as if she were a teenage Lolita.

Screw him.

She turned on her heel and went down the hall to her bedroom. Wash up and go to sleep and forget about Trevor. Look upon tonight as a learning experience. Didn't most teenage girls have a fixation on older men at one time or another?

She wasn't most girls. She didn't feel any younger than Trevor and he hadn't been fair. She had a right to make a choice, not be sent away with a pat on the head. It wasn't as if she didn't have friends her own age who already had sexual experience. One of her classmates had even gotten married last quarter and was going to have a baby in August.

And the only reason she didn't have experience was that she hadn't been tempted. The boys at school were . . . boys. She'd felt like their older sister. She had more in common with Joe and the guys at the precinct than she had with her peers.

But not with Mark Trevor. She had nothing in common with Trevor and there was no reason she should feel this closeness to him.

She opened the bedroom door and started to get undressed as quietly as possible. Her face and hands were smudged from the tunnel but she wasn't about to go down to the bathroom to clean up. She'd been lucky Eve and Joe had slept through their excursion in the tunnels and wasn't going to risk waking them. She'd get up early and shower before they got out of bed.

She moved over to the window to look out at the winding street. Was Aldo standing somewhere in the shadow of one of those shops? Down in the theater tunnel she'd been overwhelmed by death but not the death that Aldo represented. Trevor had made her see that ancient Herculaneum far too clearly. Young suntanned athletes, languid women on litters, actors rehearsing their lines. All cut off in the prime of their lives. She'd been deluged, chilled, and crushed by the realization of the scope of those deaths.

Yet she'd never felt more alive than that moment when Trevor had touched her cheek. Perhaps that was why she'd been so affected and caught off-balance.

But now she was back to the real world.

Aldo's world.

It was truly like a funeral procession, Aldo thought. The metal coffin was being carried by four of Sontag's students and the mourners were Joe Quinn, Eve Duncan, and the reporters and soldiers following the procession.

The coffin.

He stared with feverish intensity at the box that contained Cira's remains. He'd seen specially constructed coffins like that as a boy when he'd played around his father's archaeology sites. Sontag had obviously done everything possible to preserve that skeleton from disintegration.

It would do him no good. He would smash those bones, grind them to dust. He would defile and—

Jane MacGuire and Mark Trevor had come around the corner, trailing behind the crowd around the coffin. She looked pale and composed beneath the dim electric lights illuminating the sepulchral darkness. Her gaze was fixed straight ahead, not on the coffin. What are you feeling? Anticipation? Triumph? Or is it too painful, bitch? You don't know pain yet.

Do you feel me looking at you? Does it frighten you? But then you like to have men stare at you, don't you? Trevor is watching you now, devouring you with his eyes. How long did it take you to lure him into your bed, whore?

He could feel the fury explode inside him. It shouldn't have happened. Trevor had no business coming between them. It should have been him. It would be him. Before he took her face, he'd take her body. He'd spend himself, cleanse away the evil that was Cira.

But it might not be enough. What if he had only a few moments to enjoy that final victory? He needed more. He needed contact again, her voice, her words.

The procession had passed out of sight down the tunnel and he had to catch up before he lost them. He moved quickly down the robbers' tunnel that ran parallel with the theater tunnel. He wasn't really worried. He'd be able to follow them. He knew these tunnels well and the darkness was his friend. The blood was singing through his veins with a rhythmic refrain that repeated over and over.

It was his time.

SEVENTEEN

You went to pretty elaborate lengths to make this look authentic,” Eve murmured to Trevor as she watched the students carefully placing the coffin on the table in the large, high-ceilinged library. “It wasn't easy for them to get that coffin up that ladder.”