Nightfall (2 page)

"Oh ye of little faith!" Sean declaimed. "Come see me, Cass. Before it's too late."

The phone line went dead. Cassidy stared at it, blinking for a moment. "Melodramatic bastard," she said succinctly, slamming down the receiver.

She wasn't going to let him do it to her again. She wasn't going to let Sean manipulate her as he always had. She kept her distance, both physical and emotional, for a very good reason. Sean was voracious—he devoured any soul who came near him, anyone not strong enough to withstand his powerful personality. Cassidy had worked hard at being able to stand up to him, but she kept her exposure to a minimum.

The story about Sean being sick was just that, a story. Sean O'Rourke had never been sick a day in his life—germs wouldn't dare mess with him. A short, fierce bull of a man, he stormed through life, through his five wives and three children and countless best-sellers with an appetite for experience that was astonishing. As a child she'd been terrified of him. Now she was only faintly wary.

And he needed her. It was hard to resist, even though she knew the emotional danger. It probably had something to do with his career—Sean had few real emotions for anything else.

She knew perfectly well she was going to go. Despite her misgivings, she'd survive a visit in Sean and Mabry's Park Avenue apartment. Her father had lost the ability to torment her, and Richard Tiernan was the least of her worries. If he was anywhere in Sean's orbit, she doubted he'd even notice her. She simply wasn't the type to inspire murderous obsessions.

Damn, she was late. It was a March day in Baltimore, and Cassidy had been hoping for spring, not a trip farther north. It couldn't be helped. When it came right down to it, she was still prey to the old emotions that raged through her family, including a hopeless affection for her impossible father, who never failed to let her down. She'd take her vacation time, fly to New York, and see him, making sure he was the same, invulnerable old reprobate. She'd figure out what Sean wanted from her, tell him no, do some shopping, and come home.

Very simple. So why did she have this overwhelming feeling of impending doom?

Maybe she should ignore her family's demands, book a flight for the Caribbean, and lie in the sun, baking away the darkness that always seemed to invade her soul by the end of the winter.

But she wasn't going to do that. Everything always seemed fraught with disaster this time of year—she'd learned not to give in to her irrational depression. But if she ignored Sean's enigmatic demands, she'd end up spending her entire vacation worrying.

No, she was going, whether she wanted to or not. She just hoped to God she wasn't going to run into Sean's newest pet project.

Murderous psychopaths had never held any particular charm for her. Unlike her father, she preferred the more grisly aspects of modern life between the pages of a book. With any luck, that was as close as she would ever get to Richard Tiernan.

"Leave me alone, Mabry," Sean O'Rourke, born John Roarke, snapped at his fifth wife. "You know how I hate to have anyone fussing over me."

"I'm not fussing," Mabry murmured, tossing her silky straight platinum hair over one angular shoulder. "I simply said that if you don't seem to be feeling better, you should go back to that doctor you're so fond of and stop snapping at me.

"Damn it, I'm not snapping," Sean growled. "I just asked when the hell Cassidy's supposed to arrive."

"This is the third time today you've asked me," she pointed out with maddening calm. "And for the third time I'll tell you, I don't know. I don't even know if she's coming at all. I called her and added my two cents, but Cassidy is her own woman."

"Damn her," Sean said morosely. "You told her I'd been ill?"

"I told her exactly what you wanted me to tell her. That you had a bad cold, you weren't recovering as quickly as I wanted, and that I thought she ought to come see you."

"And what did she say to that?"

"Something noncommittal. You should know, Sean, that if you fail to be there for the people in your life, they might very well fail to be there for you as well."

"Cassidy wouldn't fail me," he said with great certainty. "She's fair and loyal, and she wouldn't hold a grudge."

"You're used to people forgiving you. You'll go too far one of these days."

"Spare me the voice of doom, Mabry, it doesn't become you," Sean said. "I know my daughter better than you. She'll be here. I just want to know when."

Mabry drained her cup of ginseng tea. "For the first time in your life, darling, you'll have to be patient."

Sean glared at her, but she ignored him, her beautiful face serene and distant as she turned to the morning paper. "If you aren't going to fight with me, I'll have to find someone who will," he said in a peevish voice.

