Whispers

Bruno was shocked.

He couldn't speak.

"I don't know what hotel or motel," the operator said apologetically. "But there aren't really many places to stay in all of Napa Valley, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding her."

"No trouble," Bruno said shakily.

"Does she know anyone in St. Helena?"

"Huh?"

"I just thought maybe she's staying with friends," the operator suggested.

"Yes," Bruno said. "I think I know just where she is."

"I'm really sorry about the death."

"What?"

"The death in the family."

"Oh," Bruno said. He licked his lips nervously. "Yes. There have been quite a few deaths in the family the past five years. Thank you for your help."

"No trouble."

He hung up.

She was in St. Helena.

The brazen bitch had gone back.

Why? My God, what was she doing? What was she after? What was she up to?

Whatever she had in mind, it would not do him any good. That was for damned sure.

Frantic, afraid that she was planning some trick that would be the death of him, he began to call the airlines at Los Angeles International, trying to get a seat on a flight north. There were no commuter planes until morning, and all of the early flights were already booked solid. He wouldn't be able to get out of L.A. until tomorrow afternoon.

That would be too late.

He knew it. Sensed it.

He had to move fast.

He decided to drive. The night was still young. If he stayed behind the wheel all night and kept the accelerator to the floor, he could reach St. Helena by dawn.

He had a feeling his life depended on it.

He hurried out of the bungalow, stumbling through ruined furniture and other rubble, leaving the front door wide open, not bothering to be careful, not taking time to see if anyone was nearby. He sprinted across the lawn, into the dark and deserted street toward his van.

***

After they enjoyed coffee with brandy in the den, Joshua showed Tony and Hilary to the guest room and connecting bath at the far end of the house from his own sleeping quarters. The chamber was large and pleasant, with deep window sills and leaded glass windows like those in the dining room.

The bed was an enormous fourposter that delighted Hilary.

After they said goodnight to Joshua and closed the bedroom door, and after they drew the drapes over the windows to prevent the eyeless night from gazing blindly in at them, they took a shower together to soothe their aching muscles. They were quite exhausted, and they intended only to try to recapture the sweet, relaxing, childlike, asexual pleasure of the bath that they had shared the previous night at the airport hotel in L.A. Neither of them expected passion to raise its lovely head. However, as he lathered her breasts, the gentle, rhythmic, circular movements of his hands made her skin tingle and sent wonderful shivers through her. He cupped her breasts, filled his large hands with them, and her ni**les hardened and rose through the soapy foam that sheathed them. He went to his knees and washed her belly, her long slim legs, her buttocks. For Hilary, the world shrank to a small sphere, to just a few sights and sounds and exquisite sensations: the odor of lilac-scented soap, the hiss and patter of falling water, the swirling patterns in the steam, his lean and supple body glistening as water cascaded over his well-defined muscles, the eager and incredible growth of his manhood as she took her turn lathering him. By the time they finished showering, they had forgotten how tired they were, they had forgotten their aching muscles; only desire remained.

On the fourposter bed, in the soft glow of a single lamp, he held her and kissed her eyes, her nose, her lips. He kissed her chin, her neck, her turgid nipples.

"Please," she said. "Now."

"Yes," he said against the hollow of her throat.

She opened her legs to him, and he entered her.

"Hilary," he said. "My sweet, sweet Hilary."

He drove into her with great strength and yet with tenderness, filled her up.

She rocked in time with him. Her hands moved over his broad back, tracing the outlines of his muscles. She had never felt so alive, so energized. In only a minute, she began to come, and she thought she might never stop, just rise from peak to peak, on and on, forever and ever, without end.

