Never Trust A Lady

Chapter 17

Hawk was climbing back into the driver’s seat, having just received directions to the main highway from a farmer in a pickup truck with a bale of hay the size of Delaware in the back, when the cellular phone rang.

“Jeez,” he muttered to himself as he grabbed at it, “they got a camera in this thing, or what?”

Campbell sounded out of breath. “Hawkins? Not good news here. Mrs. Carlysle just showed up at the suspect’s shop.”

Hawk threw the Nissan into Drive and swore with a vehemence unprecedented even for him. “Get her out of there,” he snarled. “Now.”

“No can do. The suspect’s en route, due to arrive any minute. Can’t risk being spotted.”

“So, what now?” The Nissan’s tires spun briefly on wet grass before they made contact with pavement. Hawk set his jaw and pressed down on the accelerator pedal. “You can’t go in. Not if there’s a chance-”

“Look, Hawkins,” Campbell said with the arrogance that made the FBI such a pain in the butt to work with sometimes, “you’re just gonna have to trust us, okay? We’re not any more anxious than you are for some innocent civilian to get caught in the crossfire, but we both know what’s at stake here. We’ve taken every precaution, and we have every reason to believe we can pull this off without anybody getting hurt.”

Every reason to believe? thought Hawk. Great. Just great.

“We’ve got the whole place wired,” Campbell went on in a smug Bureau purr that made Hawk grind his teeth. “Both picture and sound. We’ll be monitoring the situation from the word go. We’ve got both front and rear exits covered, plus the alley, the parking lot and the whole damn square, and a Hostage Rescue Team ready to roll just in case.”

In case? In case what? Hawk wanted to shout. In case Emma/ Galina puts a gun to Jane’s head, the way she did to Loizeau’s? If she does that, you moron, there won’t be anything for the Hostage Rescue Team to do except carry in the body bag!

A vision came to him then, a vision of Jane’s face, her eyes lifting to his with that sudden, miraculous leap of light and joy that always made him think of dolphins. Then he saw her eyes go dull and flat, the light in them forever quenched, and with it all the joy and light there was in the world. His world.

Carlysle…you idiot…why couldn’t you have trusted me? After last night…after everything…was that too much to ask?

“O…kay…suspect has arrived.” Agent Campbell was trying without success to bury his excitement in a monotone drawl. “She’s pulling into the parking lot at the rear of the shop. Mrs. Carlysle has exited her vehicle. So has the suspect…she’s waving at Mrs. Carlysle…suspect now appears to be unlocking the door of the shop. Okay, both Carlysle and the suspect are inside… we have them on the monitors. Hawk?”

“Yeah?” Becoming aware that his chest was hurting, he grabbed for a breath.

“What’s your ETA now?”

“I dunno.” Hawk glanced down at the speedometer needle, which was hovering around seventy-five. How far could it be to the damn town, anyway? “Five minutes?”

“Take your time. Doesn’t look like Mrs. Carlysle’s in any immediate danger.”

“How the hell you figure that?” Hawk growled.

Campbell exhaled audibly. “They’re having tea.”

“There you are…honey…and lemon.”

Jane watched while Connie, who preferred milk in her tea, poured herself a generous dollop and returned the carton to the camp-size refrigerator that shared the limited space in her cluttered workroom with a working, 1930s-vintage gas stove. An equally old-fashioned teakettle sat on one of the stove’s burners beneath its tea cozy, comfortably steeping.

“Would you like a biscuit, dear?”

“Oh, no…thanks.” Jane stirred and sipped her tea. tasting nothing. Her mind, from the moment she’d entered Connie’s shop, had seemed capable of only one coherent thought: It can’t be true. It can’t be. This is Connie…my friend.

Thank goodness Connie had done most of the talking, as usual, telling her in great detail, as the kettle was coming to a boil, all about her newest customer, something about a fantastically wealthy businessman who apparently wanted her to decorate his villa in Miami Beach.

