She had never had this gift before, but she knew how to use it now.
They put the paperwork in front of her. She filled it all in without hesitation, using Kellen’s New York address, Kellen’s birthday, Kellen’s degrees. She was, she realized, being Kellen Rae Adams in every way. She got ready to sign and date the forms. “What day is this?” she asked.
Sergeant Barnes said, “May twelfth.”
Then she scrawled Kellen’s signature and passed over the paperwork.
The recruiter ran through it all, asked a few questions, got to the end and laughed, scratched out the date and passed it back. “I know—I still get the year wrong, too. Initial the change, then we’re on to the next stage.”
That was when she discovered she’d lost more than a year of her life.
Lost it, apparently, forever.
Someone knocked on her front door.
She clutched the arms of her chair. She knew who was there.
Another knock. The bell rang.
“Bastard.” She stood and clattered down the spiral stairs. She looked through the peephole, then flung open the door. “What a surprise,” she said in a voice heavily laden with irony.
Nils Brooks stood on the porch. “May I come in?” Like a vampire who had to be invited to cross the threshold.
“If you must.” She backed away.
He dusted a few flakes of snow off his shoulders. There, in the porch light, his disguise was stripped away. He looked like a dangerous man, strong, wiry, with a determined jaw and a fake pair of eyeglasses in his pocket. He came in, flung off his Burberry coat and hung it on the rack. “The weathercasters got it wrong again. The main thrust of the storm went south to Oregon.”
She didn’t answer, and she didn’t turn up her lights.
His conversational tone changed. “What do you know?” He demanded information as if he was in charge.
“Lloyd Magnuson is dead.”
He dismissed the information with a wave of the hand. “We already had that figured out. What else do you know?”
“You don’t give a damn, do you?” She looked at him in the dim light and saw a man driven by ambition. “Someone trapped Lloyd Magnuson by using his own weakness and now he’s dead.”
He seated himself in the easy chair beside her front door. “Gossip at the resort says he used heroin.”
“Exactly.”
“Then why was he trapped? He was simply weak.” Nils couldn’t have sounded more indifferent.
“I don’t like you.” She had never meant anything so much. “Do you have no weaknesses?”
“Yes.” He came to his feet, caught her shoulders and kissed her.
She didn’t punch him in the ribs or use the serrated edge of her flashlight on his face. She let him kiss her, mouth to mouth, breath to breath, and as the moment stretched out, she relaxed, accepted the sensation, lived in the moment…and when he lifted his mouth from hers, she said, “I’d give it a B plus.”
“Are you frigid?”
She laughed in his face. “Because I don’t want to sleep with you? I suspect if you looked around this world, you could find a great many people, both women and men, who don’t want to sleep with you.”
“I’m only interested in the one.”
Most of the time, she didn’t like him. Then he was charming and self-deprecating, and she did. “You can leave now.”
He pulled on his winter gear. “Let me know if you remember anything I need to know.” At the door, he turned and asked, “Who’s the guy with the big feet?”
Your competition. But he wasn’t. She didn’t want to kiss him, either. “Max Di Luca. He’s come to handle security. He’s smart, he’s tough and he’s fast. You’d better figure out this investigation quickly, or he’ll figure it out for you.”
Nils took a step toward her.
For the first time since that first night, she pulled her pistol and pointed it at his chest. “Don’t.”
“This is not a game,” he said. “Let’s end this before it gets deadly.”
“Priscilla Carter is dead. Lloyd Magnuson is dead. Your Jessica is dead.” She slapped him with words, with truth. “How much more deadly do you want it to be?”
“I want it to end with the good guys alive.”
“Then you’d better go out there and see that they do.”
*
Kellen barricaded herself in her cottage, set a trap beneath every window and in front of the door and slept the sleep of the pure.
In the wee hours of the morning, her phone vibrated and lit up, and she woke from a dream of something about sex and Max and…sex.
Caller ID placed the number inside the resort, and for one moment she couldn’t imagine who among the guests would have her number, and who among the staff would call her when they could text.
Then she knew. She leaped to her feet, swayed as she fought for her equilibrium. “Mr. Gilfilen?”
No sound. Only the faintest breathing.
“Mr. Gilfilen?”
His voice was almost nonexistent. “Depend…you.”
“I’m coming,” she said. “Hang on. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
32
Kellen’s ATV swayed as she leaped in. She drove through a blistering cold wind and past the occasional snowflake toward the west wing, toward the suite Vincent Gilfilen had appropriated for his investigation, and all the time she prayed she was in time. Mr. Gilfilen had undertaken this mission because he believed he could make a difference. He should not die for his efforts.
She parked and grabbed the first aid kit. She used her pass card to open the outer door, pulled her pistol and proceeded cautiously into the empty living room. Across the eating bar, a light shone over the range top in the kitchen.
She listened but heard nothing, only her own breath, harsh and broken.
She looked but saw nothing. Then…a dark blot on the rug. A trail of wet crimson into the bedroom, into the bathroom. She followed that trail, pistol clutched in one hand, first aid kit in the other. The bathroom light was on. She stepped into the doorway. And saw him—Vincent Gilfilen, smeared with blood, unconscious, stretched out on his back. The throw rug was rolled and thrust under his neck, tilting his head back, revealing a dark throat bruised darker in a long thin line. Someone had used a garrote on him.
The cat, the mangy cat he had rescued, sat on the counter and growled at her.
“It’s all right,” she told it. “I’ll help him.” She stepped over his prone body, faced the door, dropped on her knees beside him. “Mr. Gilfilen!” She touched his cheek.
His eyelids flickered. He twitched as if fighting for breath, but his chest didn’t move. She adjusted his head, pinched his nose, put her mouth to his and tried to fill his lungs. No luck.
The swelling in his throat had obstructed his airway.
She had no time, and she had no choice. If he didn’t get oxygen soon, he would die, another victim of the Librarian.
Kellen would not stand for that. She understood the procedure for an emergency tracheotomy. She knew how…in theory.
She’d learn on the job. Right now. As she opened the first aid kit, she called Max. He answered, she said, “Nine-one-one to the west wing. STAT.”
“On my way.” He hung up.
She searched the first aid kit, found gauze, tape, a tube. Nothing to cut with. Very well. She popped open her pocketknife. It was sharp; she always made sure of that. But she had no time to sterilize. Hell, she didn’t have time to think.
The cat growled again.
“I’m hurrying,” she said. With her fingers, she located Mr. Gilfilen’s Adam’s apple, found the spot between it and the next hard ring, and without pausing for courage—he had no time left—she cut a slit through his skin and into the tough gristle of his trachea. Blood welled. She wiped it with the gauze, pinched the hole open and inserted the tube. “Okay, breathe.”
Nothing happened.
She pressed on his chest. “You’re supposed to start breathing.”
Nothing.
“You’re not going to die like this.” She took a hard, deep breath, leaned down and exhaled forcefully into the tube. Once. Twice.
His chest expanded.
“Mr. Gilfilen! Breathe!” she said firmly. She exhaled into the tube again.
His chest rose again.
“On your own this time!” She leaned down to do it again.