The Edge of Recall (21 page)

“I told you the problem was having her near.”

“How near did you have her?”

Smith scowled. “What do you think?”

“A fancy casino. A stunning woman. A night together.” Bair shrugged. “A bloke might succumb to less. Especially when you’ve been gutted before.”

“I wasn’t gutted. Disappointed, angry, but—”

“Devastated,” Bair shot back. “I saw you.”

“All right. Excuse me if I don’t bounce off women as easily as you.”

“Easily?” Bair’s brow lowered. “You think paying for a son I never see is easy?”

“I don’t mean that.”

“I hardly knew her name until she came requesting DNA, but that doesn’t make any of it easy.”

“I know that, Bair.”

“Good, because that wasn’t me. It was the booze. And since then, nothing’s been easy.”

“I shouldn’t have said that. I just—” Smith forked his fingers into his hair. “Look, we’re both frazzled. What you saw out there was … Tessa’s already talking herself out of it.”

“Why would she?”

Maybe he’d moved too fast, or come on too strong. “Because she doesn’t trust people. Some … deserted child syndrome. She’s telling herself all the ways I could disappoint her.” He walked through the bedroom to the bath. “By tomorrow, there could be complete animosity again.” She’d seemed so open, so hopeful. She’d admitted serious feelings for him, and he’d felt it—until the final chill when she said good-bye.

“That’s a bleak view.”

Bleaker than he’d let on. Her mood shift concerned and disappointed him. He had done his best in a difficult situation, and if she blamed him for Gaston’s behavior and everything else out of his control, then it would not be a matter of whether, or how badly, but how soon he let her down. “Have you seen the toothpaste?”

“I assumed you took it.”

Smith turned. “I have a travel size in my dop.”

Bair shook his head. “I didn’t find it earlier.”

“That was a new tube.”

“Guess we misplaced it.”

As Tessa had misplaced her drawings? Her book? He cocked his jaw. “Anything else missing?”

Bair caught the drift. “Don’t know. Let’s have a look.”

They walked through, checking the closets, the desks. Bair shook his head. “Who would take toothpaste and leave a computer?”

“It could be here. Nothing’s actually been nicked to this point. Only moved.”

Bair frowned. “We seemed a little short of food, though I don’t remember exactly what we had.”

“Food and toothpaste would be more useful than a computer to someone staked out somewhere.”

Bair turned. “You think he was in here?”

“Possibly.”

“Door was locked when I came in.”

“So he locked it behind him.”

Bair went over, opened the door, and observed the lock. “Think he picked it?”

Smith searched the room and paused at the window. “Or came through there.”

“Small opening. And how would he maneuver?”

“I don’t know. But it was unlatched.” He went over and pushed the window up, then lifted the air-conditioner down. “Look here. These scrapes.” Bare wood showed through the fresh paint peels.

“And here again.” Bair pointed to another scrape at the base of the wall. “He must have lowered it down from the window to climb through. Awkward, wouldn’t you say?”

“But not impossible.”

“Don’t think I’d fit.”

Smith nodded. “It would be a squeeze.”

“So someone small.”

“A kid?” Smith wondered aloud. Bair had called him childish. “A runaway?”

“I’d think he’d steal anything he could pawn.”

Smith nodded. “Quite. Well, we’re not going to solve it tonight.”

“Should we talk to the police?”

“And tell them our toothpaste is missing?”

“Right.” Bair laughed sheepishly.

“I mentioned the occurrences to Gaston, but he told us to handle it.”

“I wouldn’t mind, if I knew how.”

Smith nodded. Unless it escalated, the best plan seemed to be to wait. Gaston already thought him stiff and unappreciative. He didn’t want to look foolish and reactionary as well.

She was back, and it filled him with unparalleled glee. He had watched for her, wanted her. He knew her now, knew her by her drawings, her beautiful drawings. So exact and perfect. And the lines. The lines in the circle mesmerizing. He wanted to ask about the circle.

It was what she did in the field. She walked the lines. He wanted to see her walking it again. He had hoped she would come out alone and walk it. But she hadn’t. She had stayed with them. Especially the tall one, who devoured her like a fox with a rabbit. His heart galloped. His head hurt. He had almost revealed himself, almost rushed at them to make him stop. Only by strength and cunning did he restrain himself.

He had waited for the darkness. In the shadows she belonged to him, like the plants in her horticulture manual that bloomed at the sun’s passing, at the coming of dew. Jasmine. Moonflower. Angel’s-trumpet. Sweet scenting the night.

In the moonless night he loped. He had read her book, imagining her hands hollowing and planting and pressing in the plants that scented the night. No gaudy day bloomers, no sun soakers. He’d learned more than he’d known before from its pages, not just about the plants detailed in the text, but about her too. The pages she had marked, the notes penciled into the margins, but most of all the receipt tucked into the flap for the inn where she stayed, where she now slept, or prepared to sleep.

It was far, but now he knew. He knew where she went when she left, and in the silence of the night he drew near to her. To where she slept, where she dreamed. He wanted to see her dream, and so he passed through the night, loping, loping, risked the light that spilled yellow onto the ground, risked the spaces until he could hug the walls of the inn searching for entrance.

His hands found the coal chute, but the grate was firmly attached. He huddled, regarding the grate half shrouded by shrubs. He moved his fingers to the chute itself, pulled the iron handle, felt it give. Infinitely patient, he pulled again, imposing a constant force to counter its resistance.

