The Morning After (36 page)

Fortunately the storm passed quickly, leaving in its wake a thickening mist. Wet streets glimmered under the street lamps, and leaves and debris clogged the sewer drains in the roads. Rush hour was over, traffic was thankfully thin, and only a few people had ventured onto the sidewalks. Here and there, Christmas lights winked merrily through the fog, a reminder of the season. She passed a church with a nativity scene posed beneath the spreading branches of a live oak. Instantly, she experienced that same old pang of longing for Andrew, the pain that didn’t lessen with each passing Christmas season.

“Get over it,” she muttered and decided she really did have to move. There was a possibility of a job in Charlotte and she should just take the plunge and move. Cut all ties to this place with its bad memories.

Simone pulled into the parking lot of the Galleria and had no trouble finding a space on the first floor. Forget the third. Why walk any farther than she had to?

The lot was fairly deserted, only a few vehicles parked in the spaces. Though this was normal and she and Nikki parked here on a regular basis, she was still a little edgy. Making certain no one was lurking near the stairwell or elevator shaft, Simone grabbed her purse and locked the car behind her, then jogged to the restaurant. No murderer leapt from the shadows. No one was hiding near the exit. Simone walked the half a block to the restaurant without anyone accosting her.

Inside, Nikki wasn’t waiting for her. No surprise. Nikki’s M.O. was to always run late.
Or bag out completely.

Surely, not tonight.

Simone slid into a booth near the front door and ordered two drinks—a martini for herself and a lemon drop for Nikki—from a sunny waitress with a thick drawl and braces. The girl looked barely seventeen, surely not old enough to serve liquor, though she cheerily reappeared with the chilled, stemmed glasses within minutes.

Cassandra’s wasn’t doing a banner business tonight. Only a few other patrons sat at the tables and booths that filled the small space with its black and white floor tiles and matching tabletops.

Simone studied the bar menu while sipping her drink and listening to Christmas carols from the jukebox. Elvis’s rendition of “Blue Christmas” seemed to be the favorite as the minutes passed and a breathless Nikki Gillette didn’t sweep into the restaurant. Simone plucked the olives from her martini with her teeth and looked at her watch. Fifteen minutes had passed. She finished her drink. Twenty minutes. Wonderful. Late again. “Come on, Nikki,” Simone muttered under her breath.

The ebullient waitress stopped by and flashed her perennial schoolgirl grin. “Can I get you anything else?”

“A new best friend.”

“What? Oh.” The plastered-on smile chipped away. “So…do you want another drink or…something from the bar menu?”

Simone hesitated, but decided she had nothing to lose. “Sure. Why not? Another drink, I think.” She tapped a fingernail on the rim of her empty martini glass. “Another one.”

“And…?” The girl glanced at Nikki’s untouched glass. The rim of sugar was unbroken, the clear liquid unmoving around a curl of lemon rind.

“Just leave it. She may still show up. This is kind of a constant problem with her.” Simone glanced at her watch and sighed. Nikki was nearly half an hour late. Not good news. Simone could almost hear the excuses already. She imagined Nikki flying into the kickboxing class after it had already started. She would be breathless as she explained about a “rewrite” that she wasn’t satisfied with, a “deadline” that couldn’t be ignored, or “research” that had to be done “ASAP.”

Fifteen minutes later, Simone finished her second drink. The lemon drop was still sweating across the table from her. “Great,” she muttered and thought about downing Nikki’s favorite drink herself, but decided against it. She did still have to walk to the gym and then be able to perform the exercise routines. One more drink and she wouldn’t be able to do anything more than fall on her butt when she tried to strike a target with her foot.

She signaled for the bill, left the waitress with a ten dollar tip and, carrying her bag, started jogging toward the gym. The mist had turned into a thicker, shifting fog in the time that she’d been inside, the streets seeming darker.

Damn Nikki. She was always leaving Simone in the lurch.

It wasn’t that Nicole Gillette wasn’t responsible, just not reliable. But she was good-hearted. Nikki’s downfall was that she was totally obsessed when it came to her job or what she perceived as her job. She was so hell-bent on becoming an ace crime reporter that she lost sight of everything, and everyone else. Even now, Simone guessed, Nikki was probably ferreting out clues as to the identity of the Grave Robber.

