Hiding in the Shadows

DINAH

Kane Macgregor looked up from the morning newspaper as she came into the kitchen, and reflected not for the first time that Dinah Leighton was the only woman he'd ever known who managed to create the illusion of incredible bustle while never moving faster than a lazy stroll. It was a peculiarly endearing trait.

"I am so late," she said by way of greeting, dropping her briefcase into a chair across from him at the table and going around the work island to pour herself a cup of coffee. He always made the coffee in the morning, favoring a gourmet blend rich with taste, a selection Dinah accepted cheerfully even though she considered the beverage merely a simple and efficient means of getting caffeine into her system as quickly as possible.

"You turned off the alarm again." She didn't sound annoyed, just matter-of-fact.

"After all your long hours recently, I thought you could use a little extra sleep. Besides, it isn't all that late. just after nine. Do you have a meeting this morning? You didn't mention anything last night."

"No, not a meeting." She spooned enough sugar into the coffee to make him wince, and poured enough cream to make him wonder why she even bothered with coffee. "I just ... They allow visitors only twice a day, and I'm always too late in the evening."

It was Thursday. He'd forgotten.

"I'm sorry, Dinah. If you'd reminded me..."

The smile she sent him was quick and fleeting. "Don't worry about it. I still have time, I think."

She put two slices of bread in the toaster and leaned against the counter.

Kane looked at her, wondering as he had wondered often in recent weeks if it was his imagination that Dinah was a bit preoccupied. He'd thought it was because of the accident, but now he wasn't so sure. She tended to get wrapped up in her work, sometimes to the exclusion of other things. Was that it? Just another story that had drawn her interest and engaged that lively mind?

He wanted to go to her, but didn't; he was experienced enough to recognize the warning in both her actions and her body language. She had not touched him, had not even come near him, in fact.

She was across the room with the island and the table between them and showing him most of her back. She might just as well have worn a no-trespassing sign. In neon. It irritated him.

"Will you stop on the way to work?" he asked, keeping the conversation going while he decided whether or not it was time to do something about this.

Dinah checked the wide, leather-banded watch she wore and nodded absently. "For a few minutes."

"You don't have to go twice every week."

"Yes," she said. "I do."

"Dinah, it wasn't your fault."

"I know that." But her voice lacked certainly. She seemed to realize it, because she cleared her throat and quickly changed the subject while she buttered her toast. "Anyway, we'll be going in opposite directions this morning. Just as well, I expect. Steve has me chasing after that building inspector for an interview and the wretched man is never in his office, so I'll need my jeep."

Steve Hardy was Dinah's ed' or at the small but it well-known magazine where she worked, and he tended to push her almost as hard as she pushed herself.

"Another expose?" Kane said lightly. "Bribery and kickbacks in the city?"

She laughed. "I wish. No, this is just for a series on our local officials. You know — a day in the life of, and how, exactly, your tax dollars are being spent."

"Easy stuff for you."

Dinah shrugged. "Easy enough." Kane watched her load the toast with grape jelly and take a healthy bite. She was, he decided, very matchable no matter what she was doing. She wasn't beautiful, but dammed close. Regular, not-quite-delicate features that fit together well, the best of which being a pair of steady blue eyes that sometimes saw more than one would guess. Her pale gold hair was cut casually short in tousled layers "wash and wear," she called it — and her tall, voluptuous body was clothed in a simple tunic sweater and leans.

Dinah didn't care much about clothes, and it showed.

On the other hand, what she wore hardly mattered because the enticing figure underneath was what caught the eye. The male eye, at any rate. His eye, certainly, more than six months ago.

It hadn't taken them long to get intimate, but getting to know each other had become a much more complex, drawn-out process. And a cautious one.

Both were fiercely independent, with busy careers and cluttered lives and rocky past relationships that had left scars, and neither had been in a hurry to delve beneath surface passion.

It had been enough, for a while.

But even wary relationships either evolved or fell apart, and theirs was evolving. Almost against their wills, they had been drawn together to share more than a bed, tentatively exchanging views and opinions and comparing tastes and basic values.

They liked what they had discovered about each other.

At least, Kane thought so.

They were not quite living together, but after nearly four months of my-place-or-yours, Kane had been wondering if he should be the one to suggest they stop the shuttling back and forth almost every night.

