"I've been putt ing a lot of things together about what's been happening to you and to the Bel-la way kids these past few days. I've got a strong suspicion we could be up against some very bad guys here."

He'd lowered his voice, as if to prevent anyone else listening in.

She could hear the urgency in his words, but she didn't exactly understand what he was saying.

"What kind of very bad guys?" she asked.

"The kind that don't like to leave loose ends around when it comes to the police being involved."

"Are you talking about street gangs?"

The center had its share of problems with gang activity, and the situation had been escalating over the past year. Still, she couldn't think what gangs might have to do with all of this.

"Not the kind of gangs you're talking about Vic said. Why was he being so mysterious?

"What other kind of gangs are there?" she asked with mounting exasperation.

"Are you talking about mobsters or something like that?"

She'd meant that as sarcasm, but the way Vic was stating down at her now suggested she'd accidentally hit upon close to what he considered the truth.

"You've got to be joking," she said.

"I've never been more serious in my life."

Katherine was about to laugh and scoff some more, but something in his eyes kept her from doing that.

"Mobsters may not be exactly the right way to put it," he said.

"Let's just say I've got reason to believe these are some extremely dangerous people who will do whatever they have to do to get what they want."

"Vic, what is going on here?"

"What is going on is that we have to get in your car and leave this place before the cops arrive. Otherwise, there could be real trouble, and it just may end up getting those two kids hurt even worse than has happened to them already."

Katherine stared back at him. She had no doubt he believed the things he was saying. She could feel the strength of that belief in his grip on her arms, but it all sounded so fantastic to her. She didn't know what to think.

"You have to trust me," he said, leaning so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek.

"I know this may come across to you as crazy talk, but it isn't. Believe me, there's a lot more to it than that."

She sighed and stopped resisting his hold on her.

"All right. I'll believe you," she said, "but only this one time, and you'll have to prove' to me that what you're saying is true."

"Sure, sure," he said.

"Now we've got to get out of here while we still can."

He was already pulling her along again toward her car, and, no matter how skeptical she might be about what he had just told her, she was following.

Chapter Sixteen Katherine didn't even pay lip service to a protest against Vic coming along with her this time. She didn't know what to think about his claims of arch villains being involved in the frightening events of this week. Whatever level villains they might be, she now understood without question how stupid it would be to risk running into them on her own. She let Vic drive her car back to her place. No matter how stubborn she might be about self-reliance, even she had to admit that the hospital experience had her too unsettled to be safe on the road right now. Besides, she was deeply tired. Still, she didn't intend to sleep at her apartment. She was only stopping there to pick up some things. She'd decided that even before Vic found the note. She was on the phone to the hospital at the time.

"The emergency room nurse says Megan is conscious. She has a mild concussion, so they're keeping her there a couple of days for observation and to do some tests, but they think she'll be okay after she gets some rest."

Katherine had called out most of that from the bedroom where she'd used the telephone to contact the hospital and was now pack ing a suit bag. When Vic didn't answer, she walked back into the living room.

She guessed what he was holding in his hands as soon as she saw it.

The note looked a lot like the one she'd found on her mantelpiece the night before.

What he had on his hands was something more of a mystery to her. He was wearing black leather gloves. She'd seen him bare-handed more than once outdoors in these past, very cold days. Yet here he was in her overheated living room with gloves on.

He must have noticed the direction of her stare because he said, "I don't want to contaminate the crime scene. "

Katherine didn't like to think of her living room in such terms, but the dark stain that didn't fit the pattern of her carpet made the truth of his words all too unavoidable. She also didn't like to think about how readily Vic's mind appeared to work like a criminal's, or maybe a lawman's. She grabbed at that straw.

"Were you ever in law enforcement?" she asked.

He was examining the note when she said that. He looked up at her with a look in his eyes that she wasn't sure how to interpret. Then he flung his head back and laughed. The sound was a relief after the tension of the evening. Too bad the moment didn't last.

"Me, a cop?" he said when he had finished laughing. "Not hardly."

There it was again, his utter disdain for the police. What was that all about? She wished she was more certain she really wanted to know the answer to that question.

