Again he held silent, but only for a moment that time. “No,” he finally said.
She didn’t feel convinced. “You only escorted me home to protect me from reporters, right?”
“Yes, of course,” he said, pulling her back down to his side. As she lay there curled against him, he spoke again. “And no,” he said softly. “Or... I’m not sure.”
“Craig...”
He smiled suddenly. “You’ve finally used my first name.”
“It finally seemed appropriate—really appropriate.”
His smile deepened, and he said, “Let’s just say I’m suspicious by nature and leave it at that,” he said, pulling her closer.
As much as she liked the feel of her naked flesh next to his, she pulled away. Her bedroom light was off, but she hadn’t closed the door and they were bathed in a glow from the other room. That was enough for her to see that, just as he had tried to reassure Julie earlier, he was trying to be casual now and not arouse her fears.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” she said.
He let out a long breath and rolled to his side to look her in the eye. “Let me do the worrying, okay? You just be careful. I studied the video surveillance footage from the subway. I watched the guy in the hoodie you told the cop about. The footage is difficult to follow, but he does move around, just as you said. And he did end up behind you just before Shirley Martin started screaming and ended up on the tracks.”
“Oh, my God,” Kieran breathed. “I felt that he was there, but I didn’t want to believe it. Do you think that means something? I mean, people move around on the platform all the time. Do we even know for certain that Shirley was pushed? You’ve taken the subway. People always surge forward when a train is coming.”
“They do,” he agreed.
*
Craig tried to concentrate on her words, on the potentially life-threatening situation.
But at this moment, he knew they were safe.
The light from the hallway created a halo of fire around her hair, turned her flesh to porcelain and highlighted her exquisite beauty. And the way she felt against him...
“Trust me, believe in me,” he said, and pulled her closer.
His lips found hers. His hands slid down her porcelain flesh, but it wasn’t really like porcelain at all. It was silk; it was warm and vibrant. She touched him in return, and soon they were making love again. The problems of the world seemed far away. It was as if they had entered a time warp, moved into a different dimension and existed in their own intimately urgent universe.
But, of course, eventually they were forced to come back to earth.
“I just can’t live like...this. I can’t be afraid of every man in a hoodie I see.”
He pulled her close. “Let’s worry about that tomorrow. Right now we need some rest.”
“Did you set an alarm for five again?” she asked him.
“Seven.”
“A little better,” she said, curling close. He held her, staring at the ceiling. He tried to remember the last time he had lain so with a woman and felt this way, but he couldn’t.
“Wrong,” she murmured.
“Very wrong,” he said. “But sometimes it’s good to be wrong.”
He saw the slight curve of her smile as she lay with her head on his chest. He kept an arm around her, feeling every little thing, the way her hair fell across his chest, the pressure of her body, the feel of her long, long legs.
He stared at the ceiling.
Oh, yeah, this was very wrong. And he had every intention of going on being wrong.
He felt her relax as she finally slept.
Eventually he drifted to sleep himself.
*
Craig’s alarm never had a chance to go off; his phone rang at 6:37 a.m.
It was Mike.
“They struck again, Craig. In New York this time. Vintage by Victoria, an antique place with a valuable jewelry collection, in the Diamond District. Meet me there.” Mike hesitated just a fraction of a second before speaking again. “They robbed the place, and they killed again. Vic was part of the cleaning crew. Aw, Jesus, Craig, she was just twenty-two, emigrated from Romania six months ago. Welcome to the American dream, right?”
*
Kieran finished up her notes on her interview with Tanya Lee Hampton earlier than she’d expected.
She’d been at work since 7:30 a.m., and somehow she’d even managed to concentrate on her job.
At first she’d had a hard time focusing, lost in her natural human sympathy for the woman who had been killed. She didn’t know the woman, of course, but her untimely death still hurt, and without the distraction of work, her thoughts now turned back in that direction.
Any decent person would feel that pain, she thought, then laughed drily as she realized she was practically quoting her suddenly famous phrase.
But someone out there had lost a daughter, a lover, a sister....
She thought the killer deserved the death penalty himself and hoped that he would be tried in a jurisdiction that allowed it, though she wasn’t sure what requirements defined a death-penalty case.
The murder must count as inhumane, right?