“He’s Iranian, I behove-seems to have pots of money and no taste whatsoever.” Connie’s eyes sparkled with avarice as she bit daintily into a cookie. “I do believe I may have already found a home for some of those dreadful paintings I bought at Arlington. Oh-and that reminds me, dear-” her eyes came to rest on Jane, causing her heart to give a painful bump “-what did you find out about that nice little one you bought? Was my friend in Georgetown able to have a look at it? What did he say?”

Jane took a sip of tea, which did nothing to dispel the feeling that she’d somehow gotten Connie’s cookie crumbs stuck in her throat. Finally, she coughed and said, “I never got around to it, actually. I told you-I had to cut the whole trip short, and anyway, by the next day getting it appraised began to seem, well, just sort of silly. I’m sure it’s not valuable, and I like it anyway, so why bother? It does look very nice over the piano, though, just like I thought it would.” She set down her teacup carefully, praying Connie wouldn’t notice the slight clatter as it met the saucer.

“Actually, that’s one of the reasons I’m here. I was, um, wondering, I still need something for that space between the windows in the breakfast nook, and now that I have the one painting in the living room, the wall above the TV looks awfully bare, so I was thinking I might like to take another look at those paintings-the ones you bought. I know you said you were thinking of taking them to Miami, but…maybe I could have first crack?”

“Uh-oh.”

“What?” Hawk barked, as the ominous syllables came through the open cellular phone connection in Campbell’s deep-throated cop’s mutter.

His anxiety level shot off the scale when the FBI agent next produced a vehement rendition of his own favorite swearword, followed by an outraged, “What the hell is she doing?”

“You mind letting me in on whatever the hell it is she’s doing?” Hawk almost bellowed, ignoring a blast from a trucker’s horn as he ran the stop sign and made a hard right at the junction with the main road into Cooper’s Mill.

The FBI agent’s reply was lost in the squeal of tires.

“Say again?”

“I said, she’s asking about the paintings. How much did you tell her, Hawkins? Does she know what she’s doing? Is she out of her mind?”

“No, she’s just got one of her own,” he said grimly, slowing reluctantly for the traffic light opposite a Burger King. “Where are you? I’m coming into town now.”

“Uh, white van, city engineer’s markings, on the square across from the courthouse. There’s a loading zone next to it, you can park there. And Hawkins-for God’s sake, keep a low profile,. The last thing we want to do-”

But the light had just turned green, and Hawk was already hanging up on him.

“I don’t know…I just can’t make up my mind.” Jane propped the two paintings-one a rather dark landscape of horses grazing in a meadow, the other a vase full of overblown roses, complete with fallen petals-side by side against Connie’s big leather-topped desk and stood back to study them. They weren’t noticeably improved by distance. “The floral would do for the living room-it could do with some brightening, I think-but for the kitchen nook…you know, what I was really looking for was…” What? What am I looking for, exactly? And will I know it when I see it? “Something…”

And then she saw it, half-hidden behind the desk, the painting of a sailing ship foundering in a sickly green sea. And it was as if someone had flicked a switch in her mind, illuminating a video screen. A memory. “Something with boats,” she cried, swooping upon the painting, snatching it up and whirling away with it in triumph. “Yes-like this one.”

Connie, who had been leaning against a dining-room table set with an enormous set of Franciscan dinnerware, idly clicking her little jeweled pen and watching Jane’s search over the tops of her half glasses, straightened suddenly. “That ugly thing? In a kitchen? No, Jane, realty-that’s not for you, dear.”

“Not for you, dear.” Connie had been holding this painting, Jane remembered, when she’d said those words at the auction. But-funny, she hadn’t thought anything about it at the time-she’d been holding it so that Jane could see it, facing out, as if it had been the back of the painting she’d been looking at. Staring at it, studying it intently, with her glasses perched on the end of her nose.