"Speaking of cops, they should be here soon," Vic said. "If Megan's conscious, they're probably talking to her right now, or maybe they're already on their way to check out where she got attacked. We need to make ourselves scarce. * " I don't know if that's the right thing to do. " Actually, she was certain it was not.

"Katherine, it's like I said back at the hospital. You have to trust me on this one."

Vic was stating at her as earnestly as he had back in the hospital parking lot. She could feel his eyes working their influence over her. She wondered how hard she should resist. Part of her didn't want to resist at all. She knew from the way his gaze made her insides quiver that the part of her advising nonresistance didn't necessarily include her brain.

"Do you have a place to stay?" he asked.

She wished his question didn't arouse in her a sudden pang of disappointment that he hadn't immediately suggested she sleep at his place again. Of course, after what she'd as much as accused him of this morning, she shouldn't be surprised.

"I called a hotel after I called the hospital," she said. She didn't have any close friends in Albany other than Megan. Katherine's time here had been spent mostly working. That was the way she'd chosen to heal the wounds left by Daniel's death. There'd been little time or inclination on her part for making friends. Perhaps Vic understood that because he didn't comment further.

"Which hotel did you call?" was all he asked. "The Omi," she said.

"It's the only one I know."

She'd stayed there when she'd come from Chicago to interview for the job at the Arbor Hill Center.

"Sounds good," Vic said with a nod.

"Let's get going. I'll follow you down there in my car."

Once more, she didn't object to his offer. She also didn't object to his urging that they hurry their departure. This place where she had once felt so comfortable and at home was not either of those things for her right now. She couldn't keep her eyes from straying to the stain on the carpet or a chill from shivering up her spine when she did.

"Just one thing before we go," she said.

"I want to read the note."

"Sure," Vic said.

"I found it up here over the fireplace."

He gestured toward the mantelpiece as she reached for the paper in his hand.

"Don't touch it. I don't think the cops will find any prints, but you don't want yours messing the thing up anyway."

Again, he was talking like a person who knew a lot about crime.

Katherine would have liked to tell herself that was probably because he watched a lot of detective shows on television, but somehow she couldn't imagine such an action-oriented man spending much time in front of a TV set. She moved close enough to him to read the note he was holding by its edges in his gloved fingers. She couldn't mistake the way her throat tightened just from standing next to him. Maybe some of that was because of what she'd been thinking about his troubling att.i.tude toward the police. Nonetheless, she was honest enough with herself to admit that the anxiety Vic made her feel didn't all have to do with his obvious knowledge of things criminal.

She forced herself to focus on the paper he held in his hand.

"We warned you once. You should have listened," it said.

"What do they mean?" she sucked in a scared breath. This note struck her as being as sinister as the last one. She was grateful she hadn't brought Sprite home with her, and glad she'd decided not to stay here herself.

"I don't know for sure, but we have to get out of here," Vic said, as if he might have been tuned into her doubts. "This note is exactly what I'd expect from the kind of guys I've been telling you about, and they've got friends everywhere. You don't want your name on some police blotter right now. It's bad enough that they have your address and maybe know you took Megan to the hospital. We need to stall them for a while to keep them from getting any closer. That'll give us enough time to figure out how much we should tell them."

"Vic, I don't like the sound of any of this."

"I don't like it either," he said, and she could tell he meant it.

"But it's not just us we have to think about. We need to sit down and figure out what's best for those two Bellaway kids. We've got to try to find Coyote, too. We may end up telling the cops everything, maybe not. If we stick around here much longer, we won't have a choice."

One thing he was saying struck Katherine as definitely true. She had to give herself some time to think.

"My bag is in the bedroom," she said, then hurried to get it.

Minutes later they were out of the apartment and on their way down the stairs to the street. They'd left the note on the mantel and the door slightly ajar, just as it had all been when Katherine first arrived home earlier this evening. Vic a.s.sured her the police would find the marks a lock pick had made on her door latch, just as he had in his brief inspection. She wished it would be that easy for someone, including herself, to detect and a.n.a.lyze the markings all of this was making on her heart.