As he moved within her, they became one body and soul in a way she had never been with any other man. And she knew Tony felt it, too, this unique and astonishingly deep bonding. They were physically, emotionally, intellectually, and psychically joined, molded into a single being that was far superior to the sum of its two halves, and in that moment of phenomenal synergism--which neither of them had experienced with other lovers--Hilary knew that what they had was so special, so important, so rare, so powerful, that it would last as long as they lived. As she called his name and lifted up to meet his thrusts and cl**axed yet again. and as he began to spurt within the deep darkness of her, she knew, as she had known the first time they'd made love, that she could trust him and rely on him as she'd never been able to trust or rely upon another human being; and, best of all, she knew that she would never be alone again.

Afterwards, as they lay together beneath the covers, he said, "Will you tell me about the scar on your side?"

"Yes. Now I will."

"It looks like a bullet wound."

"It is. I was nineteen, living in Chicago. I'd been out of high school for a year. I was working as a typist, trying to save enough money so I could get a place of my own. I was paying Earl and Emma rent for my room."

"Earl and Emma?"

"My parents."

"You called them by their first names?"

"I never thought of them as my father and mother."

"They must have hurt you a lot," he said sympathetically.

"Every chance they got."

"If you don't want to talk about it now--"

"I do," she said. "Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I want to talk about it. It doesn't hurt to talk about it. Because now I've got you, and that makes up for all the bad days."

"My family was poor," Tony said. "But there was love in our house."

"You were lucky."

"I'm sorry for you, Hilary."

"It's over," she said. "They've been dead a long time, and I should have exorcised them years ago."

"Tell me."

"I was paying them a few dollars rent each week, which they used to buy a little more booze, but I was socking away everything else I earned as a typist. Every penny. Not much, but it grew in the bank. I didn't even spend anything for lunch; I went without. I was determined to get an apartment of my own. I didn't even care if it was another shabby place with dark little rooms and bad plumbing and cockroaches just so Earl and Emma didn't come with it."

Tony kissed her cheek, the corner of her mouth.

She said, "Finally, I saved up enough. I was ready to move out. One more day, one more paycheck, and I was going to be on my way."

She trembled.

Tony held her close.

"I came home from work that day," Hilary said, "and I went into the kitchen--and there was Earl holding Emma against the refrigerator. He had a gun. The barrel was jammed into her teeth."

"My God."

"He was going through a very bad siege of.... Do you know what delirium tremens are?"

"Sure. They're hallucinations. Spells of mindless fear. It's something that happens to really chronic alcoholics. I've dealt with people who've been having delirium tremens. They can be violent and unpredictable."

"Earl had that gun against her teeth, which she kept clenched, and he started screaming crazy stuff about giant worms that he thought were coming out of the walls. He accused Emma of letting the worms out of the walls, and he wanted her to stop them. I tried to talk to him, but he wasn't listening. And then the worms kept coming out of the walls and started slithering around his feet; he got furious with Emma, and he pulled the trigger."

"Jesus."

"I saw her face blown away."

"Hilary--"

"I need to talk about it."

"All right."

"I've never talked about it before."

"I'm listening."

"I ran out of the kitchen when he shot her," Hilary said.

"I knew I couldn't make it out of the apartment and down the hall before he shot me in the back, so I ducked the other way, into my room. I closed and locked the door, but he shot the lock off.

By then, he was convinced that I was the one causing the worms to come out of the walls. He shot me. It wasn't anywhere close to being a fatal wound, but it hurt like hell, like a white-hot poker in my side, and it bled a lot."

"Why didn't he shoot you again? What saved you?"

"I stabbed him," she said.

"Stabbed? Where'd you get the knife?"

"I kept one in my room. I'd had it since I was eight. I'd never used it until then. But I'd always thought that if one of their beatings got out of hand and it looked like they were going to finish me, I'd cut them to save myself. So I cut Earl about the same instant he pulled the trigger. I didn't hurt him any worse than he hurt me, but he was shocked, terrified at the sight of his own blood. He ran out of the room, back to the kitchen. He started shouting at Emma again, telling her to make the worms go away before they smelled his blood and came after him. Then he emptied his gun into her because she wouldn't send the worms away. I was hurting something terrible from the wound in my side, and I was scared, but I tried to count the shots. When I thought he'd used up his ammunition, I hobbled out of my room and tried to make it to the front door. But he had several boxes of bullets. He had reloaded. He saw me and shot at me from the kitchen, and I ran back to my room. I barricaded the door with a dresser and hoped help would come before I bled to death. Out in the kitchen, Earl kept screaming about the worms, and then about giant crabs at the windows, and he kept emptying the gun into Emma. He put almost a hundred and fifty rounds into her before it was all over. She was torn to pieces. The kitchen was a charnel house."

