Secrets to the Grave

5

Anne walked out of the room and down the hall, past a man in his pajamas talking to the fire alarm. She walked past the nurses’ station without exchanging glances with the staff she had come to know well. She needed to be alone, even if only in her head. The too-familiar pressure was building in her chest. She couldn’t get a good breath. She remembered the feeling of a hand around her throat.

She buzzed herself out the security door.

The day was sunny and quickly turning hot. Another day in paradise. Anne had grown up in Oak Knoll, far enough north and west of Los Angeles to escape the city’s uglier vices. Most of the time. She had left to attend UCLA, despite the fact that her father had been a professor at the highly respected private college in Oak Knoll—or, perhaps, because of it. She hadn’t planned on coming back, but life had had other plans for her.

She sat down on a concrete bench along the front of the building and rested her head in her hands as the emotions rocked through her. Post-traumatic stress syndrome: Not just for war veterans. Victims of violent crime suffered the same way.

The memories flashed strobelike through her mind: hands around her throat, choking her; fists punching her; feet kicking her, breaking her ribs, collapsing a lung.

Even a year after her abduction and attempted murder, the first and strongest feeling that assaulted her when she thought of what had happened was fear. Raw, primal fear. Then anger—rage, in fact. Then a profound sense of loss.

Her therapist told her to let the emotion come like a wave and wash over her, not to fight against it. The sooner she accepted the feelings, the sooner she could let go of them.

Easier said than done. The fear of drowning in that wave was strong; the sense of losing control, overwhelming; the swell of anger for what she had lost, crushing.

She tried again to take a deep breath. She felt like there were bands of steel tight around her chest.

“Hey, beautiful,” a deep, familiar voice said. A big hand brushed over her hair and rested on her shoulder. She leaned into him as he sat down next to her, turned her face toward him, her head instinctively finding the perfect spot against his shoulder.

“You look a lot like my wife,” he said softly, wrapping his arms around her. “Only my wife is always happy. I make sure of it.”

Her breath hitched in her throat as she looked up at him. “H-how did you know I n-needed you?”

He brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “Well, I like to think you need me every minute of every day,” he said, his dark eyes shining.

Anne sniffed and managed a little smile. “I do.”

He leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips.

To people who didn’t know them, Anne supposed they seemed an unlikely couple. Vince, forty-nine, more than a little world-wise and world-weary, a man who had dedicated his life to understanding evil. And Anne herself, twenty-nine, a former fifth-grade teacher who had dedicated her life to understanding children.

Yet they made perfect sense to her. Even as a child, Anne had been mature beyond her years. She had never been interested in young men. Vince was mature, strong, full of integrity, a man who knew his own mind. A man who had no interest in wasting his second chance at life.

“Tough morning with the demon child?” he asked.

“Don’t say I told you so.”

Vince shook his head. “I know you have to try. I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.”

“Thank you.”

“You want to talk about it?”

She shook her head. “Same old, same old. Dennis said something ... I just needed a moment. I’ll be fine.”

He brushed her dark hair back. “Tough cookie.”

“When I have to be.”

“The point is, you don’t have to be.”

“I know,” she acknowledged and deftly changed the subject. “What did Tony call you out on so early?”

“A homicide,” he said, getting what Anne called his cop eyes—an expression that gave away nothing.

“I know that,” she said with a hint of irritation. “Was it something bad?”

Stupid question. Nobody called Vince Leone for a bar brawl that ended with one idiot breaking the skull of another idiot. He got calls in the middle of night from detectives in Budapest, FBI agents in New York, law enforcement agencies all over the world, to consult on only the most grisly, psychologically twisted cases. If Tony Mendez called before dawn, he had a big reason.

“Do you know a woman named Marissa Fordham?”

“No,” Anne said, “but the name is familiar.”

“She was an artist.”

Anne thought about it. “Oh, right. She did a poster for the Thomas Center last year. It was gorgeous.”

Marissa Fordham was dead, she realized. She would never know the woman. There would be no more beautiful artwork to help raise money for charities.

“What happened?”

“Found dead in her home by a neighbor. She and her daughter. The little girl is at Mercy General.”

“How old?”

“Four.”

“Oh my God. What—”

She started to ask the question then caught herself. Did she really want to know what some sick bastard might have done to a four-year-old child?

“It was a bad scene,” Vince conceded. He brushed her hair back again. “I needed to see you as much as you needed to see me. I knew you’d be here.”

“Was it a random thing, or do you think it was someone who knew her?”

Anne wasn’t sure which was worse, really. A random crime put everyone into a state of panic. Better if the killer was someone who had a problem with the victim. Unless that someone turned out to be somebody like Peter Crane. The serial killer next door.

“It seemed personal,” Vince said.

So had Peter Crane’s first murder ... until he committed another, and another.

“I’m on my way to the hospital to see about the little girl,” he said. “I just wanted to stop and see you first.”

To check on her. The victim wasn’t the only one to suffer the aftereffects of crime. What had happened to her had left its mark on Vince, as well. He had shown up at her house within an hour of her abduction. If only he had gotten there earlier. If only he had figured out the puzzle sooner. He was one of the top men in his field in the entire world. How could he not have prevented it from happening?

All these thoughts had plagued him in the year since. As a result, he kept close tabs on her, made sure he knew where she was going and whom she was seeing. He still didn’t like having her out of his sight.

They were both damaged. Fortunately, they had each other to confide in and support as they worked through the aftermath. Not all victims were so lucky to have that shared understanding with someone close to them.

Anne slipped her arms around her husband and hugged him tight for a moment. Vince held her and kissed the top of her head.

“I should go back inside,” she said. “I’m adding to Dennis’s abandonment issues.”

“I have to get on with it too.”

Neither of them moved.

“What’s the rest of your day?” Vince asked.

“I have a class at one thirty, then an appointment with the ADA. I’m meeting Franny for a glass of wine at Piazza Fontana. I’ll be home by six thirty.”

“Me too, then,” he said. He brushed his lips across the shell of her ear. “And after dinner, I am going to make such sweet love to you, Mrs. Leone ... Remember that the next time you start to feel a little tense.”

Anne smiled up at him. “Do you know how much I love you?”

He shook his head, a grin tugging up one corner of his mouth. “I think you’ll have to show me later.”

“That’s a promise.”

Vince walked her back to the front door of the hospital and kissed her good-bye. Anne watched him walk back to his car, then went back inside, ready to face Dennis Farman for Round Two.