End, down Columbus Avenue and a left up Pembroke Street.
Her apartment lights were on.
* * *
“HOW ABOUT coffee?” she said warily.
“I think I’m past the point of no return,” I said. “Any more caffeine’s just going to put me into a coma.”
“Ice water, then?”
I nodded. I sat on her couch, and she sat on the chair next to it. Exactly where we’d sat last time. She was wearing a white T-shirt and sweatpants and was barefoot.
She went to her little kitchen and filled one of her funky handblown drinking glasses with ice water. She handed it to me and sat down again.
Then I told her as much of what I’d just learned as I could. It wasn’t exactly a coherent presentation. My brain was much too fried. But I managed to set out the basic facts. “Now I’ve got Dorothy checking on every place in New Hampshire that rents excavation equipment, but she’s not going to find anything until nine or ten when the places open.”
“Okay,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’ve looked at the case files on that Connecticut home invasion.”
“Already? But how did you know…?”
She smiled ruefully. “Nico, you need sleep. Badly. You told me about that last night.”
I shook my head, embarrassed.
“The husband survived. I wanted to see whether he might recall anything more about the attackers. But … well, he’s not going to be talking to anyone. Zhukov left him seriously brain damaged.”
I nodded.
“No latent prints were found at the scene. Neither Zhukov nor his associate. I was hoping that the locals might have submitted any unidentified fingerprints to the unsolved latent file at IAFIS. Maybe those same prints turned up somewhere else … But nothing.”
“And that’s it?” I stood up. I was exhausted and cranky and desperate to do something. I started pacing around her living room.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What’s the FBI’s budget again? Like almost ten billion dollars, right? And every single law-enforcement officer in the country on tap. More databases than you know what to do with. And you still haven’t found a damned thing more than me and Dorothy.”
“Oh, and what have you found? Last I heard, that girl is still in the ground.”
I turned away, headed toward the door. “I’ve got to get back to the office.”
“No,” she said, “you need sleep. You’re just about at the breaking point. There’s not a damned thing you can do right now until one of our leads comes in. Or one of your leads. Or until the business day starts. So go to sleep, Nick.”
“After.”
She came in close, put a hand on my shoulder. “If you don’t give your brain and your body a rest, you’re going to start screwing up, and then what?”
I whirled around. “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I don’t screw up.”
“Now I know you’re sleep deprived,” she said with a laugh.
And before I knew it, my lips were on hers.
Her mouth was warm and tasted of mint. I held her face in my hands and stroked her hair. Her eyes were closed. Her smooth hands slid underneath my shirt and pressed flat against my chest, her fingernails lightly raking my chest hair. Then I was caressing her breasts and kissing her throat, and I heard the clink of her fingers at my belt.
“Diana,” I said.
She silenced me with her mouth on mine, and her legs wrapped tightly around my waist.
* * *
“I KNOW we can’t go back to the way things were,” she said.
“I wasn’t thinking this was a do-over.”
She smiled, but her eyes were wet. She reached for me, and I held her for a long time. It felt wonderful. Almost enough.
My phone rang, and I glanced at it. Marshall Marcus.
“Nick,” he whispered, “I just got a message.”
A beep indicated a call coming in on the other line. Dorothy.
“Message from whom?”
“Them. I have until the end of the day and then they’ll—”
“Hold on.” I clicked on Dorothy’s call.
“Nick, Marcus just got an e-mail from the kidnappers.”
“I know, he’s on the other line, he was just telling me.”
“It’s not good,” she said.
I felt my mouth go dry.
“Are you near your computer?”
I hesitated. “I’m near a computer.”
“I’m going to send you an e-mail right now.”
I signaled to Diana, who brought her laptop over, and I signed on to my e-mail. Meanwhile, I clicked back to the other line. “Hold on, Marshall, I’m just opening it right now.”
“How can you do that?”
I didn’t reply. I was too busy reading the text on another anonymous e-mail.
The rules are all change now
Now demand is