Sleep of the Innocent (21 page)

When had he fallen for her? Listening to her sing? Way before that, he realized. Before he nursed her through those dark nights or carried her away from her cabin or spent all those hours searching for her. It must have been when he thought she was dead and then saw the body of the real Jennifer Wilson—and suddenly he could see her gray eyes mocking him, could see her holding up the sleeve of his sweater and telling him he was beautiful. Don't kid yourself, Lucas, he said to himself. Ever since the day you met her, you've been pursuing her like some demented fool.

The convulsive sobs began to ease, and he had to fight not to hold her tighter. He ran his right hand lightly over her hair, smoothing it back, allowing himself the luxury of resting his cheek against it for an instant. She began to straighten herself up, and he released her hastily. He turned away to hide his burning cheeks and said the first thing that came into his head. “Listening to you sing, it suddenly came to me why all those rich bastards, the bloated robber barons of this world, go batty over singers. Imagine having all that—”

Annie blew her nose fiercely and turned to face him. Her nose was red, her eyes swollen, her face blotchy. Unlike his stepmother, who could cry at will—and did—and look both pathetic and elegant as she did it, she did not cry well. She hiccupped. “Was that supposed to be funny? Or just in appalling bad taste?” she snapped. It was almost the longest unprompted sentence he had heard from her since they had arrived at the cottage. “I'll have you know that I never ever sang for—” She couldn't bring out the name. Her eyes began to look watery again.

“You're not going to believe me,” said Lucas, furious at his thoughtlessness, “but I was thinking of Callas captivating the shipping king. I had forgotten all about Neilson. I find it very easy to forget him.”

“I find it pretty hard,” she said bitterly.

“I wouldn't have thought he was that memorable,” said Lucas. “After all, if the relationship was purely business, he can't have been much of a personal loss.” There was a nasty edge to his voice, and he had no trouble identifying it. Jealousy.

“My God, what do you think of me?” she said. “No, I know what you think of me. You've sure as hell told enough people. You think I'm a cheap, nasty little whore. You'd prefer me if I called myself a hooker and went out and picked up anybody on the street, wouldn't you? That would appeal to your goddamn perverted masculine vision of women, wouldn't it? Then I could have been the prostitute with the heart of gold. As it is, you think I'm a cheap whore with pretensions—the kind that calls herself an artiste or a model or something. Only in my case it's a singer, isn't it? You were surprised that I can sing, weren't you? I saw it—you were bloody astonished. You couldn't have been more surprised if that chipmunk out there had started singing Puccini. Admit it—you were surprised.” The thought of his reaction brought a grin to her face in the midst of the blotchy cheeks and scarlet nose.

He blushed, hating himself. “Okay, I admit it—I was surprised. I didn't ask you to sing to trap you, though, if that's what you think. I was just trying to make conversation. Honest.” He stopped for a moment. “And I'm sorry it made you unhappy. Believe me, I'd never have asked you to do it if I had thought it would make you unhappy.”

She looked at him oddly for a moment and then shook her head. “It wasn't your fault. I shouldn't have sung that song. It runs too close to the bone. And besides, it reminds me of my mother. And the old days, before things got so . . . complicated.” She fell back on the pillows. “I'm tired,” she said. “I'd like to be left alone, if you don't mind. Can't you ever leave me bloody well alone?”

He grabbed his jacket and went out by the kitchen door, followed a small path through the woods down to the smooth granite that edged the lake. He sat down and stared into the water. At last he picked up a small rock and threw it, hard, into the smooth surface. A gull came gliding around the point, looking rather hopeful. “I'm going crazy,” he said to it. “Locked up here with a nutty woman. Whom I am falling madly in love with against my will, and she hates me. No wonder I'm going crazy.” The gull was either uninterested or on her side. It gave him a distinctly cold look and reversed its direction. “To hell with you, too,” said Lucas vehemently and threw another rock into the water, this one right off its port wing. It squawked, shook its feathers, and flew off to the east.

Rob Lucas sat on the smooth, cold granite and stared into the icy lake. His mind darted about in a multitude of directions: love, desire, suspicions of complicity in murder, haunting melodies. He was doomed to have that song in his head for days. He stood up with a sigh—he seemed to be doing a lot of sighing lately—and turned to go back to the cottage. He couldn't stay out here forever. He'd die of exposure. And besides, he was hungry.

