Page 10

CHAPTER 10

After Em fell asleep in his lap, Costa put her down on the bed he’d made for her on the floor of the bedroom. He wandered around the condo, with an open but largely untouched beer sweating on the kitchen island, picking up or covering up anything that a little girl who turned into a baby antelope could possibly get into. This seemed to be nearly everything he owned.

The wall-mounted flatscreen TV played quietly in the background. Costa was only half paying attention to it. He’d flipped to a news station with the thought that some random news item might shed light on Emmeline’s unusual situation. At the very least they could find out if there were newsworthy developments in the crash, which so far didn’t seem to be the case.

“ —explosion and house fire in Bisbee ?—”

He stopped and pivoted to stare at the TV.

The reporter’s voiceover was interspersed with footage of flames and firefighting vehicles. Diana lived in the small town of Bisbee, near Sierra Vista, and Costa’s heart clutched.

There was no reason to think she was in any danger. There were several thousand people in the town. What on earth were the odds that Diana was involved in a random house fire? But now that he was looking at the screen, he couldn’t shake the fear. That could be Diana’s house. He’d only seen it a few times, picking her up; it was a perfectly ordinary small ranch house. There were any number of houses that looked like that. But it could be her house.

He called the SCB.

“Hey, boss.” It was the deceptively lazy voice of Vir, one of their computer analysts. “What’s up?”

“Perfect, you’re exactly who I need. There’s a house fire in Bisbee. Should be some chatter about it on emergency channels. Look it up and text me the address.”

“On it, boss.”

He hung up, reached for his beer and dropped his hand away. He might need his head clear if this turned out to be something.

It’s not. You know that. House fires happen every day.

The TV screen had cut away to talking about a golf tournament when Costa’s phone vibrated. He looked down at the screen and stared at the text for a moment as if he could make it change to something else.

That was Diana’s address.

He pulled up Caine’s number before he was even aware that he was doing it. Caine answered on the first ring. “I thought you said I was—” he began.

“I don’t care what you’re doing,” Costa interrupted. “I don’t care where you are. I need you at my place now.”

He hung up.

There was a moment in which nothing happened, then a thump came from the direction of the bathroom. Caine emerged wearing a T-shirt and sweat pants, his feet shoved sockless into his shoes. He wasn’t wearing his usual sunglasses, giving his face a strange, bare aspect.

Costa, in the middle of panicking, stared at him.

“Where I was,” Caine said, “was in the middle of dinner with Gilly. You’re just lucky it wasn’t an hour later, or you’d be dealing with an even less dressed version of me. You rang, boss?”

But despite his sardonic tone, the fact that he had showed up immediately rather than complaining or texting back for details suggested that he was well aware it was serious.

“Diana’s house is on fire. It’s on the news. I need to go there now.”

Caine asked no questions, sliding instantly into all-business agent mode. “I can’t easily take you to a place I haven’t been. You know that.”

“Damn it. What’s the closest place you can get me to Bisbee?”

Caine looked at the window and frowned.

“It’s dark, so that helps. I’ve been getting a lot better since Gilly and I have been practicing targeting. Give me a place to center on. Do you have any pictures on your phone? And a map would help too.”

Costa floundered briefly at the realization that he didn’t have a picture of Diana’s house, or any pictures in her house either, that he could think of. “What about street view maps?”

“Uh,” Caine said as Costa pulled up the map app on his phone. “I’ve never tried that.”

“Well, if it works, you’ll have a fun new toy in your toybox.” Costa navigated to Diana’s address, zoomed in, and switched to street view. “There. That’s her house.”

“And if it doesn’t, we’ll be lost in shadow forever. Zoom out, I need to see where it is relative to where we are.”

Costa did, then added the driving direction overlay. Caine stared at it for a moment, then glanced up at him.

“The baby’s here?” he asked.

“Yeah, in the bedroom, asleep. Leaving her for a few minutes won’t be a problem. She’s down for a while.” He couldn’t imagine what might happen to her in just a few minutes, and getting someone here from the SCB would take time he didn’t have. “Caine, come on, let’s go.”

Caine shrugged a little. “You’re the boss.” He touched Costa’s arm, giving him a little push. “Bathroom.”

Costa shut them inside, and they were plunged into darkness. Caine’s hand was still on his arm, fingers clamping tightly enough to hurt.

“Hold your breath,” Caine said. “I don’t know how long this’ll take. You don’t want to try to breathe where we’re going.”

Following that not exactly reassuring statement, Costa felt a prickling chill sweep over him as the stripe of light under the door disappeared. There was a sense of vast space around him, vague movement in the dark. He had just been drawing in a breath, and he clamped down on it, but his lungs tickled as if he had inhaled smoke or ice-cold air. He fought it briefly, then lost control and was coughing violently when the world stabilized around them and the darkness became slightly less complete.

