Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (30 page)

She took a deep breath and expelled it loudly enough to cause a couple of heads to turn, a couple of quick glances in her direction. No one asked what was wrong, probably because they already knew. It seemed that everything about her life was now public knowledge. There had been heated speculation—more than speculation in the tabloids—about the relationship between Kate August and the two men at the center of the Tripper bombings.

She had to admit that all the elements were there for a great story, begging to be sensationalized: the reclusive millionaire, the poor-boy-made-good cop who had gone so desperately wrong, and the woman between them. “The Eternal Triangle” one tabloid headline screamed. The grain of truth, Kate supposed, hidden in the mass of chaff that had been written about the case, about Kahler’s death, and about Judge Barrington’s injury.

She had waited through the hours of surgery that night and had breathed a prayer of thanksgiving when she had been told that he’d survived the operation, but that his prognosis was guarded. Whatever the hell that meant. The police, who had waited patiently for her statement, would wait no longer, and when she had returned to the hospital, it was to find that the same impenetrable security that had been imposed at the time of the first bombing was again in place.

She had been denied admittance to Barrington’s hospital room—she and every other reporter. Nothing she had said or done in the intervening weeks had made any difference to that wall of silence. For some reason Greg Sandifer blamed her for what had happened—or at least for the media attention. He had made that clear in the one conversation they’d had. Kate had gotten news about Thorne’s condition just like the rest of the world, through carefully phrased statements given by the hospital spokesman, always to the effect that “the judge was progressing as well as could be expected, given the seriousness of his injury.”

There was no one living at the mansion, she knew. The gate was locked, and no one had answered the bell on any of her visits. She had no idea what had happened to Elliot or to Charlie. Even the unlisted telephone number had been disconnected. Greg Sandifer, with the help of Barton Phillips and his firm, had succeeded in keeping the press at bay, but what they hadn’t taken into account was that their efforts had simply made the media more rabid to find out exactly what they were trying to hide.

She hadn’t talked to the press, and she didn’t intend to. Not about her relationship to Thorne Barrington. What had been her relationship, she amended. That wasn’t and never would be public property. In the statement the paper had released on her behalf, she had told the truth, that Barrington had been shot trying to disarm Kahler, trying to save her life. That had only added fuel to the frenzy, the press turning Barrington into some kind of romantic figure: heroic, tragically wounded, and inaccessible.

She thought about how much he would hate that image, and she smiled. But the inaccessible part was certainly accurate. She found herself wondering, as she had a thousand times, if that were his choice. Or if that decision had been made for him because he was no longer capable of making his own decisions.

She closed her eyes, fighting emotion, fighting fear. When she finally reopened them, she had again found control, a control she had demanded of herself through these long weeks. But she might as well admit that she was wasting her time here. She wasn’t working, and she didn’t see much point in pretending.

She opened her bottom drawer, took out the black leather purse, and, offering no explanations, walked out of the newsroom. Maybe another day she could do this—satisfy the public’s right to know. Maybe some day, but not today.

S
HE HAD SPENT
a long time soaking in water into which she’d thrown a handful of Shalimar-scented bath crystals, leaving behind in the small bathroom a cloud of fragrant steam when she’d finished. She put on shorts and a tank top and walked barefoot into the kitchen to try to think about something for dinner.

Eating had moved very low on her list of priorities, and it was beginning to show. She had probably lost six or seven pounds, and she was disgusted. Being too upset to eat was about as neurotic as you could get, and she was determined to put an end to that ridiculous behavior. It was time to get on with her life. Especially since she had been left no other choice.

She opened the refrigerator, automatically inventorying its contents. Eggs. A container of milk she wasn’t real sure about. A small, hardening block of cheese. Some assorted condiments and a jar of pickles. An omelet or a cheese sandwich? she debated, fighting the urge to close the door and forget it.

