“What’s going on at the gallery?”
“The gallery is secure, I promise. And the paintings are safe. Can you relax for three seconds?”
“I don’t have that luxury.” I tried to sit up, but a pain in my head sent me back into the pillows. “Oh shit, that hurts. Look.” I squinted at Woodson through one eye. “I need to call Faraday and Tucker, check on my sister and the girls. Can I have my phone?” I closed both eyes in an effort to thwart the pain and held my hand out, palm up.
“Relax. Faraday called less than an hour ago and said everyone was fine. You’re going to have to rest for at least a little bit, Lucas. You can’t keep going full tilt or you’re going to keel over.”
I propped myself up on one elbow and winced again.
She stared at me in the ensuing silence until I opened my eyes. “You have the weight of the world on your head, don’t you?” she asked softly.
“Just the weight of my world,” I said, suddenly unnerved by the luminous glow of Woodson’s eyes in the darkness. “What time is it?” I asked.
“Just lean back,” she said, gently pushing me back onto the plush pillows and pulling a goose down comforter up over my chest. And suddenly, although I hated to admit it, I realized how good it felt to sink into the lush, cushioned mattress. I took a deep breath, the kind my chiropractor always told me to take, and it was the first one I could remember taking in a long time.
“And by the way, it’s three in the morning, Lucas. So just lay back and go to sleep for a few more hours. If you feel okay, no fever, and all that good stuff, then we should be able to get back on the case before you know it. The doctor said the headache was from dehydration after the blood loss. The fluids they gave you should take care of you by morning.”
I rested my hand on her arm. “I can’t stop now. The guy who’s killing these women … he killed my mother. I’m sure of it.”
I heard Woodson sigh, as if she’d already come to the same conclusion and simply dreaded hearing it from me. “Who knows?” she said. “It’s also possible that the killer’s just messing with you; found an old picture of your mother, portrayed her the way he imagined she might have looked that night. Put her portrait in the gallery with all his other real victims, then led you there. Maybe he’s just trying to screw with you.”
“Impossible,” I whispered back. “The setting is perfect. Those were the woods where she died. The painter of that picture was there that night. I’m sure of it.”
“Lucas. It’s still possible that the SWK is just messing with you. Maybe he read about what happened to your mother or painted it according to the reports in the newspapers. Just think about it. You have to stay rational with me here.”
I shook my head again, even more strongly in the negative, although it hurt to do so. “Everything about that painting was real. The woods, her dress, her face, that boy leading her into the woods—that’s what he looked like, Woodson. I remember it. I was there, don’t forget. I saw it all myself, my own two eyes. Those details weren’t in any historical news archives. Believe me, I’ve read them all.”
“Lucas,” Woodson began, but fell silent. She didn’t have an answer.
“Whoever is killing these girls in the present day,” I said, “is the same person who killed my mother twenty-five years ago. And I’m going to find him, Woodson. And when I find him, I’m going to kill him.”
I felt the backside of her hand softly touch my cheek and suddenly became conscious that my own face was moist. Woodson spoke softly above me. “Shhh. Just sleep for now, Lucas. We’ll start again tomorrow morning, I promise.”
I reached up and held her wrist. I couldn’t let it go. “I’m going to kill him, Woodson. You need to understand that. I don’t want you to get hurt. But I’m not out to capture this guy anymore. There will be no Miranda rights. I’m going to kill him. You have a right to know.”
“I hear you, Lucas. I’ll pretend that I didn’t. But I hear you.” She pushed my head into the pillow, and descended gently upon me. “And I understand.”
“I don’t care about anything anymore,” I said, but she shushed me from speaking further with a finger pressed lightly against my mouth. The gentle touch of her fingertip on my lips sent a quiver through my body. A sensation for which I was wholly, utterly unprepared. It instantly reminded me of the intimacy I’d felt earlier in the night, when she’d lifted the trace evidence from my body with the repetitive motions of the lint roller. How shockingly comforting that simple, methodical procedure had been.
She flicked off the lamp and the room went dark, save for a sliver of moonlight through the window outside.