“I said hold your breath,” Caine said.

“I tried,” Costa wheezed. “Give a guy more than two seconds’ warning next time.” He coughed again, violently. Caine still had a hand on his shoulder, steadying him.

“Let’s hope no one’s around,” Caine said. “Because if so, we’re not precisely being stealthy.”

Costa wiped his watering eyes, which made little difference to whether he could see. It wasn’t fully dark; there was light filtering in from somewhere up ahead, but not enough to give him more than a vague sense of space. He couldn’t touch a wall in any direction, but his fingertips brushed a canvas cover over something large.

“Where are we?” Costa asked.

“Storeroom, I guess. It was a big, empty, dark space and that’s good enough for me.”

Caine swayed a little as he took a step, and it was Costa’s turn to steady him. “You okay?”

“Two long trips back to back.” Caine rubbed his forehead; Costa’s eyes had adjusted well enough to the dimness now that he could see the pale flash of Caine’s hand. “Let’s go find your girl.”

“She’s not my—shut it.”

“Yeah,” Caine said, moving through the darkness ahead of him as if he could see where he was going; possibly he could. “Because you always drop what you’re doing and come running whenever anyone else’s house burns down.”

“Has your house burned down lately? No, so you don’t know what I’d do.”

“My house is a bunker,” Caine said.

“Shut up.”

Talking helped keep him from freaking out about Diana as they found the door and let themselves out. It turned out that the building where they had emerged was some sort of large garage or workshop behind a neighboring house on Diana’s street. It was a pleasant small-town neighborhood of widely spaced adobe houses on large lots. Flashing blue and red emergency lights strobed across the front yards and the neighbors standing around in small, confused clusters. The air reeked of smoke.

Costa pushed forward, heedless of Caine behind him. “Diana!”

He found her almost immediately, as if some part of him had homed in on her by sheer instinct. She was standing behind a fire truck, watching her house burn. She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, her hair pulled back in a fat, sloppy braid. Costa called her name again, and she turned, and then she was falling against him and he pulled her into a tight hug before he could think about what he was doing.

She was warm and strong and wonderfully alive, clinging to him, her body pressed against him.

“I went out to the store,” she gasped against his shoulder. “I needed milk and coffee. And I came back and—and?—”

“It’s all right,” Costa said inanely against her hair, although it very much wasn’t true. “You’re all right.” That was true, at least.

Diana drew a shuddering breath and slowly peeled herself off him, gazing up at him with eyes that were softer than he’d seen in a long, long time. “What are you doing here?”

“I came as soon as I heard.”

Her brows drew together in a frown. “No, I mean in Bisbee. Did something else happen?”

Costa’s preparations to pull together an explanation disintegrated in an instant, because he had, for the moment, completely forgotten that they weren’t in Tucson, they were a two-hour drive away.

Behind him, he heard Caine snort-laugh. Costa turned to give him a glare. Caine looked completely unrepentant despite his visible weariness.

“I’ll explain in a minute.” As soon as he figured out what the explanation was going to be. “Do you need to do anything else here? Where’s your car? Did you drive or walk to the store?”

“Drove. It’s down the street.” Diana swiped at her eyes, and then she visibly steeled herself. Costa, who still had a hand on her arm, was impressed all over again as the hurt and fear bled out of her, and steel visibly straightened her spine. “This isn’t an accident. I think it might be connected to—to the situation.”

Costa steered her further away from the emergency vehicles with his hand on her arm, although no one was paying much attention to them; he and Costa were indistinguishable from any of the other spectators. “The baby?”

“Yes.” She wiped her face with her hand again. “Luis told me someone was looking for me today at work. It’s a stretch, but this is just such insane timing otherwise. I won’t be surprised if they find out it’s arson.”

“Okay,” Costa said. He gazed into the middle distance for a few seconds, mulling over the problem. “I’ll put the SCB in touch with the local authorities. You might have to answer questions later, but there’s no need to deal with that tonight.” Turning his gaze back to Diana, he saw that she was watching his face with her usual sharp clarity. “Do you have anywhere to go?”

“I—I hadn’t thought about that.” The steel spine dissolved; now there was the scared woman again. “I guess I can get a hotel?—”

“Absolutely not. You can stay at my place. Where’s your car?”

“O—over here.”

As she led him toward it, Caine closed up on his heels almost near enough to trip on him, and murmured, “In case you’ve forgotten, you left the baby alone in Tucson.”

