“Maybe you two should just pretend then to step away from one another,” Sean suggested.
“I think it would be too late for that,” Katie said. She smiled and shrugged. “I think the damage is done, Sean, so please, don’t go asking David to stay away from me.”
“We’ve got to…I don’t know. We’ve got to be careful with every move, that’s all I have to say,” Sean told her. “Well, that’s not all I have to say, but we’re all exhausted. I’m going to bed. After I make sure the doors and windows are locked.” True to his word, he walked around the room, bolting the windows. With a nod, he left them there.
Katie turned in David’s arms. “Sorry you got involved?” she asked him.
He held her close and shook his head. “Never, Katie.”
He pulled her closer and lifted her chin. “Never,” he said. “Katie, Sean said that you had a dream, that you believed Danny was dead.”
She started to move away from him.
“Katie,” he said, pulling her back.
She stared at him, and he thought that she was holding her breath, that like Sean she was about to say something.
But she didn’t.
She stood on her toes and lightly kissed his lips. “We really do need some sleep,” she said. She caught his hand, and she led him toward the stairs.
They slept…
And they didn’t sleep.
At first, they held one another.
He drifted to sleep. He woke, feeling the heat of her form against him, feeling her moving. He didn’t move, not wanting to wake her.
But she was awake. Her fingers trailed down his chest, circled around his abdomen, moved lower. His breath caught as he felt her sudden, sure touch. He rolled, pulled her against him, taking her into his arms, meeting her lips and then using his own to create a slow trail of liquid fire along her collarbone and breasts.
For a moment, she was still, breath caught.
Then she moved. Fluid, easy, ridiculously graceful for the vital energy that suddenly poured through the two of them. Passionate, fierce…the ardent movement of her body escalated by the soft whisper of tenderness that came with the brush of her lips against his.
He became the aggressor, sweeping her beneath him.
The world went still, and there was nothing but the hunger and the need, the basic feel of flesh and cotton and sheets, and their words as they edged closer and closer to climax. Again, the world went still, and there were moments that were oddly as fulfilling as the instinctive need for sexual satiation, that could never be achieved unless more than just sex was involved.
He was becoming a philosopher, he thought.
No. Feelings were what they were. All the psychology and science in the world could never really answer the human question of why emotions raged where they did.
She lay beside him again, and slept, and he thought that again, maybe something as old as man was rising inside of him. He knew that he would die to protect her.
As the morning passed, he held her close, felt her flesh against his flesh, the rise and fall of her breathing.
What were his intentions?
He had never come home to stay. And then again, he had never felt this intimate with a woman, no matter how long they’d been together, no matter what the sexual appeal.
Not the time to think about it. There was a killer out there.
And they were no closer now than they had been ten years ago.
Or were they?
It seemed that the curtains suddenly flew, as if cool air whirled into the room. Katie sat up and looked around, and the ghost of Tanya Barnard was standing by her bed.
She reached out, and Katie took her hand.
“Please…” the ghost whispered.
She looked beyond Tanya. Danny was there, looking at her with prayerful eyes, and at his side, Stella Martin stood, watching her, waiting.
“You must help me,” she told them. “You must help me. Please, think, what do you know? Who followed you, who was with you-who killed you? Show me.”
They shook their heads, staring at her.
She looked to Danny. “The books, Danny-and the money. David saw them in your house. Who were you blackmailing-who gave you the money?”
She couldn’t hear him. His lips were moving. She tried to come closer to him, to study the movement. She wanted to scream with frustration.
I took the books from the library. And then I got the call. Stop. Stop looking for the past, or I would join it. Leave it be, and there would be money. And there was money. I found it under my pirate-skull doormat. And I didn’t know, but someone seemed to think I would find out what happened to Tanya, but I had no idea…that was the past. I kept the money. There was no way to give it back, no one to give it back to, because I really didn’t know.
Katie looked at the three ghosts. “Can’t you help me at all?”
Something, I saw something, someone thought I saw something. I saw Stella briefly. She came to the window, kept her back to the street. But then she was gone.