Now You See Him (16 page)

She even accepted her most recent client after some initial revulsion. There could be no connection between the Children of Eire, an organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for the children of Northern Ireland caught in the crossfire, and the murderous Cadre. She had the investigators check twice before she was finally satisfied.

But once she accepted Liam and Siobhan O'Malley, there was no stopping her. She worked nonstop, knowing perfectly well why she was doing it. As some sort of penance to the children and the people who were victims of the Cadre's fanaticism. She'd believed in what Patrick had wanted, she truly had. She was simply revolted by his means.

She fell into bed at night exhausted, too tired to think about Patrick, about St. Anne. About Michael Dowd. It was only when she slept that the dreams came. Some slow and hot and blatantly erotic, some fast and dark and dangerous. Sex and violence, intertwined. Both stemming from Michael Dowd.

In the daytime she could laugh at what little wisps she could remember, shaking off the lingering emotions. Michael Dowd was an English schoolteacher, a man of middle-class values and, when he chose to use it, world-class charm. A harmless, gentle man.

But that still didn't explain the three dead men on Baby Jerome.

She'd been back in New York for almost a month, but this hot July night was different. She came home alone, as always, but she stopped at the corner and bought herself a chilled split of French champagne. Ignoring the messages on her answering machine, ignoring her mail, she proceeded to drink every last drop, toasting her monumental decision. That very morning she'd gone through with what some people might call rash, ill-informed and downright stupid. She'd liquidated as much of her comfortable trust fund as she could and turned it over to the pathetically grateful representatives of the Children of Eire.

She still had more money than she knew what to do with, but for once in her life she felt free. Gloriously unencumbered by inherited money that she didn't deserve, by guilt that she might have deserved. She drank champagne, kicked off her shoes and danced around her apartment. And when she finally fell into bed, she dreamed once more of Michael Dowd.

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Francey looked up into his eyes. Eyes she knew well, warm, loving blue eyes, open and honest, gentle and caring. And yet they weren't the same eyes. The warm blue was icy now, with tiny pinpoints of rage in the dark center. There was no affable grin on his face. No crinkling smile, no tenderness. She was looking up into the face of a dangerous man. One with a hard mouth, shuttered eyes and a face that was narrow and still. This was no schoolteacher recuperating. This was someone as fully dangerous as Patrick Dugan had ever been.

He was lying stretched out on top of her, and yet she felt only the weight of his eyes staring into hers. And the weight of his mouth settling on hers, draining her soul, taking everything from her until she herself was weightless, floating, lost in some feathery dream world where nothing existed but the warmth of his flesh and hers, touching, heating, igniting, flaming into a flashpoint of brilliant light…

She awoke with a start, a scream of some lost emotion still rattling in her lungs. She was covered with sweat in her air-conditioned apartment, lying sideways across her double bed, and the pillows and covers were strewn around the room. Then she heard it again, the shrill ring of her telephone.

Her digital clock said 3:47. People didn't call at 3:47 a.m. unless it was to announce a disaster. She lay very still, feeling her heart pound against her chest, letting the panic dance over her skin. She didn't want to hear bad news. Her answering machine was still on; it would pick up after the fourth ring. The question was, would the next ring be the fourth?

The phone rang again, and there was no answering click from her machine. Must have been ring number three. If she could just control herself, let it ring one more time, the machine would take care of the problem, and she wouldn't have to deal with it until she was ready.

The wait seemed endless. Francey was fully awake by now, sitting cross-legged on her mattress, her arms wrapped tightly around her chemise-clad body, rocking back and forth, and for a moment she was terrified that whoever had called her had given up, hung up, leaving her forever in limbo.

The apartment was filled with the noisy buzz of silence. She could hear her air conditioner laboring away in the living room, the busy hum of her refrigerator, the ever-present noise from the street below. And then the phone rang again.