“Oh, but…don’t you see?” Jane said with almost desperate brightness. “Those windows in the breakfast nook look right out over the lake. Something with boats… water…” She was babbling again, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “This really isn’t that bad, you know that? The colors would go, kind of…I mean, my kitchen is blue and yellow, and blue and yellow do make green. And with all the plants…”

The words ceased as if she’d suddenly run out of air. She’d never seen Connie look like that before-eyes cold and hard as stone. She felt cold herself, just from their touch, as if something evil had brushed against her.

This is it, she thought. And then, Oh, God…it’s true.

Outside on the square, in a panel truck with city engineer’s markings, Hawk stared at the bluish gray images on the video monitor screen and felt himself go cold.

“My God,” he whispered, “that’s it.”

Campbell turned from the monitor long enough to throw him a glance over his shoulder. “That’s what?”

“That’s the one-Jarek Singh’s painting.” He broke off, swearing softly. “If only I hadn’t been late to that damn auction… if I’d seen it, I’d have known.”

“What the hell are you talking about? How could you? None of us had ever seen the damn thing.”

“Seascapes-damn.” He turned angrily, looking for pacing room in the confined space and finding none. “I should have known that’s what it would be. They were all over Singh’s place in Cairo. You live in the middle of a desert, you put pictures of water on your walls, right?” He jerked back to the monitor. “What’s she doing now?”

Campbell handed him a set of headphones. “Here-listen for yourself.”

Hawk grabbed them and pressed one side against his ear, never taking his eyes from the tiny, blue-gray figures on the screen…

“I’m so sorry, dear, I’m afraid I already have a buyer for that one.” Connie’s voice was as polite and impersonal as a shop clerk’s.

“A b-buyer?” Jane’s mind seemed to have short-cimuited; she couldn’t think what to do next, could only stand there with the painting clutched in her hands, foolishly stammering.

The air in the antiques shop seemed to have thickened, become a tangible substance that clogged her breathing and wrapped itself around her like spider’s silk. It seemed to shimmer as she watched Connie move through it, slowly, like someone wading through waist-deep water…to the front of the shop…watched her take a leisurely look through the front window.

“My, what a lot of people there are in town this morning,” Connie commented as she swam slowly back toward Jane. “Have you noticed, dear? Court must be in session.”

Dazedly, she shook her head, then nodded. She couldn’t seem to hear properly; there was a ringing in her ears, like the keen of a high-tension power line.

Hawk wondered why the tension wasn’t blowing the top of his head off. “Why the hell didn’t your people take her?” he yelled. “Someone must have had a clear shot.”

Campbell turned on him like a desert dervish. “We can’t take her out until we know what she’s done with the disk, dammit! What if she’s already gotten rid of it? What if she’s stashed it? We kill her, and we’re never gonna find out where it is, or who’s got it. It’s like a freakin’ time bomb, is that what you want?”

For a long moment Hawk stared at the FBI agent, while helpless fury darkened his vision and the pounding of his blood drowned sound and thought. “She’s going to kill her,” he heard himself say, as if from a great distance. “You know that, don’t you?”

And it could happen at any minute…any second. Right before his eyes. He would see it playing out like a television show on the monitor screen…see the gun in the woman’s hand, see the neat black hole appear in Jane’s forehead…the third eye, robbing the others of all light and joy and life…and there would be nothing he could do to stop it. Nothing…

As he’d watched that lovely April afternoon, watched through the eye of his camera lens… watched his wife and son whirl past on the merry-go-round, laughing and waving…watched it all disappear in an instant. a single instant of fire and thunder and blood that would live in his memory forever…

“I don’t see any sign of a gun,” Campbell said. He was back at the monitor, staring intently at the screen. “Don’t think she’s got one on her. In the desk, maybe?”

“Maybe…” Hawk leaned over the agent’s shoulder so he could see better. “What’s that she’s got in her hand? She keeps playing with it.”

“That?” The FBI man pointed. “Looks like a pen.”