It would be a good change to move away, make new friends, connect with people who weren’t related to or had known Andrew.

A stab of sadness cut through her. She’d loved him so much and he’d broken up with her, after vowing to adore her, after asking her to marry him, after learning that he’d been rejected by Harvard. Why? Had he thought he couldn’t measure up to what she’d wanted in a husband, or had it been more…another woman?

Who knew? Who would ever know? The sorry part of it was she doubted she would ever love a man the way she’d so passionately and ardently fallen for Andrew Whitmore Gillette. She’d given him her heart, her virginity, and her self-respect. A part of her figured she’d never get any of them back.

“Oh, stop it,” she muttered, angry at herself. “All those years of counseling and you still feel this way? Get ahold of yourself.”

Light-headed from the martinis, she noticed for the first time how thin the traffic was, how deserted the street. Not that it mattered. She was so close to the class. As she rounded the final corner, she spied the lights of the gym burning warmly in the night. Beacons in the empty, foggy street, the patches of light from the windows were a bit blurry, probably a combination of the surrounding mist and the alcohol creating a warm fuzz in her brain. Somewhere in the distance she heard the sound of Christmas carols and she was reminded again that it would soon be Christmas, the time of year when she’d fallen so head over heels in love with Andrew Gillette. Why she hadn’t stopped thinking about him, she didn’t understand. What was it that Nikki wanted to tell her about her brother, now, a dozen years after his death?

Squinting, she thought she could make out Jake’s SUV, which was parked under a street lamp. Simone grinned. Jake Vaughn wasn’t the first man she’d been interested in after Andrew. Since Andrew’s death, she’d dated, gone with and slept with a few other guys. None had captivated her the way Nikki’s brother had, but Jake had possibilities. Serious possibilities. He certainly was the most challenging man she’d met in a long, long while. If he would take the bait and show some interest in her, she might not have to move after all.

She increased her pace. The gym was only a block away—just past the alley. She heard a strange sound, a hiss, like something slicing through the air. Turning her head toward the windowpanes of a darkened storefront, she saw her reflection and…something else…the shadowy, menacing figure of a man lurking between two parked cars. He sprang upward, pulling hard against something.

A rope?

No!
She bolted. Adrenaline pumped through her blood. Fear shot through her brain. The man jerked hard. That same moment, her shin encountered something taut and invisible and thin enough to slice through her jogging pants and cut into her flesh. Pain screamed up her leg.

“Oooh!” she cried, pitching forward. The ground rushed up at her. She put out an arm to catch herself and hit the ground hard.

Snap!

Agony jettisoned up her arm. Her bag flew out of her hand to land on the pavement.

“Oh, God!” Whatever had caught her feet was tangling her, cutting into her flesh, a sharp spiderweb snaring her, eating into her. And her arm. It ached so badly she nearly passed out. “Help!” she screamed, writhing in agony. “Someone help me!”

“Shut up!” a deep voice snarled. A sweaty palm covered her mouth and she tried to bite, to roll away. To escape. But the more she squirmed, the more enmeshed she became. Oh, God, who was he? Why was he doing this? Twisting her neck, she caught a glimpse of his face in the darkness…a face she recognized. The guy in the restaurant…but even so, now she knew who he was. Realized he wasn’t a stranger at all.

Oh, no! Oh, Jesus, no!
Vainly she tried to free herself, but he was strong, determined. Muscles like steel, holding her against the wet sidewalk, his body pinning hers. Writhing, she prayed for help. Surely someone would see her…come to her aid…other people should be going into the gym…or driving by.
Please, please, help me!

“Remember me,” he whispered against her ear, and she felt terror burrow deep into her heart. “Remember what you did to me? It’s time to pay.” Then she spied the needle, a fine, thin weapon glinting evilly in the fog-shrouded night.

Her blood turned to ice.

No!

Vainly she tried to kick, to swing at him, to escape whatever horror he had in mind, but she couldn’t scoot away and she watched in sheer terror as he plunged the vile needle deep into her shoulder.