Tony cleared his throat. "What happened to him?"

"He killed himself when the SWAT team finally broke in."

"And you?"

"A week in the hospital. A scar to remind me."

They were silent for a while.

Beyond the drapes, beyond the leaded windows, the night wind coughed.

"I don't know what to say," Tony said.

"Tell me you love me."

"I do."

"Tell me."

"I love you."

"I love you, Tony."

He kissed her.

"I love you more than I ever thought I could love anyone," she said. "In just a week, you've changed me forever."

"You're damned strong," he said admiringly.

"You give me strength."

"You had plenty of that before I came along."

"Not enough. You give me more, Usually ... just thinking about that day he shot me ... I get upset, scared all over again, as if it just happened yesterday. But I didn't get scared this time.

I told you all about it, and I was hardly affected. You know why?"

"Why?"

"Because all the terrible things that happened in Chicago, the shooting and everything that came before it, all of that is ancient history now. None of it matters any more. I have you, and you make up for all the bad times. You balance the scales. In fact, you tip the scales in my favor."

"It works both ways, you know, I need you as much as you need me."

"I know. That's what makes it so perfect."

They were silent again.

Then she said, "There's another reason that those memories of Chicago don't scare me any more. I mean, besides the fact that I've got you now."

"What's that?"

"Well, it has to do with Bruno Frye. Tonight I began to realize that he and I have a lot in common. It looks like he endured the same sort of torture from Katherine that I got from Earl and Emma. But he cracked, and I didn't. That big strong man cracked, but I held on. That means something to me. It means a lot. It tells me that I shouldn't worry so much, that I should not be afraid of opening myself to people, that I can take just about anything the world throws at me."

"That's what I told you. You're strong, tough, hard as nails," Tony said.

"I'm not hard. Feel me. Do I feel hard?"

"Not here," he said.

"What about here?"

"Firm," he said.

"Firm isn't the same as hard."

"You feel nice."

"Nice isn't the same as hard either."

"Nice and firm and warm," he said.

She squeezed him.

"This is hard," she said, grinning.

"But it's not hard to make it soft again. Want me to show you?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes. Show me."

They made love again.

As Tony filled her up and explored her with long silken strokes, as waves of pleasure crashed through her, she was sure that everything would be all right. The act of love reassured her, gave her tremendous confidence in the future. Bruno Frye had not come back from the grave. She wasn't being stalked by a walking corpse. There was a logical explanation. Tomorrow they would talk to Dr. Rudge and Rita Yancy, and they would learn what lay behind the mystery of the Frye look-alike.

They would uncover enough information and proof to help the police, and the double would be found, arrested. The danger would pass. Then she would always be with Tony, and Tony with her, and then nothing really bad could happen. Nothing could hurt her. Neither Bruno Frye nor anyone else could hurt her. She was happy and safe at last.

Later, as she lay on the edge of sleep, a sharp crash of thunder filled the sky, rolled down the mountains, into the valley, and over the house.

A strange thought flashed through her mind: The thunder is a warning. It's an omen. It's telling me to be careful and not to be so damned sure of myself.

But before she could explore that thought further, she fell off the edge of sleep, all the way down into it.

***

Frye drove north from Los Angeles, traveling near the sea at first, then swinging inland with the freeway.

California had just come out of one of its periodic gasoline shortages. Service stations were open. Fuel was available. The freeway was a concrete artery running through the flesh of the state. The twin scalpels of his headlights laid it bare for his examination.