With a groaning squawk the cover slid open to a dark and narrow cavity. Small. Very, very small. Could he make himself that small? Already on his knees, he extended one arm into the hole. Pressing his head against his shoulder, he eased himself into the maw, letting it swallow him like a snake, squeezing, undulating, its crushing muscles drawing him deeper into the darkness.

His other shoulder loosened in the socket, slipping down his side as he drew it into the throat. His front elbow pressed against the inside wall. He slid inch by painful inch, pushing with his knees, releasing the air in his lungs. Farther, deeper.

His arm came free of the metal grip. He seized the inside of the grate and twisted, clinging with both hands as he bent his waist and pulled his legs inside, giggling. He’d gotten smaller than ever before. He dropped to the cement floor, rolling his shoulders to set them back into their sockets. He spread his arms and fingers, cracking the knuckles, straightened the painful slump of his spine with more insistent crackles, then turned, scouring the darkness.

A cellar. He liked cellars. Dark, cool, musty cellars. Since this one was new to him, he crept around, feeling the pipes, hearing their hiss and gurgle. At last he found the door. But it was too soon. He’d wait, wait in the darkness until everyone slept, everyone dreamed. Then he’d find the place where
she
dreamed.

Gasping, Tessa clutched the sheet and bolted up in her bed. Something pale and gray moved in the darkness around the door. A draft of rank air touched her. The scream lodged in her throat. She was not asleep. She had come very much awake, though her racing heart matched her primal nightmare fright.

As she reached, her hand shook so badly she dropped her cell phone with a clatter to the floor. She wanted to call Dr. Brenner, but for the first time, she doubted he could help. He might not even believe her. How could anyone believe a nightmare had entered her room?

She stared into the darkness where it had disappeared, unable to catch even a glimpse. Did it stare back at her? She pressed her eyes shut as the whisper chilled her heart.
“I’ll find you. Just the
way I did tonight.”

She gulped. “I haven’t said a word.” Her voice wavered. “Not a word.”

She had told Smith about the warning, but she didn’t know what she was supposed to keep secret. She strained toward the dark hole around the door. Was it there, waiting? Would it leap if she illuminated the darkness?

Her mouth went dry as powder. She groped for the wall switch. Light poured over her and spilled into the narrow doorway beside the bathroom. The door was closed, the space before it empty.

She slipped from the bed and went to it. With trembling fingers, she felt the knob: locked. The deadbolt was not. She frowned. Had she forgotten to turn it? She’d been dead on her feet from the strain of Gaston and the trip back, emotionally wrung out from the turn of events with Smith.

She lowered her forehead to the door and whiffed the scent she had caught before. The monster’s essence? Her knees almost collapsed as a different smell, an olfactory memory, invaded her consciousness, the smell of antiseptic breath.
“You’re not afraid,
are you?”

She pressed her palms to the door. If the monster was real enough to breathe … She moaned. “Leave me alone. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Fear spiraled up her spine.
Daddy!
The monster’s breath gagged her, stifling her cries, choking them back into her throat with the words she couldn’t say. She staggered back from the door and fell to her knees beside the bed, groping for her cell phone.

She had meant to call Dr. Brenner, but it was Smith who answered in a half whisper, “Tessa?” She must have hit the wrong speed dial, or had chosen it subconsciously.

“He was here … the monster … in my room.” She heard him changing position, or maybe getting up and moving into the office so he didn’t disturb Bair.

“Did you see him?”

“He said he would find me and he did.”

“I thought Gaston was the monster,” he said gently.

“He … is one. But this was … this one came out of my dream. I know how that sounds, but I can’t explain it any other way. I opened my eyes and he was there.”

“And then what?”

“I turned on the light and he was gone.” She knew what he thought. Who wouldn’t?

“Do you want me to come over?”

Her shaking had stopped, her heartbeat normalized. “I just wanted you to know.” She must have, or the intuitive part of her had, the part she accessed through the labyrinth, the part she trusted more than the rest of her mind.

“I’d feel better doing something.”

“You already have.” He’d listened without contradicting her, without saying it was only her imagination.

He sighed. “You’re all right? You can breathe?”

Amazingly. “I guess I needed to tell someone.”
“Not a word.”
She sank into her pillows. Was the command losing its power to control her? “He’s gone now. I’m okay.”

“Sure?”

“I’m sure.” She threaded her fingers through her hair, loving the sound of his voice in her ear as she switched the light off.

“Will you sleep now?”

“I think I will.”

His warmth and tenderness filled the space between them. “Then I’ll see you in the morning.”

She suddenly felt bad. He wasn’t paid to take emergency calls in the middle of the night. What had she been thinking? “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I’m not.” He added softly, “I thought you’d spend the night pushing me away.”

She closed her eyes with a sigh. “The night’s not over.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Good night, Smith.”

“Peaceful dreams, Tess. I mean it.”

She clicked off the phone and let her hand fall. If only.

CHAPTER

20

After searching her room unsuccessfully for the drawings and horticultural manual, Tessa headed for the property in the brisk autumn morning. She arrived at the same time as the flatbed truck delivering the Bobcat, which saved her from discussing the night before with Smith. In the light of day, the monster in her room seemed strange and ridiculous, and even though Smith had taken her seriously, she didn’t want to discuss it.