And then, a little more than a month ago, the accident happened and Dinah began to distance herself from him. He had assumed the cause was Dinah's worry for her friend and the ridiculous guilt she felt.

For the first time, though, he asked himself if that was the case.

"I'll probably be late tonight," Dinah said, eating the second piece of toast.

"More research?" It had been her excuse so often of late. Was it time for him to pick a fight and clear the air between them?

"Just something I need to check out. I'll probably be closer to my place than here by the time I get finished, though, so..."

"Why don't I meet you there?" he interrupted, unwilling to hear her suggest another night apart.

There had been several recently. Too many. "Eight? Nine?"

Her hesitation was brief. "Eight. I should be through by then."

"I'll bring Chinese," he said. "Or would you rather have something else?"

"No, Chinese is fine. Sesame chicken."

"And no egg rolls. I remember."

Dinah sent him another brief smile, but her mind was clearly elsewhere.

Kane sipped his coffee and watched her. He could accept that her job was important to her; his was to him, after all. So it would hardly be fair of him to protest her abstraction, to demand all her time and attention for himself. But was that really it?

An easy story about the city officials of Atlanta was the sort of thing she could do with her eyes closed. But she had more than once juggled two stories at a time, one of them unknown even to her editor; it was her way of combining the routine work of a magazine writer with the more gritty and urgent instincts of an investigative journalist.

"Dinah?"

Finishing her toast, she sent him a glance, brows lifting inquiringly.

"Why don't we go away this weekend. Maybe drive out to the coast?" He had a beach house, a peaceful retreat that both of them found a welcome change from the hectic pace of the city.

Her hesitation was almost imperceptible. "I wish I could. But I have an appointment on Saturday."

"Can't reschedule?"

"No, I'm afraid not." She smiled regretfully.

"There's an assistant D A. I'm supposed to talk to, and she's got a big case coming up, so her schedule is full. It has to be Saturday."

Kane thought she was talking to him. "Well, it was just a thought. Maybe next weekend." He let the exasperation in his voice lie there in the silence between them.

Her eyes flashed, but her voice remained calm when she said, "Relationships are hell, aren't they?"

"Sometimes."

"I gather you're feeling neglected?"

"Dinah, don't try to make me feel and sound like the typical selfish male."

"There's nothing typical about you," she murmured.

He decided not to ask if that was a compliment.

"Look, I know work gets the best of both of us from time to time, and that's as it should be."

"But? "

"But there's more to life than work."

Her lips twisted in an odd, fleeting smile. "I know."

"Then talk to me, dammit."

"I don't talk about my stories, Kane, you know that. "

"I'm not asking you to betray a confidence. I just want to know what could be so important that you barely have time to eat or sleep these days. And don't give me that bullshit about the story on city officials. That isn't what's making you toss and turn at night."

Disconcerted, she said, "Am I doing that?"

"Yes. Since the accident."

"Well, it's that," she said, grasping the handy reason with relief. "The accident. I've been wondering about her, and..."

"It isn't the accident. Or isn't only the accident. It So it has to be a story. Or it has to be us."

"I don't know why you would think..."

"Dinah. I know when something is off-kilter in your life. And what affects you affects me. Tell me what's wrong. I can't fix it until I know what it is."

She looked across the room at him, and something changed in her face. She went behind his chair and bent to put her arms around him. Her warm, smooth cheek pressed against his.

"I really don't appreciate you, do I?" Her voice sounded shaken.

He lifted a hand to her head, letting his fingers slide into her silky hair because he loved it and she never minded. "No," he said a bit dryly. "I'm a prince."

She chuckled. "You certainly are. And I have been neglecting you, I realize that. I'm sorry."

He looked down at her hands on his chest, the fine-boned strength of them, the red-polished nails that showed her one vanity. "So what's going on? Is it just work, or have you met a better prince?"

She hesitated, then moved around him to lean a hip against the table and smiled down at him.

"Let's just say I've stumbled onto a story with a lot of potential. A story that could make my reputation."

He frowned. "Your reputation is already made."

"Locally, sure. Even regionally. But this ... this could put my name on the national map."

Kane felt a prickle of unease. "What kind of story is it."

"You know better than that."

"I'm not asking for details, Dinah. just a general idea. Is it criminal? Political? Business?"