One step, though, and he halted. Bouncing over the lake, from its far western end, he heard a sound so foreign to this deserted place that it took him a second or two to identify it. But no more than that. It was the sound of a noisy internal combustion engine. A car with a faulty muffler or a motorcycle.

A panic-stricken voice calling Rob's name sent him racing back up the path toward the cottage. The kitchen door was swinging open. He caught it by the edge, using it to propel himself inside.

Annie stood in the kitchen, one hand on the counter, the other clutching her makeshift cane, in nightgown and bare feet, her face gray with terror. “There's a car coming.”

“It's okay,” he said. “I heard it. Go back to bed. As fast as you can.” He closed and bolted the door, pulled the curtains over the horizontal slits up near the ceiling that acted as windows, and turned off the light. “Turn on the lamp beside the bed,” he called. “I need it to see what I'm doing.” Then with speed born of practice, he lowered and locked the shutters on all the French doors. The engine noise faded away; a delusion, he knew. Those shutters were partially soundproof. He looked around. Light seeped in from the master bedroom. It, too, had broad window slits placed high on the wall; he yanked its lined curtains closed.

He raced into the bathroom. Once again he could hear the sound, closer now. This bathroom had no curtains. Susie must have felt that the window had been placed too high for privacy to be a problem. Lucas had less faith. He grabbed all the towels, face cloths, bath mats and toiletries he could carry and dumped them on the bed. One more glance assured him that the room looked at least temporarily unused. He went out and closed the door. He had never used the other bathroom between the master suite and the kitchen. He shut that door as well. The noise of the engine was now very loud. That should be—“Dammit!” he muttered. The laundry. He ran back into the kitchen, into the laundry room. It had a rather ordinary window, covered with a mesh security grill, through which one could see the driveway and the garage. And be seen. He tumbled all the clean and dirty laundry into the basket and slipped out, shutting the door behind him. The engine noise was deafening now in the silence of spring. He walked back into the living room, dropped the basket of laundry, and sat down on the foot of Annie's bed.

“You'd better turn out the light,” he murmured. The engine noise stopped, and Lucas could hear Annie breathing like an exhausted sprinter. She leaned over and turned out the light. The darkness was almost complete. Lucas slid over to the couch he had been sleeping on and reached under the pillow for his pistol. He walked quietly back and set it down beside the lamp. He could feel, rather than hear, Annie crying beside him.

“Move over,” he whispered, and sat, one leg stretched out in front of him and the other on the floor, leaning against the sofa back. He put his arm tightly around Annie's shoulders. “Don't worry,” he murmured in her ear. “We're pretty tightly locked in here.”

“What are they doing?” she whispered back.

“Walking around the place. Looking for a way in.”

“Who are they?”

“Small town hoods. Or maybe the police. But it doesn't matter, Annie. They can't get in.”

“They might have a key.”

“Won't help. The kitchen door is dead-bolted shut.”

“It's them,” she said. She began to shake. “I know it's them.”

“Sh. If it is, they won't get anywhere near you. Sweetheart, I'm a cop. I'm armed. I'm even trained. I have to be good for something.”

A heavy thump interrupted him. “Shit!” said a loud voice. “Locked up tighter 'n a monkey's ass. Shoulda brought Glen's welding stuff—we coulda torched the place open.”

“For chrissake, don't be a fucking asshole. You wanna start a goddamn forest fire and have the whole fucking system coming down on us—helicopters and everything? Try the window.”

There was another loud thump. “Jesus. You got any more stupid ideas? Who in hell can get in that window? It's too fucking small.”

“Jimmy could.”

There was a pause. For thought, presumably. “Naw. That's dumb. You bring Jimmy out here and shove him through that window, the whole town knows in five minutes. That kid don't know how to shut up.”

“I thought your ma said someone was living here.”

“For chrissake, don't you ever listen? She was over cleaning out the MacDonald place and said she saw someone outside. That's all. So we can tell her no one's here. That should be good for twenty-five bucks. That's all we need. I mean, she's supposed to keep an eye on things, isn't she? Now she doesn't have to come out. Anyways, let's get the hell out of here. If Ma finds out . . .” The voices drifted off. The engine started again with an ear-pounding roar and began its long journey away from them.