“A pen?” Hawk frowned. Campbell turned around to look at him. He was absently rubbing his thigh…

“Now then, Jane,” Connie said almost gaily, “give us the painting…there’s a good girl.” She advanced, hands outstretched.

Jane took an involuntary step backward. And instantly saw something flare, something smoky and dark, like a guttering candle flame, behind Connie’s eyes.

“She’s not helpless,” Campbell muttered, watching the monitor as if hypnotized. “She could probably take her. Jeez, you saw what she did to me.”

Hawk growled, “That was different. She was prepared for you.” He could feel the FBI man turn to look at him, but didn’t take his eyes from the monitor screen as he grimly added, “She’s never met evil before…”

Like a bird mesmerized by a cobra. Jane watched Connie’s hand reach toward her, moving slowly through that strangely viscous, thrumming space. And all the while, screened from the other woman’s view by the painting she held in her left hand, clutched against her chest, her right hand was moving too, reaching behind her, under her jacket, to grasp something hard that nestled there, tucked in the waistband of her slacks, snug against the small of her back…

With a final lunge, Connie grabbed the painting and wrested it from her grasp. But not before Jane had managed to slip her fingers under the loosened edge of the brown-paper backing. It tore away with barely a sound. Connie glanced down at it, then back at Jane, her lips curving in a regretful little smile.

“Dear Jane,” she said with a sigh, “I really do wish you hadn’t done that.”

“There,” Hawk said, straightening on an explosive breath. “What’d I tell you? There’s the damn disk. What are you waiting for? Get in there-now.”

Campbell’s breath gusted angrily as he straightened, staring down at the screen. “We go in there now, we put Carlysle at risk. She won’t hesitate to use her as a hostage-you know that as well as I do.” Campbell was rubbing unconsciously at the back of his neck. Hawk could see his own tension in the rigid set of the FBI man’s shoulders, his own frustration reflected in the angry black eyes.

“What about your snipers? Hasn’t anybody got a clear shot?” He watched the screen as if he were drowning and it held his only hope of survival. Through the headphone pressed against his ear he could hear Connie-Gatina. Emma-telling Jane in that cultured, upper-crust British voice of hers how sorry she was…

Campbell, meanwhile, was holding a low-voiced conversation with one of the other agents monitoring field communications. The agent spoke into a radio mike, listened, spoke again, then looked at Campbell and shook his head. Campbell swore under his breath.

“Can’t get a clear shot-they’re too far back. The damn place is so full of stuff…” Like Hawk, he didn’t say “stuff.” He exhaled bleakly. “I’m afraid that, for the moment, at least, Mrs. Carlysle is on her own.”

“Like hell she is.” Hawk snapped. Before anyone could stop him, he threw down the earphones, dived out of the van and hit the brick pavement running.

“I don’t understand,” Jane mumbled. Her lips felt numb. So did all the rest of her.

“It won’t do, you know,” Connie cocked her head, reminding Jane of nothing so much as a little gray hen as she turned the doomed ship in its garish green sea toward the floor and peered at the torn paper backing, and at the flat square of black plastic that was taped to the canvas beneath it. “I had hoped you’d just gotten a rather peculiar bee in your bonnet, and were being silly and stubborn about it. But I can see that wasn’t it at all, was it? You do know what this is all about, don’t you? Well…” Her sigh overrode Jane’s futile denial.

“One of the others got to you, I suppose. Who was it, that Middle Eastem-looking fellow from the auction? No doubt it was a mistake not to kill him, but you know, there would have been such a fuss…

“Or was it someone etse-the FBI, perhaps? Now that I think about it, that circus outside does seem to have their stamp on it. They have an unfortunate tendency toward overkill. The CIA would have been much more discreet.”

