Vigil (3 page)

But there were very few other people who were passionate about the news the way I was.

I loved newspapers.

I felt that reporting was a noble calling. That trying to tell people the truth was important. And that struggling to remain unbiased was difficult but worth doing. It was not the newspaper’s job to tell people what to think or how to think. It was only to provide them the information to think about.

Lauren thought it was important for the people of Aurora to know about the masked man I’d met the night before. She was probably right. The people had a right to know.

But I wasn’t going to tell the whole world I’d kissed the guy.

Maybe that meant I was using a bias on the story. Maybe that made me just a tad less noble.

I was going to have to deal with the guilt.

I sat down at an empty desk. There were quite a few of those, even with all of us summer interns wandering around.
The Sun-Times
had laid off its share of employees recently. Interns were plentiful, of course. Interns were cheap labor that didn’t require health benefits. At any rate, I had my pick of computers.

I logged on, opened up a new document.

And I began to type.

* * *

My roommate Airenne Newton was reading aloud from the front page of the newspaper. “This dark and powerful man is watching from the the shadowy underbelly of the city. He is keeping vigil for those who have been taken advantage of by the criminal element in Aurora.” She peered over top of the paper. “You’re a poet, Cecily.”

I flopped down next to her. “Hardly. I can’t believe they ran it on the front page. I guess it’s a good thing that my phone takes good quality pictures.” There he was, seven inches high, sailing off into the night.

“You named him and everything,” said Airenne. She was always complaining about her name, which sounded common to the ear, but didn’t have a typical spelling. She had to correct the way people spelled her name constantly. She hated it.

“I didn’t,” I said. “Lauren did. She wanted me to come up with a name, and I was thinking about calling him Catman or something because he moved so quietly and precisely, like a cat. But Lauren said that cats were feminine. And then I said we should call him Pantherman or Lynxman, and that was when she looked down at my copy and circled the word vigil.”

“Vigil,” repeated Airenne. “It’s a good name for him. ‘The mysterious masked man, only known as Vigil.’”

“Yeah, it’s good,” I said. “Thank Lauren.”

Airenne returned to reading. “According to the masked man, ‘the entire police system in the city is corrupt. The gangs pay off everyone. Three fourths of our fine boys in blue are taking bribes and looking the other way.’ When asked for comment, Police Chief Norman Sanders was unavailable.” She grinned at me. “You’re so ballsy.”

“I’m not. It’s just the truth. He wasn’t available when I called,” I said. “I only had two hours to write that damned story. I called again right before we went to press.”

“It makes it sound like the police don’t care,” she said.

“Well, maybe they don’t,” I said. “There’s a serial killer hacking women to pieces in case you haven’t noticed. And the police don’t even have any suspects. They’re clueless.”

Airenne folded the paper down. “You’re really into that serial killer, aren’t you?”

I shrugged. I had debated explaining to her about my friend Darlene, but the truth was that Airenne and I weren’t that close. We’d hooked up as roommates for the summer on a message board for Aurora interns, thinking it would be perfect considering that we were both journalism interns. However, Airenne was interning at
Bold!
magazine, which meant that she was shallow and mostly interested in clothes and celebrities. I had nothing against either, but I didn’t want to talk about that to the exclusion of everything else. She and I generally had nothing to say to each other.

She pointed at me. “You’re going to try to out the killer in the paper, aren’t you?”

How did she know that? “No,” I said.

“It’s just the kind of thing you would do. You’re the most ambitious person I know.” She looked at the story about Vigil again. “You’ve been here two weeks, and you got the front page.”

“Tomorrow, they’ll use it to line hamster cages,” I said. “It’s not that big a deal. I only did it because Lauren told me to write it.”

“You
are
trying to catch the killer aren’t you?” said Airenne. She consulted the article. “Seems like Vigil is too.”

I’d kept my theory about Hayden Barclay out of the article, even though Vigil had agreed with me about Barclay’s guilt.

Man, here I was calling him Vigil. I guessed the name was going to stick.

