Page 19 of The Night Before (Savannah 1)

Disjointed pieces of a dream?

Some kind of ESP?

Coincidence?

Or horrific bits of a memory too terrible to remember?

Five

Adam Hunt picked the lock deftly. Anyone watching might have thought he owned the key to this thick wooden door because the latch sprang so easily. But he’d been careful. He was alone. No one was in the hallway of the hundred-and-fifty-year-old house that had been converted into an office building. Nobody had seen him enter silently, swinging the door closed behind him.

Inside, the room was hot. Cloying. Dust had settled on every surface; a potted palm was brittle and dead near the window, the soil surrounding its roots bone dry. He looked around the office as he cracked a window, and the smell of Old Savannah slipped into the tiny office with its worn wooden floors and haphazardly placed rugs.

A leather recliner, sofa and rocking chair were grouped together. Positioned catty-corner to the seating area was a tall armoire that held video equipment. Beneath the window a short, glass-fronted bookcase contained a small library on human psychoses, sexuality, morals, hypnosis and every human frailty or depravity known to man. Some of the books had belonged to him. So had the rocker. But no longer.

His jaw clenched as he crossed to the rolltop.

Her desk was locked.

Of course.

Not that it was a

problem.

Her desk chair squeaked as he sat in it, and he noticed where its rollers had worn a path on the carpet, a small arc, so that she could turn to her computer or notes, then face her clients again. Jaw tightening, he quickly pried the desk open and rolled the top up. Inside, the cubicles and drawers of stamps, paper clips, envelopes and the like were neat. Tidy.

Just like the woman who had so recently sat in this scarred chair.

So where the hell are you, Rebecca? Absently he rubbed his knee. It was starting to bother him again, the result of a recent motorcycle accident.

He turned on the computer, tapped his fingers nervously on the arm of the chair and glared at the dusty screen as it clicked and hummed, the monitor glowing bright. He found her files, skimmed them, his lips flat over his teeth. Was it his imagination or did he smell a faint trace of her perfume lingering over the musty odor of the office?

Wishful thinking, nothing more.

Fingers moving skillfully, he scrolled through her patient files, getting quick peeks into the problems, heartbreaks and psychoses of patients he’d never met. Nothing caught his eye or made him think that this was the case that she was certain would change the course of her life.

He glanced at his watch. He’d been here nearly forty-five minutes and heard the sounds of shuffling feet and scraping chairs from an office down the hall. He checked to see that he’d locked the door, so that no one searching for an office or the rest room might burst in and see him; then he crossed to the windows. From the third-floor view, he caught a glimpse of the alley below and a neighboring house. An elderly lady wearing a straw hat and dressing gown was watering her geraniums. He slid out of her view before she looked up; didn’t want to have to explain himself. At least not yet. Not until he had some answers himself.

He’d probably have to lie to get those answers.

So be it.

Adam believed that lies came in differing shades, hues and textures. There were black lies and white lies and a variety of shades of gray lying in between. Some were thick and sticky, others thin and gossamer, but as far as he could remember, there had never been a good lie. And yet, he decided as he slid a pick into the locked cabinet and, with a sensitive touch he would never admit to having, sprung the simple latch, sometimes a lie was necessary.

With a click the drawer opened.

If a lie was necessary to get to the truth . . . was it such a bad thing?

There is no such thing as a “white lie,” his grandmother had preached often enough. “A lie is a lie and if you can’t tell the truth, then there’s something very wrong with you.” She had looked at him with her unblinking hawklike eyes, searching for a glimmer of deceit in his gaze, and he had stared straight back at her, refusing to squirm even though they’d both known he was lying through his teeth.

Norma Hunt had been a fair woman. When she had been unable to prove that he wasn’t telling the truth, she had been forced to pretend to believe him.

He wondered what she’d think of her only grandson now as he opened the top file drawer, flipping through the tabs, smelling the dry, musty odor of unused documents. His fingers riffled over the names; then he closed the drawer and opened the lower one . . . and there, taking up half the space, were the documents that might help him on his quest. Thick files. Packed with notations and information:

BANDEAUX, Caitlyn Montgomery.

How had he missed it on the computer? Quickly he turned to the flickering screen and sorted through the files again, but Caitlyn was definitely missing in action. He did a quick cross search and found all the other patients’ records, but not one solitary entry on Caitlyn Bandeaux. A search didn’t bring up any files. He even looked through the computer’s “recycle bin,” but nothing on Caitlyn had been recently deleted.

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