The sound of the doorbell shouldn’t have been unexpected. It had certainly happened often enough before. The police had put someone outside her complex for a few days after Kahler’s death to keep the media in control. When the paper had released her statement, the press had been told that was all she intended to say. After that, the number of reporters awaiting her departures and arrivals had eventually begun to dwindle, but despite the passage of time they hadn’t entirely given up. Even tonight she had walked by a couple, ignoring their questions and the microphone thrust at her face.

She knew she should just ignore the bell, too, but when it rang again, she felt her frustration boil over.
Damn it, weren’t they ever going to let it go?
The flare of adrenaline sent her storming across the dark living room to slip the chain off and throw open the door.

“Look,” she began, “I’ve told you guys—”

The man standing outside her door was literally the last person she expected to see there, his presence here a scenario she had never imagined in any of her fantasies.

“Hello, Kate,” Thorne Barrington said.

Her heart jolted painfully, and she had to think about taking the next breath, the action no longer involuntary. Her eyes examined every detail of his appearance: dark glasses, a navy polo and worn jeans, the raven’s-wing blackness of his hair, worn much shorter than she had ever seen it, short enough that it didn’t quite hide the reddened line over his temple. The newer scar obscured the small white one she had noticed there before.

“What are you doing here?” she said. It wasn’t what she wanted to say, but it was the logical question.
What are you doing showing up on my doorstep after putting me through absolute hell?

“I thought we needed to talk.”

“Talk?” she repeated carefully.

“Do you think I could come in? There are a couple of reporters outside, and I don’t imagine it would do either of us any good if—”

“Okay,” she interrupted, knowing he was right. The bidding would be sky-high for any picture of the two of them together.

When he was inside, she closed the door and led the way across the room to the facing sofa and love seat. She was aware that he took a look around the dark apartment before he sat down. She wondered with a touch of amusement if he were comparing her place to his. She sat down opposite him, the coffee table and the expanse of her small Oriental rug between them.

Neither of them said anything for a moment, the atmosphere growing uncomfortable. Whatever connection had existed between them had obviously disappeared. She found herself wishing he’d take off the glasses, so at least she could see his eyes. And then she remembered why he couldn’t.

“Do you want me to cut off the kitchen light?” she asked.

He glanced toward the lighted kitchen and then back to her, shaking his head.

“It’s all right,” he said, dismissing her concern.

She didn’t have the right to ask any of the questions she wanted to ask, and apparently he wasn’t ready to reveal whatever it was that he had come here to talk about. The hope that he wanted to do more than talk was beginning to fade in the strain.

“Are you okay?” she asked. For an encore, she mocked herself mentally, she could ask him about the weather.

He looked up from the contemplation of his hands, the dark lenses a barrier to whatever he was thinking.

“I’m fine. Even Greg turned me loose.”

She nodded again.

“I found out some things that I think you ought to know. About Kahler,” he added. “And Jenny.”

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know any more. What she already knew had circled endlessly through her head night after night. Especially Hall Draper’s death.

If Kahler hadn’t fallen in love with her, if she had let him know at once that it wasn’t going to happen for them, would Draper be alive today? Would someone have caught the Tripper before it was time for him to hit again? Was there any way she could have known how screwed up Kahler was? She was a reporter. Where were her instincts? She had always been so sure—

“He came to see her,” Barrington said, breaking into the questions that had tormented her since the night he’d been shot.

“What?”

“Jenny. That night. Before she hanged herself. Kahler came to the jail. He signed the visitor’s log.”

“But he said…” She hesitated, trying to think exactly what he
had
said. He had given the impression that he hadn’t known about Jenny’s death until he’d found the diaries. And instead… She wasn’t sure exactly what the instead was. “What does that mean? That he got the diaries then?”

“No. That part was apparently true. They
were
sent to his mother. Jenny’s mother. Maybe he did find them later.”

“But he knew about Jenny’s death.”

“He must have. It happened between the time he left and the next cell check. Since he was the last visitor, he would have been questioned.”

