Heart of Gold - By Tami Hoag Page 0,34
of escape was the only thing he had to offer her. “I’ll be here when you change your mind.”
Faith paused at the door, almost smiling at his choice of words. She didn’t look back at him as her heart asked the question she didn’t dare voice—You’ll be here when I change my mind, but will you be here afterward?
SIX
“WE’RE ONE STEP closer,” Shane said into the phone, wishing he had more to report to his boss. He took a long drag on his cigarette and leaned back in the squeaky desk chair, his gaze idly wandering around Faith’s little office. “The letters have all been postmarked in nearby towns. The call we managed to trace came from a phone booth in Ukiah. We know he’s in the immediate area.”
“The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is: Where?” Banks asked in his typical sardonic tone.
“I don’t know,” Shane admitted, narrowing his eyes as he stared at the neatly typed, utterly nasty missive lying on the walnut desk before him. It was the third Faith had received in a week. Tension coiled in his gut. He didn’t like playing a waiting game. He was a hunter by nature. But in this scenario he was relegated to the role of fisherman—waiting for their boy to take the bait so he could reel him in.
“How’s our witness holding up?”
Shane thought of Faith. She had an inner strength that never failed to amaze him. The constant tension was taking a toll on her, but every time he expected her to give in or give up she reached deep down inside for a little more grit. “She’s a remarkable lady.”
“Yes, she is. Give her my regards … and my condolences for having to put up with you day in and day out.”
A wry smile quirked up one corner of Shane’s mouth as he tossed out a rather lewd suggestion about what his superior could do with the rest of his day.
“Hang tight, pal,” Banks advised, chuckling at Callan’s characteristic disregard for authority figures. “Gerrard’s request for a later court date has been denied. He’ll be sweating bullets soon if he doesn’t hear word of Faith backing out on testifying. They’ll make a move soon.”
“I’ll be here when they do,” Shane promised. He could almost taste the vengeance. Damn, that wasn’t like him. An agent couldn’t take cases personally and hold together for long. Pushing the thought from his mind, he changed the subject. “Any word on Strauss?”
“Interpol says he was spotted in Argentina.”
“I don’t think so,” Shane said slowly, that knot of tension tightening in his belly as he called to mind the image of his archnemesis from the Silvanus organization. During his three years on the case he had come to know the man as well as he knew himself. Adam Strauss may have had Argentina in mind as a new base of operations, but Shane knew with a cold certainty he wouldn’t be there yet. “That’s not his style.”
“Meaning he’d kill you first before retiring to a tropical paradise?”
“He swore he would. As incongruous as it sounds, Adam Strauss is a man of his word.”
“Can’t happen, my friend. There’s no way he can find you.”
After Shane ended the conversation and hung up the phone, he sat back. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, he thought with an odd kind of detachment. But Adam Strauss wasn’t his immediate concern.
Stubbing out his cigarette, he forced his mind back to the matter at hand. His gaze devoured the letter Faith had received the day before. There simply wasn’t anything about it that pointed in any one direction. The only thing they could discern from it was that the perpetrator had a violent imagination and a solid command of grammar.
“Damn,” he muttered, shaking another cigarette out of the rapidly depleting pack. He dangled it from his lip and momentarily forgot about it.
He was getting itchy. Patience was the name of the game on a case like this one, but his was wearing thin around the edges. He wanted a suspect, and they didn’t have one. He didn’t like Faith’s caretaker, Mr. Fitz, but so far the only thing he could accuse the man of was being ill-tempered and malodorous.
Maybe, Shane mused, the real reason he was getting edgy was because there was something he wanted more than a suspect—Faith. Nearly a week had passed since their encounter in his bedroom. She hadn’t taken him up on his offer of a physical relationship, but that wasn’t because she wasn’t interested. It was