"Criminal and business. Maybe wanders into the political arena as well, although I'm not sure about that yet," she replied, still smiling.

"Jesus. Dinah..."

"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing." She reached over and brushed the backs of her fingers down his cheek in a familiar caress.

He didn't allow it to distract him. "Just don't tell me you're on your own in this. if Steve doesn't know..."

Her smile vanished. "He's my editor, Kane, not my nanny."

"That isn't what I meant and you know it. if there's a criminal element in this story, things could get very nasty in a hurry."

"I know that." Her voice was patient. "I have been doing this for a number of years, in case you've forgotten." She went to pick up her briefcase, the tension in her shoulders obvious; that alone told him he'd crossed the line.

She was already moving toward the door; it was too late to apologize, to explain that he was worried only because he cared, not because he doubted her instincts or abilities.

"Just be careful," he called after her.

"Always," she tossed back lightly. And then she was gone.

The silence of the apartment settled over him. With a new problem in his mind, the morning seemed darker and much less peaceful than it had only minutes before.

Kane seldom had to cope with downtown traffic, which, in Atlanta, could be truly horrendous. His company was on the outskirts of the city, a five-story stone and glass structure of considerable beauty set on five acres of sprawling grounds just as lovely. It was an engineering and architectural firm founded by his father and his mother's brother, named Macgregor and Payne; Kane hadn't felt the need to change the name, despite the fact that his uncle, Jonah Payne, had died a bachelor, leaving his share of the business to his nephew.

Kane had been in charge since his father, John Macgregor, had taken an early retirement more than ten years before, happily setting off with his second wife to see the world, then choosing to settle in California when his traveling was done.

Kane enjoyed the work, although lately he seemed to concentrate more on administrative details than on the engineering and architecture he loved.

Which was probably why, after Dinah left that morning, he decided on the spur of the moment to visit the construction site where Macgregor and Payne was building new offices for the mayor's support staff and other city officials.

"Kane? What are you doing out here?" Max Sanders, the owner of the Mayfair Construction Company, approached Kane's car briskly. He was wearing a hard hat and carrying a rolled-up set of blueprints, neither one detracting from his superbly cut dark suit — though the liberal coating of dust didn't help. Behind him rose the steel skeleton of what would be an impressive building, which today was crawling with construction workers. Huge earth-moving machines working inside the foundation were kicking up waves of dust.

"I could ask you the same thing," Kane said as he got out of his car. "Since when does the boss get his nice suit dirty if he doesn't have to?"

"He has to," Max replied with a grimace. "Somebody misread your plans and fucked up at least three of the support beams. Something the foreman said to me yesterday bothered me, so I came out this morning. Good thing I did, too."

"It can be corrected?"

Max nodded. "Shouldn't lose more than a day or two. And I've warned Jed he'd better be more careful from now on."

Jed Norris was the construction foreman.

"How did he come to misread the plans? He's been in the business long enough to be an expert."

"Well, that might be part of the problem. He thinks he knows how things should be, so he doesn't always consider somebody else's opinion."

"Blueprints are opinions?"

Max grimaced again. "What can I tell you? I had a talk with him, Kane. He's too close to retirement to want to fuck up his twilight years, so maybe that'll be enough. I'll keep an eye on things, though, don't worry."

Kane was concerned; the oh was highly visible, and if anything went wrong, reputations could end up with mud all over them. But he wasn't about to tell another man how to do his job, and once construction began, his own responsibilities were purely advisory and explanatory.

"I'll leave it up to you, then," he said. "If you find something wrong on the blueprints, give me a call. Otherwise, it seems you have everything under control. So I'll get out of your way."

"You just don't want to get your nice suit dirty," Max retorted, his slightly wary expression vanishing, then saluted Kane with the roll of blueprints and headed back toward the site.

Kane had just opened his car door when Max returned. "By the way, did Dinah find you yesterday?"

Kane frowned. "Yesterday?"

"Yeah. About, I don't know, two in the afternoon, maybe? I dropped by here for a look — see, and she came around about fifteen minutes later. Said she thought you might have been out here instead of at the office. I showed her around since she seemed curious. She didn't stay long, though. Did you catch up later?"

Kane nodded. "Yeah, thanks, we did."

"Okay, great. See you, Kane."

"Bye."

