"Do you want me to apologize for what I said to Burnett, is that it?" he demanded.
Faith blinked at the anger in his voice, but otherwise remained unruffled. "If you feel you were wrong, say so. But don't do it just to placate me."
For a dizzy moment he wondered if she had any idea how much like Dinah she'd sounded. Dinah, who had hated false repentance and always refused to accept a careless I'm sorry, even to pour oil on troubled waters. She had always preferred an honest fight to fake peace, no matter what it cost her.
Slowly, he said, "I don't feel I was wrong, except maybe in presuming that you needed me to interfere. I will apologize for that."
"Thank you. I can fight my own battles, you know."
"You didn't seem to want to fight Burnett."
"Dr. Burnett," she said with great deliberation, "helped me get back on my feet after I came out of the coma. I'll always be grateful to him for that."
"It was his job, Faith."
"I'm aware of that."
"Is he?"
Faith was silent for a moment, then said, "I'm his patient, nothing more. Not that it's any of your business. "
Kane knew she was right. It was none of his business. Absolutely none of his business.
Casting about for something casual to say, he asked, "Did you bring your apartment keys with you? if so, we can drop by on our way out to the construction site."
"I think so." She opened her shoulder bag and checked inside. He heard the clink of keys and then saw her frown.
"What?"
She drew out a folded piece of paper and opened it slowly. Her face went blank as she read whatever was written there, and he saw her fingers tremble.
"Faith?"
She looked at him, and for an instant he thought she was going to crumple the paper or tear it to pieces.
Then she held it out to him.
It was half a sheet torn carelessly from a notebook, and the single handwritten sentence on it sprawled across the page as if the author had been in a hurry.
"Faith, look in my apartment inside the book."
"It isn't my writing," Faith said.
The words blurred before Kane's eyes. "No. It's Dinah's."
She didn't want to go into Dinah's apartment. Beside her, Kane was still and silent, and she was vividly conscious of his anger and disbelief.
He didn't believe she had never seen the note before or that it had not been in her bag a few days before. Nor did he believe she hadn't written it herself, somehow duplicating Dinah's handwriting well enough to fool his incredulous eyes.
He didn't believe, because any other explanation chipped away at his sanity. And he was angry with her because ... what? Because he thought she was playing with his emotions, mocking his grief?
Faith didn't know what she believed. All she knew was that the note had not been in her bag before today and that she had not written it herself in some inexplicable attempt to deceive Kane. She knew Dinah hadn't written it, because Dinah was dead.
And she knew one last thing, one final stark fact she was absolutely certain of... Wherever the note had come from, the message it contained was from Dinah.
She knew that.
Kane said, "If it takes longer than ... If it looks like I'll be late in meeting the inspector, I'll call and have him wait." He sounded calm, but she thought it was a precarious calm.
He's angry at everybody because she's gone. And now this has to happen. And I make a handy target for his anger. She didn't blame him for what he felt, but there was an anger in Faith as well, and she didn't know how much longer she could handle it in silence.
When they reached Dinah's apartment building, the driver went around the block once so they could make certain no media lurked in the area. But since no crime had been committed there, since her apartment was empty and her neighbors had long since stopped responding to questions from the press, the journalists who had camped out there in the days just after Dinah's disappearance had finally gone away.
Even so, the bodyguard insisted on going with them up to the third floor, insisted on checking the apartment door carefully with a little electronic gadget he carried, and, after Kane had disarmed the security system, insisted he go in first to make certain there was no danger. It was, after all, what Kane was paying him for.
Faith was grateful for the few minutes allowed her before she had to go inside.
"Do you know if I've ... ever been here before?" she asked Kane, after the bodyguard closed the door, leaving them alone.
"She never mentioned it."
Angry. He's so angry.
Faith didn't say anything else. She felt Kane's gaze on her. The bodyguard came out and said they could enter.
Faith walked slowly into the living room and looked around. The apartment smelled of lemon; Kane had told her that he'd had a cleaning service come in every week, just as Dinah had, but it had been vacant for many weeks and there was an air of emptiness about it.
Faith shivered and wrapped her arms about herself as she tried to remain detached and study the room. Plenty of natural light, spacious. The furniture was high quality, the wood pieces gleaming with lemon oil and the upholstery constructed of expensive material, but the appearance was casual, the cushions overstuffed and comfortable.
The neatness contributed to the empty feel, with accent pillows placed precisely, and magazines on the stone-topped coffee table aligned exactly, and no clutter anywhere.
Looking around, she was sure that she had been here before, and more than once. I know there are two bedrooms and a bathroom. And even though I can't see it from here, there's a clock near the kitchen table, and the dish towels have apples on them. And she loves plants, but hers are silk because she forgets to water the real ones and they die ... Shaking off the odd sensations, Faith walked over to a wall between two large windows where a bookcase was filled to bursting.
... Inside the book.
Which book? There must have been a hundred on this set of shelves alone, and she didn't have to look down the hallway toward the bedrooms to know that it was lined with bookshelves just as filled as these were. Conscious of Kane behind her, Faith reached up to a shelf and began running a finger along the spines of the books, stopping on each just long enough to read the titles.
"What are you looking for?" he asked.
"I don't know."
"Don't you?"
She looked back over her shoulder at him. "No, I don't know. I have no idea which book she... which book the note meant. Do you?"
"The note was directed to you," he answered implacably.
"Okay, fine. Why don't you go on to your appointment with the inspector? Leave the guard outside and take the driver with you. I'll stay here and look through these books."
His mouth tightened. "I'm not leaving you alone."
"I'm not alone. The guard can stay."
"It'll take hours to go through all her books," Kane said roughly.
"Then I'll stay here for hours."
"Goddammit, Faith, you know Dinah didn't write that note!"
She didn't flinch. "I don't know who wrote it. But I am absolutely positive the message is from Dinah."
"Dinah is dead."
"Yes." Faith made herself go on in the calmest voice she could manage. "And I've known things about her all along, Kane. The flashes of those scenes with you. The dog attacking her. That room in the Cochrane warehouse where they... where they hurt her. And the sound of water near where she was found. I knew all of that, saw it or heard it or felt it. And I'm telling you now that the message in the note is from Dinah."
"Are you channeling the dead now, Faith?"
"I'm just telling you what I know. There is something in one of these books, something Dinah wants me to find. I have to look for it."