"Yes. We are engaged." Then he pushed his way through the reporters, followed closely by a tall, dark man with a scarred face, and both disappeared into a waiting car.
Faith found herself sitting on the couch, her arms hugging a pillow to her breasts, dazed, no longer hearing the news broadcast.
Kane Macgregor was the man in her dreams. And he was Dinah's fiancée. She was having dreams about Dinah's fiancée? Intimate dreams?
Pain, hot and cold like a knife made of ice, sliced through her. She heard herself breathing in shallow pants, felt her heart thudding, her body trembling.
Had he been her lover first? Had their relationship ended a long time ago, before Dinah came along? Or was Kane Macgregor's haunted, grieving face hiding the knowledge that he'd been involved with her and Dinah at the same time?
Then Faith went even colder.
Dinah was missing. Faith had been in a serious accident.
Did it mean something?
Her apartment had been broken into after her accident, and though she couldn't know for certain if anything had been taken, the lack of personal papers and photographs was decidedly unnatural.
Did it mean something? Anything?
Why couldn't she remember?
"Oh, God," she whispered. "What's happening?"
THE SEARCH
CHAPTER 1
"Were you?" Bishop asked.
Kane, concentrating on driving, spared him only a quick glance. "Was I what? Engaged to Dinah?"
"Yeah."
"Unofficially."
Bishop thought about that for several beats. "Does unofficially engaged mean it was all in your mind or all in hers?"
Kane felt a flicker of grim amusement. "You have to have everything spelled out, don't you, Noah?"
"Just trying to understand."
"Then I guess I'd have to say it was all in my mind. I hadn't asked her yet."
"But you were going to?"
It was Kane's turn to think, and when he answered it was with a weary sigh. "Hell, I don't know. I think so. I mean, I hadn't planned to, but it was in the back of my mind that's where we'd end up. At least ..."
"Until just before she disappeared?"
Kane nodded. "It's like I told you. Everything was fine. Then she got preoccupied, I assumed by whatever story she was working on. Then there was the accident her friend was in, and she seemed to get even more distant and distracted."
"And she never told you what she was working on?"
"Goddammit, Noah, you know Dinah. She's always been like a clam when it comes to a work in progress. With that amazing memory of hers, she never needs notes. And sure, a story absorbs her, sometimes makes her oblivious to most things. But this time it had gone on long enough to bother me. So I tried to get her to talk about it that last morning, to tell me what she was investigating. She told me practically nothing and ended up mad at me to boot."
"Stop feeling guilty," Bishop said. "You couldn't have known she'd disappear that day."
Since guilt was only a small part of what Kane was feeling, he was able to shrug without commitment.
Bishop looked at him thoughtfully. "And you're sure, absolutely sure, that wherever she went, it wasn't willingly?"
"Absolutely positive. And even if I'm wrong about that, she would never stay away this long without letting me know where she is. If she could get to a phone, she'd call me."
Bishop was silent for a couple of miles, then said, "We're reasonably sure that nothing in her personal life would have driven somebody to snatch her."
It wasn't a question, but Kane answered anyway.
"Nothing I can imagine. When her father died a few years ago, he was the last of her family, I told you that. Or at least the last she knew of. He left her a huge portfolio of stocks and other investments, but she just turned the management of everything over to someone and more or less ignored the money, as far as I could see."
"You said both you and the police talked to her financial consultant?"
"Sure, early on. Easy enough for me, since he manages my money as well. He said Dinah's business affairs were perfectly in order, that she wasn't being blackmailed or pressured in any way as far as he knew. No large, unexplained deposits or withdrawals to or from any of her accounts. Nothing. Not a single god damned breadcrumb to follow."
"Still," Bishop said, "maybe it'd be worthwhile to talk to him one more time. Money tends to be at the root of most bad things one way or another. He might know something no one else could tell us, especially now that he's had plenty of time to think about.
By this point, Kane wasn't willing to discount anything, even going over familiar ground a second time.
Dinah had been missing for more than a month, and so far the investigation had led nowhere.
Noah Bishop, special agent for the FBI, had come into the picture only the day before, when he'd arrived in Atlanta. He had been out of the country, whether on Bureau business or his own, Kane hadn't asked. He wasn't formally a part of the investigation, but both his badge and his manner meant that when he asked questions, even of cops jealous of the' territory, he usually got answers.
Kane and he had been good friends since college, when they'd competed in track-and-field events, and had been roommates in their junior and senior years.
Their career choices had taken them in different directions after graduation, but Noah always found a long weekend every few months to visit Atlanta.
He had managed three of those visits after Kane had become involved with Dinah, so he had known her fairly well. And since she had been characteristically curious about the FBI and Noah's very specialized abilities and knowledge, and he had a high regard for investigative journalists with integrity and strong ethics, they had found much to talk about.
So, he was almost as upset over her disappearance as Kane was, but only the white of the scar down his left cheek bore witness to that emotion.
Otherwise, he appeared completely calm and in control, his voice steady and sometimes filled with a dry humor, his powerful body relaxed, pale sentry eyes watchful as always but tranquil.
Kane wasn't fooled.
In response to Bishop's statement, he said, "Okay, we'll talk to Conrad Masterson. I'll call him tonight. In the meantime, there must be something else we can do."
"Between you, the cops, and your private investigator, I'd say everything that could be done has been." As if ticking off the facts on his fingers, Bishop said, "Her movements that last day have been traced as much as possible and every potential lead followed. Everyone she's known to have talked to that last week has been questioned at least once. You've kept a fire burning under the police. Your P I. has been dogging every step of the investigation and working his own contacts. You've spent days in Dinah's office going through ten years' worth of files, and weeks running down information on anyone she might have pissed off in the course of doing a story. You've talked to her financial manager, her co-workers, and her boss. You've talked to neighbors in her apartment building. You've searched her apartment. You've offered a million-dollar reward for information."
Kane braced himself.
Quietly, reluctantly, Bishop said, "Unless something new comes to light ... Jesus, Kane. I'm sorry as hell — but the trail is looking awfully god damned cold."
Kane hadn't wanted to admit that to himself. Not today, when Bishop had kept him from lunging across the desk of a police lieutenant and choking the man.
Not yesterday, when the last of Dinah's known rues had proved to be in prison on the fifth year of a ten-year sentence.
Not the day before that, or the days and weeks before that, when useless information had piled up and leads dwindled and hope dissolved.