She dived for it, knocking it off the nightstand onto the floor and the pillows beside the bed, following it down with a thud, cursing beneath her breath as she first brought the receiver to her face. "Hullo?" Her voice was hoarse, strained, a desperate whisper as she waited for the voice of doom.

"Francey." One word, one voice. It was all she needed.

She started to cry. Tears were pouring down her face, and the more she tried to speak, the faster they flowed, choking her.

From miles, oceans, away, Michael's voice came back to her. "Francey?" he said again, his voice alarmed. "Are you all right?"

By sheer force of will she pulled herself together, wiping the tears from her face as she huddled on the floor in the darkness. "Michael," she said, and her voice was only faintly tremulous. "I'm fine. I just didn't expect to hear from you."

"Lord, what time is it? I woke you up, didn't I? I didn't think. Let me call you back…"

"Don't hang up! Please, Michael…"

"I won't." He sounded so calm, so sure, so safe, on the other end of the line. She closed her eyes, wishing she could touch him.

She shuddered, so alone, and then sat up a little straighter, leaning against the side of the bed. "Tell me about your life," she said, back in control. "You must be out of the hospital—you couldn't sound so healthy otherwise."

"I was in and out in a matter of days. It was a simple matter for them to patch me up. Then I went up to Whipdale House for a stay with my mother and sisters, and I've been back at school for the summer session for the past three weeks. We just won our first soccer match. We were out celebrating at the local pub, and I suddenly needed to hear your voice."

"It sounds as if your life is back to normal."

There was a certain wryness in his words. "As normal as it ever gets, given my life-style. What about yours?"

She remembered the darkness of the night on Baby Jerome, how her bedtime story with its horrors differed from the middle-class English comfort of his, and she wished for a moment that she'd never told him. That she'd kept up with the pretense that she was just a young woman at loose ends, spending time at her cousin's Caribbean estate, not someone running away from pain, from terror, from life.

But she couldn't take it back, and her past had almost killed an innocent man. A man who had come to matter far too much. "Actually, things are going quite well," she said, wondering if she should tell him what she'd done today, then dismissing the notion. "I've gone back to work. Things are hot and busy. I've been doing my best to put things behind me."

"Good for you. Looking back is a waste of time. There's nothing you can do about it at this point. Better to look forward." There was something he wasn't saying. Something in his voice, beneath the light, charming tone, that sent tendrils of alarm through her.

"Michael, are you certain you're all right?" she asked, suddenly anxious.

"Right as rain," he said firmly. "Listen, the boys are raising a fuss, and if I don't get back to them they'll probably spray ginger beer all over the waitress. I just needed to make certain you were all right."

"I'm fine," she said. "Better for hearing your voice. When am I going to see you again?"

The hesitation on the other end of the line answered her better than his evasion. "Sooner or later. It's a busy time for me, after having missed so much. And I don't think I'm in the mood for traveling. I've missed England too much."

"I could come over there."

"I don't think that would be a good idea."

It was said very gently. She hadn't realized pain could be delivered with such a soft touch. She absorbed the blow, shivering slightly.

"You're probably right," she said finally, her voice as artificially cool as the air-conditioned apartment. "It's part of everything that I need to put behind me. Get on with my life and all that. I'm glad to hear you're well, and I wish you the best of luck in the future, Michael. You're a very sweet, gentle man, and I'm sorry if I embarrassed you. I know you'll have a good life. I can't think of anyone who deserves it more, and—"

"Stop it." His words were stripped of all charm and calm, and he sounded bleak, as lost as she felt. "Don't do this to yourself, Francey. Don't do this to me. You don't understand all the ramifications."

"You're right, I don't. Because no one answers my questions, no one is honest with me. I'm trying to be mature about this, Michael. You've made it clear you don't want to be bothered with me again, and I'm accepting that as gracefully as I can. We went through an intense, emotional experience when our lives were at stake and ended up imagining there was more of a connection between us than there really was. Or at least I did. But I'm a big girl now. I know how things work, and I can—"

"Shut up." His voice was savage. She could hear the noise in the background, British schoolboys out on a celebratory lark. She closed her eyes in the darkness, wishing she were there beside him to see his face, to touch him, to try to understand what he wasn't telling her.