“Everything will be all right, Lucas,” she said, her voice echoing above me from the pitch-black darkness like that of a hypnotist.
At that same moment I felt her take my face in both hands and tilt my head gently upward. I thought she was simply repositioning my head on the pillow, but a sensual thrill passed through my belly again as I felt the bed move beneath her weight. Suddenly I felt her lips against mine, forcing my mouth open and taking my breath away for a moment. One of her hands traced my chest and came to rest on my stomach, slowly moving in a soothing circular fashion.
And then my hands were reaching upward and finding her neck, and I pulled her toward me. The pain in my head dissolved as I became aware of only her. Her kiss was warm, with a perfect degree of pressure from her lips as she continued to kiss me from above.
I ceased kissing her for only a second so that I could see her, now that my eyes had adjusted to the dark. Her long, angular face hovered above mine. And somehow, impossibly, this interesting, brilliant, and beautiful woman whom I’d known for mere days was above me, kissing me silently in the darkness. I noticed that her lips glistened in the moonlit darkness, sparkling with leftover lipstick from the Magnolia Mansion reception earlier in the evening.
Without a word Woodson lifted her silky cream-colored top above her head. It slid off and disappeared over the side of the bed.
Naked from the waist up as she swayed above me, she looked down at me with a calmness that juxtaposed oddly with the moment. It stunned me for what seemed the tenth time in as many minutes. She leaned down and kissed me again, and I relished the way she welcomed me to her.
She helped me remove my clothes, taking care to avoid the bandage on my back. Chills swept over me in repetitive rushes of pleasure, but I couldn’t stop to take the time to enjoy them. A voice inside my head screamed at me to just stop and think about the ramifications of becoming involved with a colleague … but an equally loud voice told me to shut the hell up for a change and give in.
For once, I listened to the latter voice.
I succumbed to her, and in moments the night was suddenly full of our sounds; the bed, our breath, our skin, the deepness of our intensity—a newfound intimacy that didn’t smother me but gathered me to her. My mind raced backwards through time as we moved together, a series of images spilling faster and faster like a waterfall in my head, leading all the way back to our first exchange in the auditorium in Quantico.
In the midst of it, Woodson suddenly stared down at me, an oddly quixotic look on her face. “Lucas,” she whispered. “Everything is going to be okay. I promise.”
I looked at her blankly as my body threatened to finish, and I had to fight to hold myself back. I strained upward toward her and buried my face into her chest. “Woodson.”
She pushed me back down. “I promise it will be.” And then she began to move again, and as I began to keep rhythm with her, I felt her body begin to shake, imperceptibly at first, then more noticeably, until every muscle in her body tightened simultaneously. I couldn’t hold back any longer, and succumbed.
After a few moments of tremulous silence she uttered a half-broken cry and finally pushed her head backwards away from me as though she were trying to stretch herself into oblivion. A little later she collapsed beside me, my face in her hands.
I waited for a time, relishing the moment and thinking about everything that had just transpired, feeling her fingertips on my cheek. After a little while I spoke. “Woodson,” I spoke her name into the night.
But the only sound that greeted me was the heavy breathing of someone in deep slumber beside me. I fell asleep within minutes after that, making sure her hand remained.
* * *
At seven the next morning the phone rang. I managed to search around on the nightstand and pick the phone up on the third ring, even as an intense pain shot upward through my back. The bedroom phone felt strange in my hands as well: too big, too oblong.
I brought the receiver to my face, eyes still closed. “Madden here.”
“Lucas?”
“Terry?” I said, and felt something move beside me. I looked over, half expecting the furry body of Crick to flop beside me. Instead, Woodson flicked on the light. Her blonde hair was disheveled and her mascara had run. She still looked gorgeous amidst the chaos of her makeup. I stared at her, the night’s memories swirling upward with a dizzying intensity from the bottom of a deep, lost pit, straight into the very forefront of my mind, as I recalled every last bit.
I tried to focus on the voice on the other end of the phone.
“Oh yeah, that’s right. Woodson told me she let you stay there last night after the hospital, rather than having to drive back to your house. I just didn’t expect you to answer her phone. Anyway, I have some good news at the lab and thought you and Woodson would both want to hear about it.”
