Cain met her gaze, then slowly dropped his eyes. He was really a very good-looking man.
“Your neighbor was very worried about you,” he said. He waved toward Margaret Holzbauer, who stood near the doorway.
“I’m sorry,” Daryn said.
Cain was quiet for a long moment. “You’re back safe, and that’s the important thing.” He stood up and handed her a card. “If you think of anything we might need to know, please call me.”
“Anything you might need to know? Like what, Detective Cain?”
“You tell me.”
They exchanged wary smiles. “I can’t think of anything,” Daryn said. “But I’ll keep your card.”
Cain nodded to her, beckoned to the two uniforms, and they left the apartment. Mrs. Holzbauer stayed for a few minutes, fluttering over her. Daryn talked to her mindlessly, not remembering what she’d said only seconds after saying it. It was shortly after ten before the old woman left and Daryn was alone. She breathed out quietly and sat motionless on the couch. Her head was pounding.
Rob Cain had been at his ten-year-old son’s baseball game at Woodson Park in south Oklahoma City when dispatch called him. Dylan wasn’t a particularly athletic kid, but he loved the game of baseball, and Cain was proud to bursting that the boy kept trying, regardless of what he did on the field during the games.
He called his wife’s cell. “Game over?” he said.
“Yep,” she said. “Nearly half an hour ago.”
“Damn,” Cain said. “Sorry.”
He pictured his wife’s shrug. She was the wife of a detective, after all.
“Was it her?” his wife asked. “The missing girl.”
“It was.”
“She’s okay?”
“Physically she’s fine. She’s also lying to me through her teeth.”
“What?”
“Never mind. It may be a while before I get home.”
After he hung up, he headed toward his office downtown. Inside the Detective Division of the Oklahoma City Police Department, he found his desk and started sifting through piles of paper. After a moment he had the phone number he wanted. He didn’t look at the time before he called.
“Scott Hendler,” said a voice a moment later.
“Scott, it’s Rob Cain,” he said. “Sorry to call so late. But I think you and I need to talk.”
Daryn sat in silence for a few minutes, then took her cell and made a call.
Sean Kelly answered after four rings. “Yeah?”
“Hello, Sean.”
There was a long silence. “Where are you?”
“I’m at home. I mean, at Kat’s apartment. She cut me loose, Sean. Your sister turned me away.”
“But Sanborn-”
“No evidence, she said. I-I’m not quite sure what to do right now.” She lowered her voice. “But I know I don’t want to be alone.”
“I-”
“Please, Sean. Please. I need you. I need you beside me, I need to see you and hear your voice and taste you and smell you. I need you inside me, Sean. Please.”
“But I can’t-”
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
She broke the connection. Then she went upstairs, stepping around the little boombox Sean had thrown at one of the attackers. In the bedroom, she lit a couple of candles, took off her clothes, and lay down on the bed to wait.
Sean was electrified by Daryn’s words. It was too much to digest. He didn’t understand how Faith could have turned her loose. Faith had come home about an hour before, saw that he was drunk, and stalked down the hall to her room. She’d come out a few minutes later in fresh clothes, carrying her little overnight bag.
“Sober up, Sean,” she said. “We need to talk.”
Then she’d gone out again, slamming the front door behind her. She paced the front yard for fifteen minutes while he watched from the window. He wasn’t going to run after her, that was for sure. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
Just who the hell did she think she was?
Scott Hendler’s Toyota appeared in a few minutes and Faith got in, casting one look back at the house. Sean let the curtains fall back over the window.
Sean got up and wandered around the house, gripping the neck of his bottle, even though it was empty. He thought about Daryn’s words. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her, whether sober, drunk, or somewhere between. Her touch, her body, her acute sensuality, her outrage, her raw and powerful lust. They beckoned to him, and in sober moments over the last week he’d wondered if this was how the sailors in the old folk tales felt when they heard the mermaid singing to them.
He kept gripping the bottle, even using it to brace himself against the wall a couple of times. He was more drunk than he’d been the entire week, and hadn’t much cared before Daryn called.
She wanted him. She wanted him now.
And he wanted her.
But I’m so shit-faced I probably can’t even get it up, he thought, which then struck him as funny. He laughed uncontrollably, then blinked it away, wondering why he was laughing.
He thumbed through Faith’s bookshelves again. Books on the Zodiac killer, Jack the Ripper…how could his sister read this crap? Then there was the strange one, something about the Civil War. More crap. He paged through it, then it suddenly felt slippery and fell from his fingers.
Screw it, he thought. If Faith is going to be a bitch, then she can pick up her own goddamn book from the floor.
He jammed a hand, not the one holding the bottle, into his pants pocket. He felt his keys-fat lot of good they did him, since his Jeep was long gone-some coins, and…
Another key.
By itself. Not on his key ring.
His hand closed on it, and he remembered. The morning he’d asked Faith to provide a safe house for Daryn, he’d had her car. He’d stopped and had a copy made of her car key.
Just in case, he’d thought at the time.
Just in case had just arrived, he thought now.
He dropped the bottle. It shattered on the wood floor.
You can clean that up too, Faith.
He found his wallet, though he stumbled on the coffee table to get to it, and almost went sprawling. But he had to have it. Wouldn’t want to drive without a license. The thought cracked him up, and he laughed again.
He thought of Daryn’s body, of her warmth, her wetness, her lust…just for him.
So what if there was no fucking evidence of Franklin Sanborn or the Coalition or of anything else?
He made it to the door, then outside. He slammed it behind him. The gold Miata was in the driveway.
Sean smiled.
26
WHAT THE HELL WAS TAKING HIM SO LONG?
Daryn’s patience wore thin, and she had to remind herself that Sean was probably drunk, and probably hadn’t climbed very far out of the bottle for the entire week. She knew that he had come to the safe house in Edmond twice, and that the marshals had turned him away at the door. She’d heard him shouting her name.
All of which would only inflame him further, make him desire her more. He would do anything to be next to her.
It took him nearly half an hour. Goddamn fool’s probably so drunk he got lost, she thought. But he pounded on her door at ten minutes before eleven o’clock. She didn’t get out of bed to see if it was him, but she called “Come in!” at the top of her lungs, hoping he was coherent enough to hear her.
She heard the door open. “Daryn?” he whispered.
“In the bedroom,” she said. “Come up here, now.”
She heard his steps on the stairs. She positioned herself on the bed and opened her legs. She moved her hands to her breasts and began massaging her nipples. Her breathing grew heavy.
He entered the room.
“Daryn,” he breathed. “My God, Daryn.”
“Come to me, Sean,” she whispered.
He fumbled with his clothes, almost falling over twice. She continued putting on a show for him until he joined her on the bed. He thrust his tongue into her mouth. She tasted the whiskey, tasted the danger. But sex was life.