Her voice stopped him at the door. "I'd watch it before you tangle with your newest pet, love," she said in a dulcet voice. "He might not be quite as civilized as you think."

Sean's laugh was harsh. "That's what makes him interesting, Mabry. Jackals are far more inspiring than house cats."

"You'll go too far."

"I always have," he said. And there was no missing the pride in his rough voice.

He lay on the bed, letting the white-blue surround him. He'd become adept at disappearing, letting his conscious mind drift free, so that nothing remained, just the shell of his body, the weight of his bones pressing in to the thin prison mattress. There were noises echoing through the vast steel and concrete structure, voices, the slam of metal doors, the jingle of keys and coins, but none of them reached him as he floated, free and formless.

He'd gotten so that he could do it any time he wanted, an instinctive, almost unconscious escape. As an alibi it had been a piss-poor one, but he hadn't been interested in convincing a jury of his peers. He'd only been concerned with ending it quickly.

At one point he'd even considered confessing, but some stray remnant of self-preservation had stopped him. Once he confessed, there'd be no going back. As long as he kept silent, denied everything, there would always be an element of doubt. No matter how tiny.

He remembered the first time he'd gone into that dark, empty place. It had been automatic, as he knelt beside the body of his dying wife, her blood staining his hands and clothes. When the police had come he'd still been there, silent, lost. Unable to answer their simple questions. Thank God.

It was much better like this. Free and floating, in a vacuum with no sun or wind, no warmth, nothing but a vast emptiness.

He blinked, a tiny movement, and the bright blue of the winter sky invaded his stillness. The bed beneath him was neither thin nor hard. It fit his tall, rangy body far better than the narrow cots in prison, and he supposed he should summon up some kind of gratitude. But gratitude would require emotion, and he had no emotions.

He could hear the two of them arguing, the voices more intrusive than the muffled obscenity of Dannemora. He didn't want to be here. He didn't want to be anyplace at all, but that still, white-blue emptiness. But he wasn't finished yet. He wasn't ready to rest.

He pulled himself upright, barely noticing his surroundings. Sean O'Rourke's upscale Manhattan apartment with its pseudo-Southwestern decor meant no more to him that the spartan cell he'd shared with another murderer. All that mattered was getting through the next hour, the next few weeks. All that mattered was doing what he had to do. No matter what the cost.

"You're awake, then." O'Rourke stood in the doorway, his aggressive chin pushed forward. He was like a bantam rooster, short, bandy-legged, pugnacious. Tiernan had no illusions as to what O'Rourke wanted from him, believed of him. He had every intention of exploiting him to the fullest.

"I'm awake," said Richard Tiernan. "Where's your daughter?"

Cassidy was afraid of flying. It wasn't something she admitted very often, even to herself, but three days later she blessed the fact that what existed of the United States railroad system was still working reasonably well between Baltimore and New York. She didn't have to mess with getting to and from airports, and she didn't even have to think about sitting in a contraption that lifted off the ground and suspended her in midair for a ridiculous amount of time.

Unfortunately, it left her with too much time for distraction, and she'd made the mistake of grabbing
People
magazine just before she got on the train. By sheer force of will she'd managed to avoid any of the media stories involving her father and a convicted killer, but trapped on a crowded train with a sour-tempered bureaucrat to her left, there was no way she could resist the temptation, particularly with Sean's pugnacious face on the cover. " '
He's
innocent
,
' claims
Sean O'Rourke, who's putting his money where his mouth is
" said the teaser. In the corner, over her father's shoulder, was a grainy snapshot of a happy family, a blond, perfect wife, two young, beautiful children, and a tall, dark man standing behind them, a protective hand on the woman's shoulder. Or was it a threatening hand?

Suddenly she couldn't stand even touching the magazine. She dropped it on the floor, but the man beside her immediately scooped it up. "D'you mind?" he asked, not giving her a chance to object. "Disgusting, isn't it?" he leaned over and breathed expensive Scotch in her face. "They let monsters like that go free, just because someone with a little clout talks them into it. He'll kill again, you'll see, and then that asshole O'Rourke will write a book about it. It makes me sick."