“That’s how you found him, isn’t it?” said Airenne. “You two were both tracking the serial murderer.”

“Maybe,” I said. I fished the remote out of the couch. “You know what? I’m home, and I don’t want to think about it. I just want to veg out and watch TV.”

She raised her eyebrows. “All you care about is the news, Cecily.”

She was right. It wasn’t like me to avoid talking about working or the paper. But the truth was, the article embarrassed me. I felt vaguely like I’d sold Vigil out. I hadn’t asked him if I could write about him. I’d taken his picture without permission. He could make a fuss about things like that if he wanted. Considering he seemed to be hiding his identity, it wasn’t likely that he would, but still I didn’t want to upset him. I’d already pressed my lips against his for no particularly good reason. Everything about the situation made me feel like cringing.

And now it was my first front-page story at
The Sun-Times
. I didn’t like it.

I turned the volume up on the television.

It was some gossip show that ran on one of the entertainment channels.

On screen, Callum Rutherford, orphaned billionaire head of Rutherford Enterprises, was coming out of a limo, a thin, big-busted blonde on each arm.

Airenne pointed. “You may have come to Aurora for a serial killer, but that’s why I came here. Callum Rutherford.”

“He’s disgusting,” I said.

“Are you kidding? He’s gorgeous.”

He was nice to look at. He had dark hair and blue eyes, and a fit, muscular body. “He’s good looking,” I said, “but he’s always taking out three girls at once. Didn’t he have
four
girlfriends at one point?”

“Maybe there’s enough of him to go around,” said Airenne. “He lives in the city. And I’m going to meet him before this internship is over. You can count on that.”

I wrinkled up my nose. “I can’t stop you. But I don’t see why you’d bother. He seems like a rich jerk.”

She laughed. “In a perfect world, I’d want a man who was attractive, rich, and kind. But two out of three isn’t bad, is it?”

Really? I didn’t get Airenne at
all
.

* * *

I left Airenne swooning over Callum Rutherford and went to take a shower. I didn’t usually take showers in the evening, but Airenne hogged the bathroom in the morning, and I’d had to adjust. I didn’t like it, because sleeping on wet hair meant that I always had bed head when I woke up.

I looked like crap, no matter what I did. I’d bought about fifteen different hair products since moving to Aurora, but none of them could contain my slept-on hair.

It wasn’t that my hair was complicated hair. It was honey colored and a little bit wavy. Not curly. Not straight. Wavy. I wore it long. Lately, I’d had my hair stylist cut a few layers in it.

But I was a wash-and-wear kind of girl. I didn’t usually spend a lot of time screwing around with my hair. Of course, considering I didn’t take showers in the morning anymore, I now had lots of time to play around with it.

Tonight, I’d decided that I was going to put it in one long braid. I figured that, when I woke up tomorrow, I could re-braid it, and it would look pretty good. Braids weren’t exciting, but they were practical. And it would keep my hair back and out of the way. I could live with the idea of having to wear my hair in a braid every day for the rest of the summer.

Of course, if it didn’t take Airenne three centuries to get ready for work every day, then I wouldn’t have any problems.

I supposed that I could have tried to talk to her about it, but I hated confrontation.

Anyway, I didn’t know how she could adjust, so I didn’t know what to ask her for. She already got up at six in the morning. She took a shower, blow-dried her hair, used various curling irons (although her hair didn’t look curly afterward), applied stuff to her face from at least thirty tubes and containers (although she didn’t look like she was wearing much makeup), and did god knows what else in there. At any rate, she didn’t leave the bathroom until about fifteen minutes before I had to leave for work.

I could take fast showers. But not quite that fast.

What could I ask her to do? Cut short her beauty routine for me?

Get up even earlier?

I guessed
I
could get up before her. But I wasn’t going to do that.

I cared about how crappy my hair looked, but not
that
much.

I put on my red silk kimono robe with tiny white orchids on it and left the bathroom after my shower. I was going to comb and braid my hair in my bedroom.