IT OCCURRED TO VIC that he was too tall a guy to be spending so much time on tiptoe, but that was what he had to do if he was going to stay around Katherine for any length of time. Five minutes into any conversation with her, he was bound to find himself up on' his toes, picking through every sentence he said as if it were made of rusty nails and broken gla.s.s. One false step, and he could end up with gaping wounds, or at least in need of a teta.n.u.s shot, from tromping down too hard on the wrong spot. He wasn't used to such delicate dancing. He wondered how long it would take for him to get so tired of the trouble it took that he wouldn't care to bother anymore. He knew he wasn't there yet. He only had to look at her and, all of a sudden, he was ready and willing to put up with almost anything as long as she'd let him stick around.

So, when she told him she intended to spend the night in a hotel, he didn't make much comment in response. He knew exactly what he'd like to say, of course. His usual bulldozer self would have come right out with it, too, telling her how there was nothing in the world he'd rather do right now than join her in that hotel room for tonight and any other night she'd let him be there. Then, she'd take off at a run down Capitol Hill as fast as her hiking boots could carry her. In this weather, he'd be left with snowflakes on his face instead of egg, but it amounted to the same thing. That's why he was keeping his mouth shut for this duration anyway.

He had managed to ask if he could follow her down here to the Omni in his car, making a point not to be pushy in the way he said it. Maybe that's the reason she'd agreed without any fuss, or maybe the events of this evening had her so upset she didn't want to be on her owmjust yet. He'd seen the way she looked in the hospital, with her eyes round and scared, darting from one end of the place to the other. He had put two and two together then, with what she'd told him about her stepson dying after a long illness. Hospitals must have pretty bad memories for her. He'd rushed her out of there partly because of that. He'd only talked about avoiding the cops because he didn't want to make her even more uncomfortable by bringing up those bad memories of hers. Besides, what he'd said about the police was true.

However it had come about, he was happy to be here now, standing in the lobby of the hotel while the automatic door slid open and shut behind him at regular intervals, letting guests in and out on gusts of frigid night air. Katherine was at the registration desk. It would be more discreet of him not to go up there with her while she checked in. Discretion was something else he didn't usually give much thought to, but she seemed to have him in unfamiliar territory in general. Like the fact that, despite all of what had been happening at the center to both of them and to people they cared about, the only thing Vic found himself able to focus on right now was the way wisps of Katherine's hair fell forward across her cheek as she looked down to sign the hotel registration form.

"Can I carry this up for you?" he asked, when she'd walked back over to him with the small folder containing her room key card in her hand.

He was referring to the bag she'd left on the lobby floor next to him while she went to register. He'd seen her shake her head no to the bellman when he approached at the desk.

Vic expected she'd respond to his offer in the same way. "I'd appreciate that," she said.

He was so stunned, that she had already walked away to the right, toward the elevators, before he grabbed her bag from the floor and hurried to catch up. He followed her past two lobby restaurants and the hotel gift shop into an open elevator car and watched as she pushed the b.u.t.ton marked fourteen. They didn't speak as the car rose or when the doors opened at the fourteenth floor and she checked the wall signs to find the direction of her room. He waited awkwardly behind her as she unlocked the door to her room. Awkwardness was another territory where he had spent very little time.

Vic hefted the suit carder bag over the threshold into a long living room with a window the width of the wall at the opposite end. The curtains and drapes had been pulled aside to show the state capitol building on the crest of the hill across the way. Lights illuminated the steeply pitched roof peaks topped by metal spire points that had always made Vic think of something more native to Asia than this ma.s.sive, gray granite building above the Hudson. The view was impressive all the same.

"This is quite a layout," he said as he put the bag down inside the door, which had swung shut on its tight hinge springs when he let go of it.

A spiral staircase near the window wall led upward to what he a.s.sumed must be the bedroom. The bag should probably go up there, but he wasn't about to suggest that.

"It's really more than I need," Katherine was saying in response to his comment about the room.

"This is where they put me when I came to Albany to interview for the job at the center. There was some kind of convention in the hotel then, and this was all they had available. I imagine they have lots of empty rooms tonight, with the legislature out of session for the holidays and all. I just thought I'd feel better in some place where I'd been before."

She had her back to Vic. He could tell from how fast she was talking and the way she went on and on that she must be nervous, probably because he was still here.