Connie’s eyes were bright with that combative gleam Jane had seen before. She’s enjoying this, she thought. And for some reason, she suddenly felt very calm. Not angry, not even frightened, just a strange sort of quietness inside.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

Connie’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Oh my-well, I shouldn’t like to, you know. You are a dear girl, and you’ve been quite a good friend, haven’t you? We shall have to see.”

As she talked, she was ripping the disk from the back of the painting, setting the painting aside, tucking the disk into a manila envelope and then into a large handbag that had been lying on the desktop. That completed, she looked once more at Jane. Jane wondered why she’d never noticed before that Connie’s eyes were as hard and flat as polished stones.

“I have an idea you are going to be of some use to me yet, dear. For example, right now you are going to tell me who it is you’ve brought with you, exactly where they are out there and how many.” She picked up her little jewel-encrusted pen and studied it thoughtfully. “Then we shall see how helpful you can be in getting us out of here.”

Jane gave her head a confused shake. “What are you talking about? Who is out where?”

And suddenly she thought of Tom, and what he’d said about waiting until Connie’s shop opened so he could look at the paintings she’d bought. She remembered, too, that she’d thought he must be lying. And that he must be up to something.

All those cars parked in the square… Was Connie right? Were the police, or the FBI, or-good heavens, the CIA-out there even now? Was help so near, just outside these old brick walls, visible, even through the dusty front window? And yet, so far away…

Tom. Her heart gave a great leap of hope. Might he be out there, too, she wondered, right this minute? She’d left him sleeping, but then, she knew how good he was at pretending.

Oh, Tom. She’d been wrong to lie to him. That note she’d left him-he thought she’d gone to work. He wouldn’t even know she was in here until it was too late. She’d probably messed up everything for him. Oh, God, what if she, with her foolhardiness, was the one who made it possible for Connie to get away, and with that all-important disk besides? Tom would never forgive her. Never.

I’m sorry, Tom…I should have trusted you.

She’d been wrong to try to do this alone. But wasn’t that what she’d always done, what she’d always had to do? She had a whole lifetime’s habit of handling things on her own, fending for herself, dealing with every task and crisis without help from anyone. She’d never worked with a partner before. She didn’t even know how.

Out of a deep, inexpressible sadness, she said before she thought, “I came alone, Connie. No one else even knows I’m here.”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, she knew how stupid she’d been.

Connie’s eyes flared briefly. She gave a short, hard laugh. “You know, dear Jane, I actually believe you. Your eyes, you know. They simply don’t know how to lie. So, perhaps court is in session, after all. Well, now…” She studied her little jeweled pen, thoughtfully clicking it, while Jane’s heart began a slow, heavy thumping. “This does change things, doesn’t it? It would be much more tidy, much less cumbersome, I think, if I killed you now. I’m so sorry, Jane…it’s not personal, you know. And I do promise, you won’t feel any pain at all…”

Like a snake striking, Connie’s hand shot out and clamped with a grip of iron around Jane’s wrist. The jeweled pen flashed as it caught the light Jane gasped when she felt the needle prick her skin.

Shock rocketed through her, turning her blood to ice water. But it didn’t stop her from whipping her Roy Rogers cap pistol from its hiding place and bringing it down with all her might across Connie’s forearm.

It made a most satisfying sound

There were other sounds, then, too. Connie’s shriek of rage. a clatter as the jeweled pen hit the floor and went skittering away under the desk. Some loud thumps and bangs, and Tom’s voice shouting, “Stay where you are-don’t move!”

She tried to turn toward him, but the room tilted alarmingly. There was another, louder bang, followed by a crashing and tinkling, as if a crystal rain were falling. And then a strange male voice bellowing, “Get down on the floor! Get down on the floor!”

And the next thing she knew, that’s where she was. Tom’s face was looking down at her, wearing a truly magnificent scowl. She wanted to reach up and touch his face, smooth away the frown, but her arms wouldn’t obey her. She heard a strange, garbled voice say, “How is she?” And then a second face joined Tom’s, the two hovering above her like pale twin moons.