As Terry spoke I found myself negotiating a series of facts flowing like white water through my mind.
One, I wasn’t at home—I was at Woodson’s.
Two, I was at Woodson’s because last night I’d grappled with the Snow White Killer himself, then passed out in the gallery after the pain became too great.
Three, the Snow White Killer had likely killed my own mother.
Terry’s voice continued, and I became cognizant of it once again. He was speaking. “Yeah. If you’re up to it, you guys better come on back to the lab. We’re getting close, I think.”
“Okay, Terry,” I said. “We’ll be there as soon as possible.”
As I hung up the phone, Woodson rolled over, took my face, and pulled me back toward her in the bed. I allowed her to pull me backwards. Even though it felt good and I wanted to collapse backwards into her arms again, I dreaded it. I dreaded the reality of what we’d shared last night, fully illuminated between us in the bright light of morning.
I hated that part of it. I didn’t know what to say, because after finally denying all the repressed desire for my strange and alluring partner, I hadn’t had time to consider what, exactly, the consequences of our passion might ultimately mean in our professional lives.
“Woodson,” I started to say, but she breathed into my ear before I had a chance to turn around. I’d hoped to stumble through an explanation of why it would be a good idea to keep our tryst confidential, even though it had been memorable and I wanted things to continue, but her low voice sent an electric thrill through my body before I could speak further.
“Not a word to anybody,
Madden,
” she said, and quickly swept away in a rustle of sheets behind me. She called to me from behind the closed bathroom door. “Hey, you can take a shower in the guest bathroom downstairs. I brought in one of the extra suits you keep in your SUV, you weirdo, for you to change into. I’ll see you in the field office in about an hour.”
Strangely, I felt both relieved and slightly peeved that she already fully intended to keep our rendezvous a secret as well, and that I didn’t need to awkwardly suggest it myself. “Okay. See you then, Woodson.”
“And Madden?” Woodson yelled as she turned on the shower.
“Yeah?” I assumed she was going to inquire as to my physical well-being after the previous night’s sequence of events. To be honest I was surprised at how refreshed I felt. No more headaches, and a lot less tension in my neck. “Yeah, Woodson?” I said, a little more loudly.
“Hey, I forgot to mention. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”
For about half a second I was stupefied, as a sense of sheer embarrassment began to take hold, until I heard the cacophony of laughter ring outward from the shower. “I’m just kidding, you big galoot,” she said. “I’ll see you in a bit.”
Surprised to find myself already smiling, at that moment I began to suspect that maybe, just maybe, having someone in my life who was able to make me laugh for a change, take me by surprise for a change … well, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
Downstairs, after showering and changing into my clothes, I took Woodson’s advice. I left straightaway, making sure not to let the door hit me in the ass on my way out.
It was a liberating feeling, I had to admit.
During the ride back to work, I reentered reality. My thoughts turned to the most recent twist in the SWK investigation. My mother’s eyes in the painting grew larger and larger in the back of my mind as I struggled to understand the link between the SWK, the gruesome art gallery, the victims of today, and my mother’s death so many years ago.
It didn’t seem so much like my own cosmically pervasive shithouse luck anymore.
I arrived at the field office a little past eight. To my great surprise, I found Raritan and Parkman sitting in Terry’s office when I walked in. All three looked up.
“Aha. The agent with nine lives,” Raritan said.
“In the flesh. What are you guys doing here?”
Raritan smiled. “Where’s your partner, Lucas? I heard you two have been inseparable lately.”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I answered.
“Terry told us you stayed at Woodson’s place after you were released from the hospital last night.”
“I did. She let me stay at her place last night since it was close to the hospital and they wouldn’t let me drive under the influence of all the drugs I received in the ER. I slept on her couch and left this morning, before she even came downstairs.” I was surprised by how easily the lie slid from my tongue.
“Okay, thanks for filling us in.” Raritan spoke with just enough sarcasm that I wondered whether the untruth that had so easily slid from my lips hadn’t sounded quite as believable as I’d thought.