"What do you want from me, Michael?" she asked finally, her voice deceptively even.

"Nothing. I want nothing from you, I want a thousand things for you. I want you to have a good life, Francey. Away from death and terror and lies, from people who aren't who they say they are and never will be. Away from me."

"Michael…"

He broke the connection, the transatlantic buzz loud in her ear. She stared at the phone, willing him to be there. She could see him, the cozy English pub around him, uniformed, ruddy-cheeked schoolboys surrounding him, everything as safe and eternal as England herself. And she wondered what in God's name he was talking about.

Michael stared at the phone in mute frustration, rubbing a hand across his face. He'd been crazy to give in to temptation, another sign that his time was running out. He glanced out beyond the beaded curtain to the bar beyond, the babble of a dozen different languages surrounding him. He was suffering from jet lag, a hangover and a need so powerful that it
threatened to wipe out his good sense. He needed Francey Neeley; his soul yearned for her. And if he had any spark of decency left within his battered carcass, he would never go near her again.

He'd meant to say goodbye. But it hadn't come out that way. He didn't want to hurt her, but he would rather end up wounding her than killing her. He'd meant to be cool and brisk. But she'd gotten through his front so quickly, so devastatingly, that he knew he didn't dare contact her again. She had too much pride to try to contact him, and even if her pride failed her, she had no idea how to find him. She would be safe, whether she liked it or not. Safe from the Patrick Dugans of this world. Safe from men like him.

He pushed himself away from the counter and, wandered into the bar, squinting through the heavy cigarette smoke. There was a woman waiting for him, someone with information he needed—if he was willing to meet her price. She was very beautiful, very experienced, very deadly. His kind of woman. There was no room in his life for the Francey Neeleys of this world. If he expected to survive for much longer, he'd best remember that. And not waste his time regretting it.

For a long time Francey didn't move. She sat on the floor, hugging a pillow against her, dry eyed, heartsick and confused. "I don't know what's wrong with me," she whispered out loud to the cockroaches. "Nothing seems to make sense anymore."

The cockroaches didn't answer. She had a headache from too much champagne, a stomachache from too much emotion, and all she wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep.

But sleep and security and what dubious peace of mind she'd attained had been ripped from her by Michael's voice. She'd thought she could forget about him, forget those ten days on the islands. Forget those moments by the lagoon.

She knew better now. Michael might want that chapter in his life closed—she couldn't. Not without seeing him once more. She wasn't going to be patted on the head and told to get on with her life. She'd
heard
him, beneath the easy charm. She'd heard his need, as raw as her own. And she damned well wasn't going to forget it.

She was going after him. Willingborough was a well-known boys' school in the south of England; she would fly to London and hire a car. If he could look her in the eye and tell her things were better left as they were, maybe she could accept it. If she saw him surrounded by the accoutrements of English country life, maybe her confusion would fade.

First she would need to book the first flight available. There was six hours difference; if she got a plane out by that evening, she would arrive the next morning and be at Willingborough by evening.

She crawled back up onto the bed, shivering slightly in the too cool artificial air, and started making plans, mentally ticking off all the things she would have to accomplish before making a clean getaway. It wasn't until she was almost asleep that the niggling little discrepancy hit her. Michael had told her that he had taken his schoolboy soccer team to a pub to celebrate the victory they'd just won. According to her calculations, it had been nearly ten o'clock in the morning, far too early for a pub to open, much less for a soccer game to have been played.

Keep away from lies, he'd told her. Keep away from men like me. She hadn't known what he meant; she still didn't. She only knew that was the one thing she couldn't do.

"I'm sorry, Miss, but I'm Michael Dowd," the heavyset, red-faced man informed her. "I've taught here at Willingborough for the past fifteen years, and I've never been in an auto accident. Someone must have been pulling your leg."