"Is it his name?" she repeated steadily.
"Yes. I'm sorry, Faith."
She shook her head and looked down at her plate for a moment, then slowly shifted her fork from her right hand to her left.
"I'm glad I don't remember him," she said almost absently. "But I'm still confused about why that file is restricted."
"Ellis is an FBI agent."
She looked up swiftly. "Ali. Now it makes more sense. Covering for one of their own?"
"That was apparently your view. But it really does appear that there was no evidence to arrest him. Or even for the FBI to fire him, for that matter. They demoted him, and he's under close observation in L A., something he's well aware of, apparently. From everything Noah could gather, he's been behaving himself for the last eighteen months."
"I told someone at the shelter that I had medical evidence that could ruin his career."
"Yes. Hospital records showing broken bones and severe bruising." Kane held his voice even and steady, but it took effort. "You turned it over to the police in Seattle. But when they couldn't prosecute him for the murders, you apparently decided that rather than let them prosecute for assault against you, you'd use the evidence to pressure him into signing the divorce papers and getting out of your life for good."
Faith shook her head. "And then what? I crossed the country just to make sure?"
"Maybe."
And maybe not.
Once again, Faith was unsure if that was her voice, her question — or someone else's.
She tried to think, to concentrate. "I was angry. I wanted ... justice. That's what Dinah said to me, that we had to have proof that would stand up in court or I wouldn't get my justice. But as far as we can tell, up until the accident, everything that happened to me happened before I came to Atlanta. It has to connect, though, it just has to. Whatever Dinah and I were investigating here has to connect to my life before."
"That makes sense."
"Then it is my fault Dinah's in trouble."
"Dinah's a grown woman with a damned good mind," Kane said after a moment. "Whatever was going on, I doubt she was dragged into it unwillingly."
"What if I didn't tell her everything? What if I took whatever it is they want, and I didn't tell Dinah what I did with it?" She grimaced suddenly and set her wineglass on the table. "Dammit, not knowing what the thing is makes it sound so ridiculous when you talk about it."
"We could always call it the Macguffin," Kane suggested wryly.
"Isn't that a word Hitchcock coined? To name something in a movie that everybody was after?"
He smiled faintly. "Another Hitchcock fan, I see."
"I guess so."
"Well, then, we'll call it the Macguffin until we know what it is."
Faith waited out a long, rolling rumble of thunder.
"I just wish we knew."
"We'll find out." We have to find out. He didn't speak the last words, but he might as well have.
He wouldn't let her help him clear up, and when he was done in the kitchen, he lit a fire in the fireplace.
Faith wandered uneasily to the piano for a few moments and then to a window. The storm was going strong, and the rain was heavy now, blown against the windows by gusty wind in a rattle that told of sleet.
It made her feel very jumpy.
Be careful
That voice again, almost inaudible to her now.
"I think this is going to go on all night," Kane said, watching her as he stood by the fireplace.
Move ... now!
"I think you're right." Baffled by the faint whisper in her mind, by her own tension, Faith winced as a bright flash of lightning illuminated the night, then she turned from the window. "And I don't know why I have this compulsion to stand here and watch when it makes me..."
For an instant, Kane thought it was the crash of thunder that cut off her words, but he saw an expression of puzzlement and then shock twist her features.
Her right hand touched the upper part of her left arm just below the shoulder, and Kane saw scarlet bloom around her fingers.
"Faith..."
"Will you look at that?" She was staring at a mirror directly across the room from where she stood. A cobweb of large cracks radiated from a small hole in the center of the mirror.
With more haste than gentleness, Kane grabbed her and pulled her away from the windows. "Goddammit, somebody's shooting."
"At me?" She sounded only mildly interested.
He sat her down on the couch and pried her fingers away from her arm.
"Let me see."
Her sweatshirt bore two neat, round holes that were clearly entrance and exit points, and made it easy for him to tear the sleeve to expose the wound.
"It's just a scratch. I've always wanted to say that."
Kane had a hunch it was shock rather than courage that kept her voice strong and her words light. But she was right in that the wound was minor, a bloody furrow carved across no more than a couple of inches of the outside of her arm. He had no doubt, however, that it hurt like hell.
He made a pad of his handkerchief and pressed it to the sluggishly bleeding spot, and looked at Faith's pale, calm face.
"Can you hold this in place while I call the police?"
"Of course I can." She did so, then looked at him with amazingly clear eyes. "But I won't go to the hospital."
"Faith, this needs to be looked at."
"I can have Dr. Burnett look at it tomorrow when we go to talk to him," she said calmly. "It'll be fine tonight if you can just clean and bandage it."
"Faith..."
"It doesn't even need stitches. I'm all right, Kane, really."
She shivered suddenly as thunder boomed again. "I just ... I don't want to go out there tonight."
"All right."
He got a blanket and covered her with it before he went to call Richardson. He was careful to stay away from the windows, though he doubted there was any danger. Whoever had been out there was long gone now.
That a shot had been taken on a night like this, with blinding rain making precision impossible, told him the act was a scare tactic, not intended to hit a live target; the bullet had found Faith only by sheer dumb luck. Nothing else made sense.
But that hardly made the situation better.
Kane disinfected and bandaged the wound. She never flinched or made a sound, just sat there and watched him, and for some unaccountable reason her gaze made him feel suddenly clumsy.
"I'm sorry," he said, taping the final piece of gauze into place.
"Why? You didn't shoot me."
Still holding her arm gently between his hands, he looked up to find her smiling faintly. "I can't be flip about this, Faith."
"I see that. Kane, I'm fine. My arm hurts, and I won't be lingering near any windows for a while, but I'm all right."
"You must be one of those people who shine in a crisis."
"You didn't do so bad yourself."
He realized he was compulsively smoothing with his thumbs the tape holding the bandage in place, and forced himself to release her and lean back. "Yeah, well, I'll get the shakes later. And speaking of delayed shock — which do you prefer, whiskey or hot tea?"
"Tea, please."
When Richardson arrived a few minutes later, Faith answered the detective's questions with no visible anxiety. Not that there was much she could tell him.
"I saw the cracked mirror first, and thought how odd it was. Then my arm burned suddenly, but it wasn't until I put my hand over it that I felt the blood. Even then, I didn't immediately realize I'd been shot. I never heard it."
"The storm was right overhead," Kane told his friend. "There was so much noise we couldn't hear the shot or the bullet going through the window and smashing the mirror."