Kane didn't know why Dinah had come out there, though it wasn't the first time she had shown up at a construction site looking for him — and finding him, once or twice. But she hadn't mentioned it last night.

Then again, he hadn't mentioned dropping by her office the previous week hoping to find her there.

The detour cost Kane only half an hour. It was just after ten-thirty when he got to his office. As usual, his secretary, Sharon Ross, presented him with a dozen messages, which meant he'd spend the remainder of the morning on the phone.

"Shit," he said elegantly.

Sharon grinned. "I can pretend you didn't come in today."

Kane was tempted, but since he only enjoyed ditching work when there was a fun alternative — and today, there wasn't — it didn't seem worth the bother.

"No, I'm officially in today, Sharon."

She nodded. "I didn't add it to the rest, but Dinah called about two minutes ago."

Kane said shit again, but silently. He would have liked the opportunity to finish his discussion with Dinah; being at odds with her screwed up his whole day. "Did she leave a message?"

"Yeah, she said to tell you she just found out her cell phone battery was dead, so not to worry if you don't talk to her until tonight. She's going to be on the run and out of her office most of the day."

"Okay. Thanks, Sharon."

In his office, Kane pushed Dinah out of his mind and concentrated on work. Two hours later, he was frowning down at an engineering schematic of a gravity-defying design when the door opened and Sydney Wilkes strolled in. She looked serene and cool as always, which was not unusual on a nippy October afternoon but earned her astonished stares in the heat of an Atlanta summer. Her business suit was immaculate, the beautifully tailored style and mustard color flattering her tan and pale blond hair, and she walked with the easy confidence of a woman who is beautiful and knows it.

Kane swiveled his chair away from the drafting table and looked at her with lifted brows. "Bored, Syd?"

"Is that the only reason I ever visit my favorite brother? Because I'm bored?" Her voice was slow and lazy.

"I'm your only brother — and yes, usually." But he smiled to remove any sting from the words.

She smiled in return, the pale gray eyes they shared amused and tolerant. "All right, so nothing much is going on today in the residential arm of Macgregor and Payne, and I thought you might like somebody to buy you lunch. I ran into Dinah yesterday, and she said she'd be tied up all day, so ... "

An architect herself, Sydney had chosen to specialize in residential work, whereas Kane's preference was commercial; it was an easy and profitable partnership. There were only three years between them — at thirty-two, Sydney was the younger. Her marriage had kept her working only part-time until her husband's accidental death more than two years previously; she was now fully involved in the family firm.

As for her personal life, though there was certainly interest from just about every male she encountered, she had been unwilling, so far, to begin dating again.

"Well," Kane said, "if you're buying ..."

Lunch was pleasant, and the remainder of the afternoon hectic. In fact, he wasn't able to leave the office until after seven-thirty. Determined not to be late, he rushed to pick up the Chinese food and get to Dinah's apartment, but even so it was well after eight when he got to her building.

Dinah's jeep wasn't in its parking space.

Both relieved and irritated, Kane parked his car and went inside. The security guard knew him well enough just to wave a greeting.

He let himself into Dinah's third-floor apartment with his key, fumbled for the foyer light, and took the food to the kitchen. As usual, the place was very tidy; not only was Dinah naturally neat, but she had a cleaning service come in once a week — and by the fresh scent of lemon in the air, Kane knew the apartment had been cleaned today.

Maybe that was why it felt so ... empty. He went around the living room lighting lamps and turned on the television. He changed out of his suit into jeans and a sweatshirt, and waited.

By nine o'clock, he was hungry and angry.

By ten o'clock, he was worried.

He couldn't remember Dinah being so late before without calling. And even if her cell phone did have a dead battery, there were pay phones, weren't there?

All over the city, there were pay phones.

Kane called her office and got her voice mail. He left a brief message asking her to call him if she came in or checked before coming home. She never carried a pager, so his options were limited.

All he could do was wait.

By eleven he was going often to the front window to look searchingly out at the busy streets. By midnight he was pacing the floor.

He only just stopped himself from calling her boss.

He reminded himself that Dinah was a grown woman, no fool, and able to take care of herself. She would certainly be unhappy with him if he pushed the panic button when she was just tied up with something and had forgotten to phone.

He told himself that several times.

The streets outside got quieter and grew shiny in the streetlights because it had started to rain.

It got later.

And later.

And Dinah never came...