Simone fought, but his weight pinned her down and her arms were suddenly heavy and useless, her trapped legs unable to move. Panic tore through her as the sluggishness invaded all her body parts. She tried vainly to scream but couldn’t. Her tongue was thick, her vocal cords immobile.

The streetlights dimmed, the fog thickened in her mind, and merciful blackness dragged her under.

God be with me,
she thought desperately and only hoped that death would come swiftly.

CHAPTER 23

“Wait up!”

Reed, jacket collar hiked around his neck, was leaving the station. He didn’t break stride but Morrisette dashed through the puddle-strewn lot and around two parked cruisers to catch up with him.

“Jesus, what crappy weather,” she growled.

Night had already fallen, streetlights glowing through the thickening fog, headlights few and far between. Rush hour was over; traffic no longer snarled and slowed. “Look, Reed,” Morrisette said as they reached his El Dorado, “I thought about it and I guess I came on a little strong this morning.”

“You guess right.” His keys were already in his hand.

“So, you’re pissed, right?” She was reaching into her purse, digging, presumably, for her pack of Marlboros.

“You’re batting a thousand.” Unlocking the car, he didn’t bother to glance in her direction.

“Hey, I’m just doing my job.”

“I know.” He swung the car door open and the interior light flashed on. “So, do it. You don’t need to apologize.”

“Come on, Reed, when did you get to be so thin-skinned?” She found a crumpled pack and shook out a cigarette. “You know what the drill is.”

“Was there something you wanted to tell me?”

“Yeah.” She clicked her lighter to the end of her filter tip and drew in hard. “First of all, we haven’t got much out of Nikki Gillette’s apartment. No fingerprints or any other hard evidence.” Morrisette blew out a cloud of smoke. It dissipated into the gathering fog. “She was right. The door and windows weren’t forced, so we have to assume whoever got in had a key—he either had it made, stole it, or borrowed it from someone who had one, most likely Ms. Gillette.

“The microphone we found in her bedroom is identical to the two we found in the coffins and we’re checking with stores and distributors who deal in all that electronic shit, including on-line dealers. All the mikes are wireless, kind of sophisticated, so we figure our guy is probably a techno geek. We’re looking for anyone who bought at least three of that brand and make of microphone and the listening devices that go with them.”

“Good.”

“So, I guess I’m telling you that we’re done searching her apartment. We’ve got all we can get from there.” Morrisette took another drag. “Siebert called her already. Gave her the green light. She can move back in.”

“Why tell me?”

“Because I thought you’d want to know.” She lifted a brow as smoke drifted from her nostrils. “Right?”

“Yeah.” A cruiser rolled in and parked two slots down from the Caddy.

“And there’s something else.” He heard the tension underlying her words; realized she was about to give him bad news. She glanced back at the station before meeting his eyes. “The DNA results on Barbara Jean Marx’s baby came back.”

His shoulders tightened.

“It confirmed the blood test.”

“Great.” He felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut. Not that he hadn’t expected it, but this was so final. So unequivocal. A blood test left a little doubt. DNA did not.

She looked at him hard, her eyes squinting against the darkness. “If it’s worth anything, I’m sorry.”

His jaw slid to one side. Cold air collected on his face.

“I know. It’s a bitch.” Morrisette flicked her cigarette onto the pavement. Its red tip glowed for a second before sizzling and dying in a puddle. A brief little light. Extinguished quickly. “Hang in there.” Without so much as a glance over her shoulder, she walked toward the back door of the station.

Standing in the parking lot in the night, Reed felt suddenly alone. Empty inside. Hollow.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his raincoat and stared up at the heavens. Above the glow from the city lights, there was nothing but cloud cover. He should have experienced something more than this gnawing vacuum within him, something akin to loss. But how can you lose something you never really had?

The baby hadn’t been planned. Nor had it been wanted. It would have complicated his life immeasurably and yet…and yet he experienced a deep-seated desolation that would only be assuaged by vengeance. That, at least, he could fix. He planned on finding the son of a bitch who had done this and stringing the bastard up by his miserable balls.

Climbing behind the wheel of his El Dorado, he jabbed his keys into the ignition. A look in the rearview mirror reflected haunted eyes that were dry but seething with pent-up anger, a beard-darkened jaw that was set in stone, lips that folded over his teeth in newfound determination.