Her last thought was Aaron Campbell? But that makes no sense at all!

“I can’t believe I hit a federal agent,” Jane said with a groan.

It was the third or fourth time she’d said it, but she sounded a lot stronger and a lot less groggy now, and the nasty little fear-pulse that had been throbbing in Hawk’s belly was finally beginning to subside.

She was lying on a gurney, much against her will, in the parking lot behind Connie’s Antiques. Hawk was sitting beside her on a yellow plastic chest that belonged to the fire department‘s paramedics, most of whom were busy at the moment tending to Aaron Campbell. The FBI man lay a short distance away on a stretcher with his arms encased in inflated pressure bandages meant to control the bleeding from several deep lacerations he’d sustained breaking through the shop’s front window. Connie had been whisked away to God knows where.

There was a measure of privacy there, “privacy” being a relative term, considering there was a small army of men wearing navy blue windbreakers with “FBI” in block letters on the back swarming over every inch of the store and the blue van, and another handful armed with high-tech rifles standing around in baseball caps and flak jackets, not to mention the four guys wearing berets who were engaged in polite conversation with two others dressed in conservative gray suits. But at least the alley had been roped off with crime-scene tape, and Sheriff Taylor’s people were doing a good job of keeping both the news media and the merely curious confined to the town square.

“I think he’ll probably forgive you,” Hawk said gruffly.

He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. They felt too big, clumsy and useless for what he wanted to do, which was touch her face in awe and thanksgiving, stroke her hair, gather her oh so gently against his heart. He also wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until her teeth rattled.

He didn’t know what to do with his eyes, either. What he was doing was looking everywhere, anywhere but at Jane, because she was the only thing in this world he wanted to see. He couldn’t look at her, even though he feared she’d disappear in a puff of smoke if he didn’t, because he feared what she might see in his face even more.

So he kept his hands clasped tightly between his knees and followed the comings and goings of the army of law enforcement personnel with burning eyes, while every nerve in his body hummed and vibrated to the same frequency as hers.

“Is he going to be all right?” Jane asked.

Aaron may forgive me, Tom, but will you?

“Yeah,” Tom muttered, clearing his throat. “Just needs some stitches. They’d have taken him before now, but he won’t let ’em. Not until they’ve got things wrapped up here.”

He looks so angry, she thought. As if he can’t stand the sight of me. I don’t blame him.

She wanted to touch him so badly. She wanted to reach out and put her hand on his face, and smooth away the frown and make him smile again, that sweet, crooked smile that made her ache inside. But he looked so grim and isolated, so unreachable. And as if she were still feeling the effects of Connie’s poison, her arms wouldn’t obey her wishes.

She wanted his arms around her, holding her close, keeping her safe, keeping her warm. Even if she didn’t deserve it. Her body trembled with wanting. How will I survive, she wondered, if he never holds me again?

A white-haired man dressed in a suit and tie and wearing latex gloves came stumping up to them. He had a small plastic bag in each hand, one containing Connie’s little jeweled pen, the other a vial containing a small amount of murky-looking liquid. He gave Jane a nod, then spoke briskly to Tom, who’d gotten to his feet at his approach.

“Tests’ll confirm it, but I’m sure it’s…oh, well, forget the scientific name-let‘s just say it’s a tranquilizer, enough to bring down a bull elephant. You were lucky, young lady.” His bristly white eyebrows twitched in Jane’s direction. “Looks like she barely nicked ya. Otherwise, you’da been dead for sure.”

And with that he took himself off, continuing on his way across the parking lot and around the corner with the stoop-shouldered, slightly sideways gait of the still-vigorous elderly. Jane drew a shaken breath and said, “Who was that?”

Hawk didn’t answer. He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t, not without remembering the way he’d felt when she’d hit the floor right in front of him. He never wanted to feel like that again in his life. He didn’t think he’d be able to survive it.