I swung open the door and bent over to towel dry my hair. I rubbed my scalp furiously and then hung the towel up on the hook on my door.

I peered into my mirror and began to run a comb through my hair.

The curtains on my window fluttered over my single bed, which I’d shoved in the corner.

Airenne and I had a pretty tiny apartment. They didn’t make them that big in Aurora. Not unless you wanted to pay a small fortune for them, that was. I could have technically afforded a bigger apartment. My grandparents had left me a nice chunk of money when they passed away. However, I was trying to save my money. I didn’t know when I might need it. I was already stretched thin, considering I’d kept my apartment back in Madison, where I went to school, and I was renting another here in the city. The intern salary I was getting was a joke. No one could live off something so small. I was only managing because of my inheritance.

I furrowed my brow. Had I left that window open all day? I didn’t remember doing that.

Why would I do that?

The apartment had central air.

“Vigil, huh?” said a deep voice.

He was in the corner, standing next my closet. He looked even larger in my tiny bedroom than he had in the street. He was still clad in tight black spandex, and the mask obscured his face.

My masked man.

I let out a tiny noise—too pathetic to really be called a scream.

He glided across the room. He held up the newspaper. “I made the front page, I see.”

I was holding my comb. I brandished it like a weapon, pointing it at him. “How did you know where I live?”

“I heard the address when you called the taxi last night,” he said.

Oh. Yeah. I guessed that was obvious, wasn’t it? “So, you climbed in my window? You could have knocked on the front door.”

He shrugged, his massive shoulders lifting carelessly. “Sorry.”

He didn’t seem the least bit sorry.

Jesus, he was huge. His shoulders were broad and his chest was V-shaped. He was sculpted and muscular. He was really attractive. I flashed on the way it had felt to have his body wrapped around mine on that motorcycle.

I felt warm all over.

He moved closer to me. “You didn’t tell me you were planning to write a news story about me.”

I held out my comb, even though I knew it couldn’t keep him back. “I wasn’t planning on it. My editor happened to see the pictures I took, and she insisted I do it. She was right. You’re news, and people have the right to know what’s happening.”

He stepped right up to the comb, letting it push into his taut stomach. “I didn’t think interns got the front page.”

I gulped. This was stupid. I should put the comb down. “Well, not usually, I guess. But the most important stories go on the front page, regardless of who wrote them.”

“And I’m an important story?”

I nodded.

He reached down and wrapped his fingers around the comb. “I was amazed at how accurately you remembered the things I said. Were you recording me?”

I bit my lip. “Maybe.”

He pried the comb out of my hand. “Were you following me? Did you plan out our little encounter?”

I shook my head. “I flipped the recorder on because I was afraid. I swear. I had no idea you even existed before last night.”

He reached around me and set the comb on my dresser. For a moment, I was engulfed by his presence. His body was stretched out in front of me. He was all I could see. My breath caught in my throat.

He pulled back. He folded his arms over his chest. His gaze flitted over me. “What are you wearing?”

“I…” I took a step backwards, pulling my kimono tight against my chest. Did he really want me to answer that?

He looked away, sucking in breath through his nose. “You are very distracting, Cecily Kane.”

I
was distracting? He was a big, burly man in black spandex. But my heart skipped a beat as I realized that I affected him.

“You left things out of the article.” He was staring at my carpet.

“I hardly thought it was… appropriate to write about…”

He looked up at me.

“Kissing,” I said.

He shook his head. “I meant Barclay.”

Oh. Of course he did.

“But I’m sorry about what I did,” he said. “I promised that I wasn’t going to hurt you, and then I—”

“Oh, no, it was fine that you—I wasn’t
upset
, or—” Damn it. What was I saying. It was
fine
?! Who described kissing as
fine
? I felt my cheeks flush.

He touched me. His gloved hand came up out of nowhere and caressed my cheek. I was so startled that I took another step backwards. I collided with my mirror, and it thudded softly against the wall.

“Sorry,” he said.

Was he nervous?

He couldn’t be. He was so virile and large and brave and strong and… Jesus, was he really still that close?