Faith was briefly introduced to Tim Daniels, a well-built man in his early thirties with something in his shrewd gray eyes that reminded her of the women in the shelter; they were older than his years and didn't look as though they could ever doubt that evil existed in the world. He wore a gun in a shoulder holster beneath his jacket, and she could see the antenna of a cell phone peeking from his shirt pocket.
"I need to take a look at this site," Kane told Daniels. "It should be secure, but I'd rather not take any chances."
Daniels nodded. "I'll watch your back."
He trailed along behind them as Kane took Faith's arm and guided her down the rutted track that led to the building. They stood looking up at the steel skeleton clawing its way nearly a dozen stories in the air so far. Only the underground parking garage had been partially closed in.
Faith eased her arm from Kane's grasp. "I don't think I want to go down inside that."
"Then you stay here with Tim. I'll be right back."
She didn't question his optimistic estimate, just nodded. But when Kane had disappeared around the back of the structure, she glanced at Daniels and said, "Aren't you worried about him being alone down there?"
"He can take care of himself."
"I can't." She grimaced, and touched the hidden bandage on her left arm. "Well, maybe so."
"You're vulnerable at the moment. No memory means you couldn't tell friend from foe."
"So you know about that," she murmured.
"Kane told me what he thought I needed to know. No more and no less."
Faith decided not to question him on that point. She turned her attention back to the building. "I'd like to wander around a bit. Alone, if you don't mind."
"Any particular reason?" Daniels asked.
Because Dinah was here. Because I have to ... Had to what? She didn't know.
"No particular reason," she said.
Daniels glanced around the site, which appeared to be enclosed by a high wood and chain-link fence. "It looks safe enough. But don't go far."
"No, I won't." She had no idea what she was looking for, if anything.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe the voices in her head, familiar and unfamiliar, didn't know what they were talking about. Maybe she just wanted to have time and space to herself and for a few moments forget...
Except that you can't forget. I won't let you.
This time, Faith made no attempt to focus on that voice, to reach out for it. To catch it. Instead, she merely let her mind drift, trying not to think about anything at all.
That didn't work either.
She walked slowly, wandering without rhyme or reason. She passed the huge earth-moving machines parked on the site, the stacks of construction materials, and the trailer that housed the construction office.
Nothing she saw awoke a spark of memory.
It was, she saw now, absurd to imagine that Dinah might have been held here. The building was only a skeleton, even the underground floors barely enclosed. In fact, here at the back, the building was still open all the way down to the bottom most concrete floor.
Kane was moving around in the shadows of that lowest area, but she wasn't about to join him — mostly because she didn't care for shadowy underground places.
Mostly.
She turned and continued along a few feet inside the fence, picking her way over uneven ground and around the occasional pile of debris. Two giant Dumpsters barred her way at one point, and she chose to go between them and the fence rather than around them.
If she hadn't, she never would have seen the break in the fence.
The wooden slats had been removed or never installed in this section, so it was possible to see through the chain-link to what lay outside. There was an empty half acre or so, and then the back of a large building. A warehouse, she thought, maybe for industrial use rather than just storage. She saw at least one loading dock, but the place seemed deserted on this Tuesday afternoon.
Then she caught a whiff of something she thought she should recognize, something that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. That was the only warning she had before the eighty pound Rottweiler threw himself at the fence.
CHAPTER 8
"No judge in his right mind is going to give the police a warrant to search that place just because they have a guard dog," Daniels said matter-of-fact. "Not on the basis of a dream."
"I think it was more than a dream," Kane said.
"I know what you think." Daniels believed in nothing except what he could see, hear, or touch with his hands — but Kane wasn't paying him to scoff, and he saw Daniels send a faintly apologetic glance to Faith as she stood in the kitchen doorway with a cup of coffee.
Faith lifted her cup to Daniels in a grave salute of understanding, and Kane decided she was holding up pretty well after having a monster dog try to eat his way through a fence to get at her.
Kane, on the other hand, was moving restlessly around the living room of the apartment. Daniels watched him. "So let's talk about that warehouse."
And when Kane shot him a quick glance, he added dryly, "Don't think I don't know you're planning to check it out yourself as soon as it gets dark enough."
"Somebody has to."
"That's a hell of a big dog, Kane."
"Even a big dog can be handled — if you have enough sedatives and a hunk of raw meat."
"Unless he's trained not to take food from strangers. "
"Well, there's only one way to find out."
Daniels smiled slightly. "True. But before you start doctoring sirloin, let me make a few calls and find out what I can about that warehouse."
Kane went to sit on the piano bench and absently ran his fingers up and down the scales to work out of the tension his hands.
"Cochrane was the name on the building."
"I saw it. And I got the street address, so I should be able to find out what the place is and who owns it."
"I know who owns it." Kane began to play the piano softly, choosing without thought a piece he was very familiar with — and which had always been Dinah's favorite despite her avowed tin ear: Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata."
"Jordan Cochrane and family. Mostly Jordan Cochrane."
"You know him?"
"We've met here and there. Not really surprising, since his family businesses include various aspects of construction. And since he's beginning a run for the governor's mansion."
Faith spoke for the first time since they'd returned. "Construction again."
Kane looked across the room at her. "You noticed that, huh?"
"And politics. Didn't Dinah say..."
"That this story she was into involved business and criminal elements — and possibly politics. Yes." Kane paused. "You told us you were sure Dinah wasn't in that warehouse now."
Carefully, Faith replied, "I'm sure I would have felt something, being that close. But I'm also sure she was there, the night she disappeared."
"Then we have to check it out."
Daniels drew a breath. "Breaking and entering, Kane."
"I'm willing to risk it."
"Yeah. I thought you might be."
"You don't have to..."
Daniels didn't let him finish. "Are you kidding? In all these weeks, this feels like the closest we've come to an honest-to-God trail without ice all over it. I'm definitely coming along."
"So am I." Faith kept her gaze on Kane.
He continued to play the piano for several minutes, looking at her rather than the keys, then broke off abruptly and rose to his feet.
"Faith ..."
"If that's where Dinah was held, where the where they hurt her, I'll be able to recognize the place, I know I will."