"I went in to straighten the covers, and I thought for a minute you were awake. You said my name. But you were sound asleep."
"I must have been. I don't remember."
"Bad dreams?" He looked at her finally, as he handed her a cup.
"Just the usual. Bits and pieces." Faith dumped sugar and cream into the coffee and took a sip. Kane tasted his and grimaced.
"Sorry," she said wryly. Clearly, he didn't like the way she made it. She sipped her own again; it tasted to her the way coffee always tasted — slightly bitter.
Kane said, "If you don't mind ..." and poured the entire pot down the drain.
She was not offended. "I suppose there's a knack to it. I don't seem to have it."
He got the second pot started. "Some people don't. I'll shave and shower while this is getting ready. You wanted to go by your apartment for your watch, and I have that appointment with the building inspector. We might as well clear out before the work crew gets here."
"Okay." She thought he was a little abrupt but didn't protest or question his mood. She was still unsettled by his announcement that he had gone into the bedroom while she slept and that she had said his name out loud.
She was bothered by the knowledge that some dream or nightmare had caused her to cry out, had caused her to say his name.
There's another body, of course.
"My subconscious doesn't know what it's talking about," she murmured to herself. But she went into the living room and turned on the TV anyway.
She wanted to see the news, even though she didn't believe there would be another body. Not really.
The first part of the program was taken up with a rehash of Dinah's disappearance and the discovery of her body, complete with all the gory details the media had been able to obtain through their various sources. There were numerous shots of Kane as he had been in the early days, haggard with worry but determined to find Dinah, saying little except that.
And someone had unearthed a short video clip of Dinah herself, caught unawares about six months before by a news crew as she was working on interviews for her magazine article about Haven House.
The news crew had been there because a rather well-known Atlanta wife, supposedly taking shelter there, had called a reporter friend to come and tape her tearful accusations of repeated abuse.
It was, of course, a complete coincidence that their divorce proceedings had turned nasty a few weeks before that.
The only positive note about the situation was that the news crew had been responsible enough not to show any identifying characteristic of Haven House such as a street number or a long shot that might have placed its location. Even after having been there, it took Faith a couple of minutes to realize it was Haven House she was looking at.
She listened to the society woman's accusations with half an ear, her attention fixed on the background of the shot, where Dinah, notebook in hand, was cradling a sleeping infant.
She had been a beautiful woman, Faith realized.
And her lovely face wore compassion and empathy so openly and naturally.
It was a face to which even strangers would be drawn to tell their secrets, even their shames, and Faith wondered how many confidences Dinah had carried with her to her death.
Before Faith could do more than ponder that question, her attention was caught by another person moving in the background, someone across whose face an expression of anxiety appeared when she saw the news crew filming the place. And her. Someone who darted through the doorway and disappeared into the shelter. Herself.
Faith frowned at the set as the news piece continued. What was it about the scene that nagged at her?
It wasn't as if she hadn't known she had met Dinah at Haven House when Dinah was researching her article.
What was bothering her?
Kane came into the living room just as a perky weather lady was saying it might rain today, and Faith knew she had to tell him. Whether he believed her or not.
She drew a breath and stared at the television. "I didn't really answer you when you asked if I'd had nightmares last night. I don't remember everything I dreamed, but I do remember one of those ... those odd dreams. There was a warning. A warning that another body will be found."
Kane sat on the arm of a chair near her. He was gazing at her, not in disbelief but in apprehension.
"Whose body, Faith?"
"I don't know."
"Where did the warning come from?"
"I don't know. My subconscious, which seems to know more than I do. Or that psychic ability I might have but can't control. Or even that — that connection with Dinah."
"Dinah is dead."
That's what I keep telling her.
Faith felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rise in her throat, but managed to swallow it. "Yeah, well. The last time she warned me, she was right."
"The last time?"
Faith wasn't surprised that his face was masklike in its stillness.
"Dinah told me in a dream that somebody was trying to get into my window. When I woke up, someone was."
"You know very well that had to be your subconscious, Faith. The noise you heard while you were sleeping found its way into your dreams, that's all."
"Probably," she agreed. "So I have to wonder, Kane. I have to wonder what I've seen or heard that convinced my subconscious there's another body out there somewhere." She returned her gaze to the television screen. "Unless I know there is, of course."
"How could you?"
"Exactly. How could I?"
Like Dinah's, Faith's apartment felt too empty, and Faith wasted no time in searching for her watch. But it was nowhere to be found.
"You know, now that I think about it," she said to Kane, "I don't think there was a watch among my things when they gave them back to me in the hospital."
"It could have been destroyed in the accident," he pointed out.
"Yes ... But how many people do you know who have only one watch?
"Especially a woman. They're cheap accessories."
Kane helped her search a second time, but there was no watch in the apartment. They found a small trinket box containing a few pairs of earrings, long and angry with brightly colored stones and crystals.
Faith reached up absently to touch her earlobe, finding the simple pearl stud there a far more restrained style.
"Dinah's," Kane said. "She kept a few pairs at my place, in a box in the linen closet."
Faith stared at him, horrified. "You mean I just took them? God, Kane, I'm sorry. I hadn't even realized..."
"Don't worry about it. I doubt it would bother Dinah, and it doesn't bother me."
But she knew it did bother him, and that she had unconsciously raped Dinah in yet another way definitely bothered her. She brooded about it all the way out to the construction site, even more unnerved when she realized that at some point in the last twenty-four hours, she had, without even noticing her actions, polished her fingernails again.
With Dinah's red polish.
The building inspector was surprised that Faith didn't recognize him; they had, after all, worked in the same city office for months. He was also surprised to learn of her accident, which told Faith he hadn't felt enough interest in her to notice her absence.
Since it appeared that the morning's weather report had been accurate, and distant rumbles of thunder promised more than just rain, Kane and the inspector wasted no time in going down to the half-finished lower levels of the Ludlow building to look at the foundation. Faith remained outside. She stood, actually, between the building and the gate, beyond which their car and driver waited, and the restless bodyguard paced.
What is his name, anyway? she wondered for the first time. Kane had called him something, but for the life of her she couldn't remember what it was. She supposed bodyguards grew accustomed to being ignored; if they did their job well, they were supposed to be virtually invisible to the people they guarded — or so she assumed.