“Gotta…talk to Aaron,” he mumbled, and lurched off to where the FBI agent was about to be loaded into a waiting EMS wagon.

“Hey, Hawkins,” Campbell greeted him, sounding weak but grinning anyway.

“Hey, yourself,” Hawk said gruffly. “I’d shake your hand, but…”

“Yeah, looks like I’m kinda tied up at the moment.”

“Yeah, well…” Hawk stuck his hands in his jacket pockets and shifted uneasily; moments like this were never easy for him. He coughed and muttered, “Just wanted to say thanks, before they, uh, haul you in for repairs.”

“Hey, you too.”

“Oh-well.” Hawk made a dismissive gesture and looked off into the distance. Campbell followed his gaze.

“That’s one helluva lady,” he said softly. “But I expect you know that, don’t you?”

Hawk didn’t answer. Two paramedics hoisted the FBI agent’s gurney onto its wheels and began rolling it toward the waiting van. Campbell lifted his head. “Hey, Hawk?”

“Yeah?” He took a few steps, keeping pace with the gumey.

“Take good care of her, you hear?”

He halted. “Hey, wait It’s not like that.”

“The hell it’s not.” The gumey slid into the van, but Campbell’s eyes still followed him, glowing like coals in his pale face. “Look man, just because it’s never happened to me, doesn’t mean I don’t know it when I see it. You let that lady go, you’re crazy, you hear me? Crazy.”

The van’s door began to close. The last thing Hawk heard Aaron Campbell say before they did was, “Hey-ask her if she’s got a daughter!”

Jane watched the two men in immaculate gray suits walk away across the dusty parking lot and disappear around a corner.

“What’d they want?” Tom growled, startling her. She was still a little bemused, and hadn’t heard him come back.

“Oh,” she said, smiling up at him from the gurney’s hard pillow, “they were just being nice.” Under the edge of the rough EMS blanket, she was fingering a plain white business card.

Tom was glowering-there was no other word for it. “They’re CIA.”

“Yes,” Jane murmured, “I know.” And they asked me to give them a call-me! Jane Carlysle. She wouldn’t, of course; the very idea was, well, preposterous. But still…the CIA.

Jane Carlysle…spy.

Oh my.

“They’re gonna want to take you over to the hospital…check everything out,” Tom said, still scowling at her, hands stuffed in his jacket pockets. “Just to be on the safe side.”

“Yes, I guess.” She took a deep breath. Her heart began to hurt. She pressed her fist into her stomach and felt her pulse bang against her knuckles. “And what about you? What’s next for you. Tom?”

He shifted restlessly and looked off into the distance. “I’ll be going back to Washington.”

“Oh,” she said. “Of course.” Please, God. don’t let me fall apart.

“I’ve got some things to do there. There’s…someone I need to see.”

“I see,” she whispered, though she didn’t, not at all. I won’t ask if he’s coming back… I won’t. Please, God, don’t let me ask “There’s someone…I have to say goodbye to.” His voice sounded strange…thick and husky.

Jane’s breath seemed to catch in her throat. She could only stare at him, suspended in a strange, shimmering state, like a newly emerging chrysalis. Do I dare? If he would only look at me…

She never knew where she got the strength to say the words, calmly, quietly. “When are you leaving?”

“I dunno…depends.” And now at last he was looking at her, rocking a little onto the balls of his feet, then back again, as if he felt ill at ease. His frown seemed less severe than usual. Almost wary. “I’ve got a few things to wrap up around here first Then, I guess it pretty much depends on when they let you go.”

“I don’t understand.” But she did. Oh, she did. And she felt as if her heart would fly right out of her chest. Surely he would see it. Surely he must know.

“I want…I’d like you to come with me.”

Somehow she knew that was all he would say. All he could say. And it was enough.

She reached for his hand. He took hold of hers like a drowning man thrown a rope, and after a moment, raised it, closed his eyes and pressed his lips against her palm. She felt a shudder pass through him. and then a sigh.