“He came to visit her and when he left, she hanged herself?”

“Within minutes of his departure.”

“But why? Why would she…”

Thorne didn’t answer. The dark lenses were again focused downward toward his hands.

“What in the world could he have said to her?” Kate asked. The question was very soft, rhetorical, because she knew they would never know the answer.

“Whatever it was,” Thorne said, “it was something she couldn’t live with.”

“
He
caused her death. Whatever he said that night. And he
knew
that. All those years, he knew it.”

“But he couldn’t accept that guilt.”

“So eventually he decided that other people had to be to blame. You and all the others. He set out to get revenge for something
he
had done. God, he really
was
crazy,” she said. “So damn crazy. She killed herself because of whatever he said to her that night, but he couldn’t admit it. So everyone else had to be made to pay for Jenny’s death.”

He nodded.

“Does knowing that make it any easier?” she asked, remembering what he’d told her.

When he looked up, she realized he hadn’t understood.

“To know that you had done nothing to deserve what he did to you? Is it any easier to know that?”

“I put her in that cell, Kate. Just like he said.”

“That was your job. You were supposed to do that.”

“Maybe. But maybe there might have been something…” He shook his head, the movement small and contained. Again he let the silence stretch before he broke it. “It was a sweep. Teenage hookers. Most of them runaways. Jenny Carpenter was picked up with the rest. She looked about sixteen, but she wasn’t, of course, and she had a previous conviction. For possession.” He took a breath, deep enough that the movement was visible in the dimness. “So instead of sending another kid home to her family, I sent her to jail. I knew she wouldn’t be able to make bail…”

His words faded again and the silence was back. A different silence now. Full of cold and darkness, the lonely silence of a cell. The silence that must have remained after the words of her brother had stopped echoing through the darkness.

“There was something about her…” Thorne said softly. “Something in her eyes. Lost. Alone. She was the most alone person I’d ever met.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kate whispered.

“You asked me once if there was anything about my life that I regretted.”

Like Hall Draper, and like Kahler, Thorne, too, had been haunted by Jenny Carpenter.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said again.

“But he was right. We all played a part. He was right at least about that.”

“No,” she denied. “Not even about that.”

His mouth moved, the muscles tightening briefly, and then he nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

She was aware that the ghost of the dark-haired child who had been Jenny Carpenter had not been laid to rest, but she didn’t know what else to tell him.

They were quiet again for a long time until finally he said, “I kept thinking that you might…”

He let the sentence fade, and he looked back down at his hands. He held them both palm upward in his lap, the right one on top. She knew that mutilated hand would always be a reminder of how one man’s insanity had forever changed his life.

“That I might what?”

“I thought you might come to the hospital,” he said. He was looking at her now, but she couldn’t read his expression because of the glasses.

“I
came
to the hospital,” she said. “How the hell can you think I wouldn’t come? They wouldn’t let me in. Your friend Sandifer. All of them.”

“I never knew you’d come, Kate.”

“I was just another blood-sucking vampire of a reporter. They made it pretty obvious I wasn’t welcome, so eventually I quit beating my head against that brick wall.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Yeah. Me, too. It would have been nice to know whether you were…” She stopped because she couldn’t say out loud the horrors she had imagined, all the things she had known could result from a head injury. “Whether you were all right.”

“I’m all right.”

“Okay,” she said.

Why was this so hard? The last thing she remembered saying to Thorne Barrington was to beg him to make love to her, and now they couldn’t even carry on a conversation.

“I guess I’d better go,” he said finally. “I just wanted to tell you about Jenny. I thought it might make you feel better about Kahler’s death.”

He stood up, and she was aware again of how big he was. She stood also and followed him to the door. He had simply come to tell her about Jenny. It seemed there was nothing left of whatever had been between them before. Violence and death were barriers too hard to overcome, and all those deaths, especially Jenny’s, and even Byron Kahler’s, lay between them now.