Page 27 of Edge of Secrets

I couldn’t see his face, but I sensed that he was smiling. “Thank you for saying that,” he said. “I appreciate your understanding.”

The hairs rose on my arms as he came closer. I could smell the fresh, crisp scent of his shirt. I stared up at his inscrutable silhouette. “You’re welcome,” I whispered.

“I spoke to Detective Lanaghan today,” he said.

I jolted back. Detective Denise Lanaghan was the investigating officer for Lucia’s case. Hearing her name spoken in this context was jarring. “You did what? Why on earth?”

“I wanted to see what progress they were making on the case,” he said.

His voice sounded so casual—like he had every right to rifle through the most painful details of my life. My shock was quickly replaced by anger. “I imagine you wanted to check and see if my story was just so much paranoid bullshit, right?”

He hesitated. “Not at all, actually.” His voice was guarded. “A couple of minutes with a good search engine was enough to establish that.”

My outrage grew. “So you checked up on me? You hacked into my private business?”

“I wouldn’t call that hacking. I didn’t get into anything private. I just looked at what was lying around in plain sight. Matters of public record.”

“But why?” My voice rose in pitch. “Why poke into my life?”

I still couldn’t make out the expression on his face, but his shrug looked unrepentant. “I was interested.”

“Well, your level of interest is invasive and weird, and it’s making me nervous,” I said. “And I don’t need anything else in my life to make me nervous. I am at full fucking capacity, Duncan! Do you get me?”

He nodded, but did not apologize. He just stood there, obdurate. Waiting.

“Good God, Burke,” I snapped, exasperated. “It’s all or nothing with you. Either you completely ignore my existence, or you pin me under a microscope and stare. Whatever happened to just, you know, flirting? Suggestive conversation? Casual chatting?”

“Not my strong suit,” he admitted.

“I’ve noticed! So? ‘Fess up. What did Lanaghan say? Not that she should have said anything about our business to some random guy off the street.”

“I’m not some random guy. And she spoke to a cop friend of mine, not to me. She said pretty much what you told me last night. They haven’t made much progress.”

“No, they sure haven’t,” I said bleakly. “They are nowhere with it. The guy’s really good. He left no trace. No prints, no DNA, nothing at all. Even the car that he used in Boston when he tried to kidnap Nancy turned out to be stolen just hours before.”

He nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I heard.”

Thinking about it chilled me. I shied away from the subject, groping for something else to think about. “So, Burke? What else did you find on me out there on the internet?” I demanded. “Did you read my last term’s graduate seminar paper on Christina Rossetti? Did you dig into the archived transcripts from the message boards at the online poetry forum?”

“Yes, both. But my favorites were those five short poems you published in The Golden Thread Poetry Journal last January.”

My mouth opened and closed in astonishment “Ah ... actually, I was, um, just kidding about you reading that stuff.”

“I wasn’t,” he replied. “I read it. All of it. Several times.”

After a few moments of my speechless silence, he gestured with his hand. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “It’s not like I can discuss your poems intelligently. I absolutely can’t. To be honest, I don’t have a clue what you were talking about.”

I was puzzled. “Ah. Okay. So how did you know they were your favorites?”

He fidgeted, clearly uncomfortable. “I don’t know how,” he said impatiently. “I just liked the way they made me feel.”

I was oddly moved. “Wow. I think that might be one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me about my work,” I told him. “Thank you.”

He kept drifting closer, like a shadow, until he stood right in front of me. His aura interfered with my brain function. Alarm bells were ringing, colored lights flashing in there. It was complete pandemonium.

“You’re welcome.” His low voice felt velvety to my ears. “First time in my life I ever got something like that right. And it was by accident. Just dumbass luck.”

“It’s not something that you get wrong or right,” I said. “It’s just a matter of paying attention. Telling the truth.”

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