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Voice mail. Damn voice mail. Karen clenched her teeth. He deserved a personal apology, deserved the chance to swear at her some more, but it might take her days to catch him in the office. "This is Karen. I'm at home. I'm sorry for running out on you this morning. It was childish of me, and I—I don't have any excuse. I thought—never mind. I acted like an idiot, and I'm sorry."
There didn't seem to be anything else to say. She bit her lip and hung up. The pit of her stomach felt cold. Maybe he would call so he could tell her she was a jerk and an idiot, but likely she would never hear from him again.
On impulse, she took the microcassette out of the answering machine and put it in a drawer. Even if he was swearing at her on the tape, at least it was his voice. She could listen to it occasionally to remind herself she was a fool.
She put a new tape in the machine, then stood uncertainly. She could sit waiting for the phone to ring, or she could finish the laundry, do some chores, and try to get some sleep. She had to work that night, and she hadn't had much sleep the night before. Marc had been on top of her, and inside her, most of the night.
She closed her eyes, breathing deeply as memory curled around her. No matter what, it had been a night to remember. She regretted a lot of things about what had happened, but for a few hours she had been lost in sheer physical ecstasy. Marc had given her more pleasure than she had known it was possible to feel. It was impossible to regret that.
And she loved. She, who thought she had blocked out all love except that for her mother, found that she hadn't blocked anything. Despite everything, she loved her father. There was peace in finally admitting it, in no longer fighting to keep herself closed off. She loved him, ached for the life he had wasted, the love he had rejected. She was more like him than she had ever thought, in her reactions, her efforts to seal herself off, and like her mother in that despite all her efforts, she loved anyway.
She suspected this meant she would love Marc for the rest of her life.
Marc was still in a savage mood late that afternoon when he entered his office. He was hot, sweaty, tired, and so pissed off he wanted to tear something apart with his bare hands.
Karen had run from him.
He had expected her to be nervous this morning, maybe a little shy, a little embarrassed. Knowing he was short of time and opportunity, he had taken their intimacy to deeper levels, faster, than he had ever done with a woman before. There wasn't an inch of her body he hadn't touched or kissed in his effort to stake a claim on her that she wouldn't be able to easily dismiss. He had left her asleep in the bed and taken a shower, intending to waken her with kisses, hold her on his lap and pet her, tease her, bring a smile to those too-serious dark eyes—and then make love to her again. But she hadn't been asleep after all; instead, when he came out of the bathroom, she was gone.
She must have run all the way to the hotel; that was the only way she could have avoided him. By the time he got there, she had already checked out by phone, and he hadn't been able to cover all the exits. She had slipped past him again, and a valet in the transportation bay remembered getting her a cab to the airport.
He paged her at the airport, but she hadn't answered. By then, he was so angry she was lucky he hadn't been able to catch her. Instead, he called her home phone and left a blistering message; probably not a smart thing to do when he was trying to gentle her out of her skittishness, but her running had rattled him.
The relative coolness of his office washed over his damp skin, wringing a sigh of relief from him. He shed his jacket and rolled his shoulders, unsticking his shirt from his back and raising chill bumps at the sensation. He ran an impatient hand over his hair and the back of his neck. God, he hated child murders. He would rather work a hundred other cases than investigate the death of a child. The helplessness and fragility of the little bodies got to him, hit him hard.
He had a five-year-old little boy in the morgue, dead from a fall down the stairs. An accident, his mother said. But the kid's legs had been covered with small, half-healed burns that she had tried to pass off as mosquito bites, and yellowish bruises had blotched his skin. Yellow bruises were old bruises, healing bruises. He had had an accident on his bicycle, his mother said.
The woman had been terrified. She had sat motionless at the kitchen table, as if she were afraid to move. Once she did turn her head, when her husband said something, and Marc thought he had seen a dark mark on her neck, just under the edge of her collar.
He knew the signs: the blouse buttoned up to the throat, the long sleeves even in sweltering weather, slacks instead of shorts.
Marc no longer wasted time wondering why a woman would stay with an abusive man, or how a mother could be cowed into silence even when her child was killed. He'd been a cop long enough that nothing surprised him. He did know he had to be careful on this case, because the husband was a lawyer and would know if there was a t left uncrossed or an i undotted. He was also a criminal defense lawyer, which made Marc all the more determined to nail his ass.
The ME would likely discover other evidence of abuse, such as previous fractures. He would determine the marks on the child's legs were from cigarette burns, not mosquito bites, and his report would provide reasonable grounds for arrest. Marc only hoped he would be able to get a warrant before the son of a bitch panicked, knowing his wife would be able to testify against him, and killed her, too.
Marc sat down to listen to his voice mail and leafed through the pile of papers that had accumulated on his desk during his absence. Most of it was routine stuff, notices, memos, reports he had requested.
He had a lot of contacts in the city, a lot of snitches who would gladly roll over on their buddies rather than get on his bad side. Most of the stuff he heard was penny-ante, but sometimes all it took was a detail that fit into an overall picture he already had, and his case was made.
He didn't expect Karen to call, because of the message he had left rather than despite it. It was probably for the best, at this point. When he was completely calm again, he would call her and try to get this courtship back on track.
Her message took him by surprise. He stopped and leaned back in his chair, listening grimly. She sounded subdued. "… I thought—never mind. I acted like an idiot, and I'm sorry."
She thought… what? She thought too damn much, that was the problem. He could almost hear the worry go
ing on behind the words. The woman didn't know how to relax and have fun, she had to shoulder the responsibility for everything—
"Shit," he growled, puffing out his cheeks. He should have guessed she would wake up kicking herself for what she would consider wildly irresponsible behavior. He'd been so careful not to spook her before he could get her into bed, she had no idea he was planning anything more than a one-night stand. Leaving her alone in bed while he showered had been a major tactical error, one he would remember.
The sexual chemistry between them was so hot it took his breath, and it was even more bewitching because he had known immediately she wasn't very experienced. Not ignorant, not virgin, but not… accustomed to making love. He suspected she controlled her sexuality as fiercely as she controlled her emotions. But last night, she had relaxed her control and turned into the sweetest, hottest woman he'd ever had in his bed. He hadn't known he could get a hard-on that often, but hell, he hadn't had any choice. She had been in dire need of loving, and he had risen to the occasion.
He was experienced, and their lovemaking had been more intense than anything he'd known before. The night must have seemed like nothing less than debauchery to her.
He reached for the phone to call her, then stopped. His temper had cooled, but he was still angry, and his own control was a little shaky after dealing with that little boy's murder. He needed to talk to her as soon as possible, so she wouldn't have time to buttress her resistance to him, but that need was balanced by caution. He wanted to yell at her, and yelling wasn't a good idea right now. She would withdraw even further and maybe refuse to talk to him again.
He forced himself to continue reading the notices from other police forces, flipping through the computer printouts. He paused when he saw the Mississippi state police had reported a body found just across the state line from Louisiana. The victim, a white male age fifty-seven, name of Rick Medina, had been shot twice with a .22; his money and credit cards had been stolen.
People were shot with .22s all the time; it was the most common of handguns. It was instinct alone that made him pull the report out of the stack. Maybe it was nothing, but this victim was approximately the same age as Karen's father, and Mississippi wasn't that far away.