Rob Lucas realized that he was clutching Annie's shoulder so hard she must be in pain. He loosened his fingers and gently massaged the offended place.

“Have they gone?” she whispered.

“Oh, yes, they've gone. I doubt if they'll come back. And even if they did,” he added, “I think we could buy them off with fifty bucks.”

“It was just kids.” Her voice was tight and strange. “Just kids. And I was scared, Robin. I wanted a little dark closet to hide in.”

He shuddered and rubbed her shoulder again.

“Robin,” she went on, “there's just one thing—”

“Mmm?” he murmured vaguely, giving most of his attention to the dying engine sounds.

“What are we doing here?”

“What did you say?”

“I said, what are we doing here? Way out in the middle of nowhere, just the two of us? What are you doing looking after me?”

He turned to try to see her expression in the darkness and failed.

“If I'm a witness, why aren't there other cops around? Don't you get time off? And whose cottage is this?”

“Have you been worrying about this since we got here?” he asked. “You should have said something.”

“No. Actually, it never even occurred to me until today. And then I began to wonder why they would send one cop off to look after a sick witness for a week or so without any relief. Why wasn't I in the hospital? I mean, you are a cop, aren't you? Not just one of those guys—”

“—who likes to lock women up in private hidey-holes? Oh, Jesus, no, Annie. I'm not sure if I'm still a cop, either. And the reason we're alone is that no one knows where we are—except for a friend of mine who sort of lent us the cottage. It belongs to his wife's sister.”

“Then what in hell is going on?”

“Listen to me, Annie. There's a reason for all of this. Remember when I dropped you off at the motel? Well, I filed a report, saying where you were. Okay? Standard procedure. Next thing I hear, your motel room has been entered forcibly and you are gone. I think I am chasing someone called Jennifer Wilson. I find out where she lives, file my report, and Jennifer Wilson is murdered.”

“Oh my God.” Annie drew her breath in horror and began to tremble again. “Jennifer? My roommate, Jennifer?”

Lucas nodded. “I'm afraid so.”

“Because I used her name? I didn't mean to involve her. I was so scared that it was the first thing that came into my head.” Her voice died away.

He put both arms around her and held her. “It wasn't your fault. If anything, it was the fault of the woman next door. Some man came around asking questions, and she identified a bad description of you as Jennifer. Anyway, I finally found out who you were and the name of your lawyer. He told me you were at the cabin, I filed a report, did a few other things, and then drove up to talk to you. Someone got there before I did. I may be slow, but by this time even I have figured out that I am the connection. Someone is reading my reports and passing on the information to the people who killed Neilson. And they want to get rid of you because you saw them.”

She shook her head, still muffled in his sweater. “No, I didn't see them. I was hiding in the apartment. I heard them.”

“Heard them? Where in hell from? Not the coat closet. You would have had to move the body to get out. And the body wasn't moved.”

She shivered. “No, not the coat closet. I was in the linen cupboard in the bathroom. Behind the bath towels. It was a tight fit.”

“Well, I'll be damned,” he said, with admiration. “It didn't occur to us anyone could get in there. You are a resourceful woman, Miss Hunter.”

“No, a skinny, terrified woman.”

“Could you recognize their voices again?”

“Oh, yes. I'll never forget those voices. And I've heard them twice, remember. All that ear training, Sergeant. It comes in handy sometimes.”

“Well, to get back to my story, I may be a slow thinker, but it finally occurred to me—once I got my hands on you—that letting anyone know where you were might be worse for your health than me looking after you. So here we are. My superior officers are probably livid with rage. I phoned in and said that I was in the Deerton hospital with multiple fractures. They must have figured out by now that I'm not there. I expect I've been slung out of the force.”

“But why? Why have you done this? Why risk—”

There was silence. “I'm not sure,” he said finally and changed the topic. “Do you want me to raise the shutters?”

“Oh, please don't. In case they come back.” She reached over him, brushing her hair across his face, and turned on the small lamp beside him. “There. I hate talking about important things to someone I can't see. It's like fighting on the phone. Can't be done satisfactorily.” Her voice had changed in a subtle way that he couldn't quite assess.