Cassidy controlled her trace of amusement in hearing her father called an
asshole. She couldn't put up an argument on that front. "Maybe Tiernan didn't do it."

"Have you heard his story? He says he came home, found the bodies of his wife and children, and then went into shock and doesn't remember another thing. They never found the bodies of his children, but his fingerprints were all over the murder weapon. He was covered with her blood. And he's never shown a trace of sorrow or regret."

Cassidy glanced over at the photograph on the cover. They looked so normal, so happy. The perfect family, now destroyed. She leaned back and closed her eyes, turning her face away. She could only hope to God her father wasn't going to want to talk about Tiernan. The whole subject made her faintly ill, the thought of a man murdering his own children. Not that she had any illusions about the sacred nature of the father-child bond. She'd lived with Sean for too long to retain her innocence. Her father could wallow in the mud as much as he wanted, but she wasn't going to let him drag her there with him.

A light snow had begun to fall when the train pulled into Penn Station. She considered calling Mabry and warning her that she'd arrived, then thought better of it. Sean fancied himself an old-fashioned Irishman, one who kept a welcome for any friend or family who happened to stray near him. There'd be room for her in the cavernous old apartment on Park Avenue, and she'd prefer to see Sean without giving him time to prepare. He wanted something from her, she was certain of it, though she doubted it had anything to do with writing. Sean had always ridiculed her lack of creativity, referring to her as his little Philistine. He'd hardly be asking her editorial expertise.

No, he wanted something else, enough so that he was willing to play sick, to enlist Mabry in his little games. And if he wanted something that much, Cassidy was curious enough to play along. For a day or two.

As luck would have it, Sean and Mabry were coming out of the door just as Cassidy reached the apartment building on Seventy-second Street. "Cassidy, my love!" Sean boomed when he caught sight of her, flinging his arms around her. Cassidy stood within his burly embrace, bemused as always by the rush of love and irritation that swept over her when she was in her father's presence. He pushed her away a moment later, glowering fiercely. "Let me look at you. You've been eating too much again. Don't you know a woman can never be too thin or too rich? Mabry, talk to the girl. I swear, she looks positively voluptuous."

Irritation took over as Cassidy glared down at her father. "What can I say, Sean, I'm hopelessly curvaceous. Nothing short of cosmetic surgery would whittle down my hips, and I'm not sure that would work."

Mabry's cool blue eyes met Cassidy's over her father's head, and she smiled faintly. "You're father's an asshole," she said. "You're absolutely beautiful, as always."

"You're the second person today who's said that," Cassidy said, moving past Sean to hug her elegant stepmother.

"Told you were beautiful?" Sean demanded, not liking to be ignored.

"No, said you were an asshole," she replied.

Mabry laughed. "I wouldn't be surprised if there were more we haven't heard about. How long are you staying, darling? We'll come back up and get you settled."

"No, we won't!" Sean snapped. "You've been harassing me to go to the doctor's for weeks, and now that I have an appointment, I'm not going to miss it. Cassidy can get herself settled in. Take your old bedroom, Cassie. Just make yourself at home—I'm not sure when we'll be back."

"But…" Mabry began, a worried expression on her face.

"But nothing," Sean said. "Don't fuss over the girl. Lord, you're becoming an old lady before your time, Mabry, fussing over everyone. You'll be here a good long time, won't you, Cassie? We'll have plenty of time to spend with her."

"As a matter of fact, I wasn't…"

But as usual, Sean had no interest in anyone's thoughts but his own. He dragged Mabry down the sidewalk toward Park Avenue, waving an irritated hand. "Later," he shouted, and they disappeared around the corner.

"He never changes, does he, miss?"

Cassidy turned and flashed a smile at the doorman. "He doesn't seem to, Bill. How's he been? Mabry said he was sick."

"Not so's I'd notice. Still getting into trouble, like always. It's good to see you back. Maybe you can talk some sense into him."

"Now, why does everyone seem to think I can do the impossible?" Cassidy demanded with a wry grimace. "Sean doesn't know the meaning of the word caution."