“ Crap .” Leaving Emmeline for a few minutes was one thing; leaving her for hours was something else.

Diana turned an accusing glare on him. “You left her alone to drive here? Quinn, what on earth were you thinking?”

“I told you, I—” He shut his mouth, suddenly foreseeing the long drive in front of him. “I can call someone at the SCB to come sit with her.”

Diana still looked furious. “No matter what you were doing here, I can’t believe you ran off and left her for hours. I thought you knew something about babies! I don’t know anything about babies, and even I know enough not to do that.”

Caine cleared his throat. “As entertaining as it would be to watch you talk your way out of this, I’ll take you both back.”

Costa turned to look at him. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Caine said. He quirked a sideways smile. “If she can keep a secret.”

“She can. Diana, get whatever you need out of your car. We’ll go with Caine.”

Diana scowled mutinously as she opened her car door to rescue a bag of groceries. “I don’t care how fast he drives, it’ll still take ages. You’d better call someone to come. I can’t believe you.” She slammed the car door and locked it. “All right, let’s go. Where’s he parked?”

Costa looked around. The emergency lights and people’s yard lights were washing out the nearby shadows. Caine was already headed down the street. “This way.”

“Seriously cannot believe this,” Diana was still muttering. “Aren’t you going to call the SCB? Do I have to call them? I don’t know how self-sufficient you think babies are—and you still haven’t told me what you’re doing in Bisbee in the middle of the night.”

Caine turned abruptly and ducked between two houses. It looked as if neither household was home; the lights were off, and shadows lay desert-night black between them.

“What’s he doing?” Diana asked. “Is this a shortcut?” As Costa touched her arm and steered her into the shadow behind the fence that separated the houses, she added, “You know we’re trespassing, right?”

Costa drew her in closer, sandwiching her between them. She went readily with a small sound of surprise. It was too dim to see anything clearly, but Costa felt Caine reach around Diana to grip his arm again, holding the three of them in an involuntary clinch.

“Hold your breath,” he said to Diana.

“ What ?”

“No need this time,” Caine said. “Your house is pretty easy to target. I’ve been there enough.”

“Wha—” Diana began again, but her voice died to nothing as darkness enveloped them.

It was the first time that Costa had realized it was impossible to hear anything in the void through which Caine traveled—nothing, that is, except a sort of faint rustling that was felt more than heard, as of the spreading of vast, unseen wings. There was a sharp chill that stung like a cold winter day.

Then he struck his hip on some hard object, probably his own sink. There was a rattle and a sudden clatter as of items being knocked over.

“What!” Diana half-screamed, and in a slightly more moderate tone, “Where are we?”

“My bathroom, probably.” Costa felt around in the dark, feeling unseen bodies moving against him, and opened the door. The light of the living room spilled in, and Diana plunged out past him as if she needed air.

Caine followed more slowly, one hand pressed to his forehead. Costa planted him on the couch, and idly reached for the TV remote, as it was still playing silently (now on a commercial break). “You okay? Need a drink of water or something?”

“Just too many trips in close succession. Gimme a minute.” Caine bent over, pressing the heels of his hands to his forehead.

Diana was standing a few steps into the living room, staring around, with her hands clutched on the strap of the grocery bag. “I see why you thought Caine could take care of himself in the desert,” she said faintly. “What— was that?”

“Top secret,” Costa said. “Extremely confidential. Do not talk about it with anyone. Come here, let me put those away for you.”

He guided Diana into the kitchen, pausing along the way to glance in on Emmeline, who still seemed to be fast asleep on the floor of the bedroom.

“So you didn’t leave her alone for hours,” Diana said slowly as he found room for her groceries (a half gallon of milk, some yogurts, a carton of strawberries, a small bag of French roast) in his fridge. “You were only gone for a few minutes.”

“Right. I saw the news and called Caine and we were over there thirty seconds later.”

He had to watch, then, the slow crumpling of her face as recent events really hit her.

“My house,” Diana said, and she started to sit down on the kitchen floor, not a faint so much as apparently going for a chair that wasn’t there.

Costa hastily caught her and steered her to a stool at the kitchen island.

“My house,” Diana repeated blankly. “My house. My things. My birth certificate. My mom’s ashes.” She turned a dazed look on the fridge, which Costa had left open when he caught her; he moved to shut it. “All I have in the world is the clothes I’m wearing and thirty bucks’ worth of groceries,” she added, and gave a high-pitched, slightly hysterical laugh.

Costa had rarely felt so helpless. He wanted to take her in his arms again. He still had the visceral sense-memory of her body against his, the way she felt when he held her.

“Do you want a drink?” he asked.

“No! I want my house!” And with that, Diana burst into tears.