Lucas's first impulse was to turn the light off again and hide his desperate need under cover of darkness. Blood was pounding through his arteries with uncontrollable violence; his face must be scarlet. Every breath was ragged and undisciplined. Annie sat up beside him, pulling her uninjured foot under the other leg, perched like an inquisitive child. “I think I'd better go,” he said hoarsely, “and see if those kids did any damage to the place.” He pushed himself up.

Annie caught him by the arm. “Don't go,” she said. “They didn't do anything. We would have heard if they had. Stay here and talk to me.”

His arm burned under her touch; desire coiled in him like a tightly wound spring. He laced his fingers together and sat straight, his back rigid, concentrating on two thoughts: you kidnapped her, Lucas; she is sick and injured. “Really, I better go out and check the place,” he said again. He tried to move, but the hand on his arm seemed to fasten him to the spot. He could no more shake it off than tear off his own arm.

He took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on something else this time. “Do you ever call yourself Anne?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Never.”

“Why not?” he said desperately. “It's a very nice name.”

“That may be, but my name isn't Anne, so I don't. It'd be stupid to call myself that, wouldn't it? You don't call yourself Jason, do you? Or Frank?” She pulled her hand away from his arm in irritation.

That was better. He could deal with his lust when she was feeling combative. “So—what is your name? Or are you really Annie? No, I'll bet it's Anna. I've known a couple of Annas. But they would have killed anyone who called them Annie.”

“No.” There was a pause. “No one calls me by my real name. Well, my mother used to. My dad never liked it, though. He was the one who called me Annie.”

“So what is it? You have me intrigued. Very intrigued. All sorts of interesting possibilities are running through my brain: Augusta? Hermione? Cleopatra. How about Delilah?” His subconscious mind was beginning to do odd things to him.

“Not that interesting. Although it is an odd name around here, I suppose. It's Irish—quite common, really. Grainne. Rhymes with Sonia, spelled G-r-a-i-n-n-e, but no one can remember how to spell it or pronounce it, so it's a drag sometimes.”

“Grainne,” he said softly. “It's beautiful. Grainne,” he repeated, drawing the syllables out.

“Grainne Mary Dermot Hunter. That's me. My mother was Irish.”

“That seems evident,” he said. She smiled and placed her hand on his arm again, poised as if to say something. His stomach lurched, and his precariously gained self-control fled. “I really must go out and check,” he muttered, and pulled himself free of her. He swung his left leg off the couch and set his foot on the floor beside the other one.

“Robin, what's the matter with you?” she asked, whether in malice or innocence he couldn't tell. “Are you angry?”

“No. I am not angry. Far from it. Or not at you. At myself, maybe.” He gripped the arm of the couch until his knuckles whitened. “For chrissake, Annie, just let me get out of here.”

Suddenly her eyes filled with tears again. “I'm sorry,” she muttered. “I keep forgetting. You're stuck here because of me, and you must be going stir-crazy.” She tried to laugh. “It'd be different if I was a gorgeous blonde, wouldn't it? Not just some—” Her voice died away and she turned her head.

“Oh, my God,” he said, twisting his torso around to face her. “Annie—Grainne—whoever you are, do you have any idea what you're up to? Do you enjoy teasing the hell out of me? Or are you just being incredibly stupid?” He grabbed her face, forcing her to look at him. “What color is your damned hair, anyway?”

“My hair? It's nothing special. Not this color.” She blinked the tears out of her eyes, blushing with embarrassment. “And I don't know what I'm up to. All I know is that sometimes you're absolutely wonderful, as if you like me, and then suddenly you treat me like a piece of dirt. I'm confused, Robin. I'm not very good at figuring men out. I've never had much to do with them, except as friends, you know. I always worked too hard—we all did—for going out and things like that, and anyway, lots of the guys I know are gay and so—”

Lucas's bitter laughter cut her off. “Oh, Annie—” He turned his back to her again. “It's not confusing at all. I am an ordinary heterosexual male who has fallen in love with you, and I can hardly keep my hands off you, and I'm suffering hideous pangs of conscience and a sense of violated ethics.” Her face turned scarlet. “Dammit, don't you see? If you could simply call a cab and waltz out of here, it would be different. I'd be plying you with champagne and soft music and chasing you all around the furniture, no doubt. But you can't chase a woman who can't run. You can't. And so—I think I'll go for a walk.”