I'll go now," he said, backing toward the door, and it was the most difficult thing he'd ever done in his life. He didn't want to go. He didn't want to leave Katherine. But he knew in her vulnerable state, he couldn't insist that she let him stay.

"My phone number's in the book if you need me."

She turned to face him then, more abruptly than he would have expected.

"Don't go," she said.

"I need you now."

Her face was as wide open to him as the s.p.a.ce of window gla.s.s behind her. Her eyes were clear and looking directly into his. He saw all her fear and her yearning, too, and he recognized the feelings because they matched his own.

Vic walked toward her, stepping carefully and slowly for fear of shattering the fragile moment that hovered in the air above the rose-colored carpet between them.

KATHERINE TURNED and walked away before Vic reached her. She heard him halt, or maybe she felt him do it, behind her. He must be wondering why she had asked him so pleadingly to stay but now walked away from him. She was wondering herself. She wasn't sure. She stopped at the wide window and looked out at the Gothic stone of the City Hall building, St. Peter's Church to the left and the Capitol Building beyond, all solidly planted as if they could stand forever.

She wished she felt the same. She knew what she wanted, but she still had doubts about whether what she had said to Vic right now was really true. Did she, in fact, need him? Was he the trouble she suspected he might be? She definitely didn't need any more trouble.

She took three steps to her right and found the long cord to the curtain's traveller rod high above at the top of the window, which rose from this lower level to the upper one. She pulled the cord and drew the gauzy curtain closed across the scene outside. The determination she carded with her at all times, to always think her actions thoroughly through in order to protect herself against the kind of hurt she'd suffered in Chicago, was suddenly as obscured as the view of Capitol Hill beyond this curtain. Maybe, if she stood here a while longer weighing the pros and cons of what she had in mind to do, all would become clear to her. On the other hand, if she turned around, she would be lost.

A voice inside her, unfamiliar but compelling, cried out. i! That is exactly what you want, it said, and what you needa"to be lost.

Katherine turned around.

Where she stood was mostly shadow. The light from the one lamp she had turned on as she came through the door didn't reach this far. She wondered what Vic could see of her. She could certainly see all of him, and the sight actually took her breath away. He had stopped, just as she had felt him do, several feet from where she was now. The pool of light from the lamp touched the thick darkness of his hair and caught almost blue accents there. She couldn't exactly see his deep-set eyes, but she could guess how they were looking at her all the same. The glint in Vic's eyes had been a constant image in her own mind's eye for what had begun to seem like forever.

His trademark close-fitting jeans stretched tight along his right thigh as he c.o.c.ked his hip in that direction in a posture also typical of him and not lacking in arrogance. In any other man, that att.i.tude would have left her cold. Vic left her anything but cold.

The challenge of his stance was received, fast as a telegraph message, direct to her belly, and she tightened there, that tightness clenching farther down her body with every shallow breath she took.

He, of course, had on his leather jacket as well. He reached upward in a movement she hadn't expected, grabbed the zipper loop and pulled it down in a single, rapid gesture. A gasp escaped her throat, as if it had been her own clothing he was zipping off.

On trembling legs, she stepped out of the shadow cast by the spiral staircase and into the area of semi-brightness where Vic stood. He remained a few feet away from her and made no attempt to approach.

Still, his presence so dominated her senses that he might as well have been filling up the entire room and pressing hard against her from all sides. She was also keenly aware of herself as not quite herself. That engulfing presence had entered into her, perhaps through her parted lips. She felt herself surrender to a will more deeply her own than the surface determination that had held every part of her in check for so very long. ! The relief which accompanied that release was profound, and experienced in her body as a rush of warmth. : She had unb.u.t.toned her long coat in the lobby downstairs. She shrugged it off her shoulders now, and it fell in folds of heavy wool around her feet. She barely heard Vic's gasp as the coat descended to the floor. She recognized that gasp as the mate to her own, an instant ago. She parted her lips further, as if to speak, but understood then that no words were needed, at least not about what they were both feeling. The two of them, though they might not think alike about a lot of things, were at this moment sharing exactly the same emotions, the same powerful awareness of each other in every fiber of their bodies. The silence was taut and filled with the promise of what was sure to happen between them.