him.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Sara dismissed his apology. “No—don’t be sorry.” She hesitated. “It was a body. A murder. Wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” Nick was taken aback. “How did you know?”
“I have a confession to make, too.”
Nick waited.
“I didn’t sit down here because of the fire. I was standing behind you for about two minutes before I approached the table. You were pretty absorbed in your computer.”
“You saw the pictures.”
Sara nodded. “I have to tell you,” she said, smiling wryly. “I was pretty relieved just now when you told me you were a reporter.”
Nick took a fresh look at the beautiful woman in front of him, intrigued that she would sit down with him after seeing the images on the screen of his laptop.
“You took those pictures today?”
Nick lowered his eyes.
“So you were there. Standing right there, I mean. Almost on top of her.”
“Yes.” Close enough to smell her.
“No wonder you’re freaked out.”
From the corner of his eye, Nick noticed Sara’s gaze traveling down his legs, taking in the mud drying on his shoes.
“It scares me”—Sara said, shivering slightly—“and I wasn’t even there. To see a body like that, it must be pretty frightening—no matter how many times you’ve been around crimes like that before.”
“It is,” Nick admitted.
“I didn’t really get a good look at the pictures. But I could see how violent the crime was. The guy who did it must have been crazy.”
“That’s not what scares me.”
Sara was silent, waiting for Nick to meet her stare, waiting for him to continue.
“It scares me more how sane he was.”
Again, Sara shivered. “What do you mean?”
Nick regretted that he had let them dwell so long on the murder.
“Tell me,” Sara said, prodding him.
“How the same person can be one thing at night,” Nick said at last, “and then something else during the day.”
Nick read Sara’s confusion.
“The guy stabbed this woman so many times—so brutally—she was nearly unrecognizable,” he explained. “This same guy, though, takes the time to gather her up and sneak her out to the bank of this river to dispose of the body. That’s what scares me. That the same person can somehow reconcile the two realities.”
“Because you think maybe we’re all capable of doing the same thing.” Sara’s eyes hadn’t left his face. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“To some degree—yeah, maybe.”
“Sane during the day. Killers at night.”
Once again, Nick looked down at the table.
“You think you’re capable of it?”
Nick turned Sara’s words over in his mind. He found himself wondering whether she was asking him a question. The truth is you’ve got to be a little insane to work a job like this. His own voice seemed to resonate in his head, and he felt his face flush.
“It still sounds pretty amazing,” Sara said into the awkward silence. “Your job, I mean.”
“And what about you?” Nick asked her, determined to change the subject. “What do you do? You’re not a student either, are you?”
A slight darkness clouded Sara’s expression. There was something overwhelmingly light about Sara, he realized in contrast. Her hair was silvery blond. Her eyes were translucently green. Her teeth were dazzlingly white. Her skin was ivory. Still, as radiant as she was, there was something mysterious about this woman in front of him, too, something elusive he couldn’t define. “No,” she said, “I’m not a student, either. Is it so obvious that I’m too old?”
Loosening up a little, Nick looked up and down her body, from the top of her head to her toes. After all, she had invited him to. “Not exactly,” he said. “It’s not that you look too old to be a student. You seem too focused.”
“That’s the last thing I am.” Sara’s laugh was genuine, and Nick felt himself relax even more. “Just say it, I look too old to be a student.”
He refused the bait and pushed the compliment another way. “Too polished anyway.”
“I’m an actress,” Sara said. “Well, off and on, anyway. Off right now. That’s why I’m back here in Seattle.”
“You’re from Seattle originally?”
“My parents live in Bellevue.”
“You’re staying with them?”
Sara shrugged. “For a while. Maybe I’ll get my own place one of these days. Or maybe I’ll just head back down to LA.”
“You’ve got something to head down there for? A project, I mean—a movie?”
Sara shook her head. “I’ve been lucky enough, I guess. But I haven’t pursued it as much as I should. I’m thinking maybe I’ll do something else entirely. Get into business, I don’t know.”
Nick’s cell phone vibrated, and he glanced down at its screen. Recognizing Laura Daly’s personal line from the Telegraph building, he remembered the staff meeting this morning, the first one for the month of October, when assignments would be handed out by the editors. The senior editor would no doubt be wondering where he was. “Excuse me,” Nick said. “I’ve got to take this.” He pressed a button on his phone and raised it to his ear. “Laura?”
“Were you planning to grace us with your presence, Nick?”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Nick threw a quick, embarrassed smile at Sara.
“Don’t sweat it. We’ll talk when you come in. Listen, you somewhere close? There’s something I’d like you to do now. A couple of blocks from here. It can’t wait. You got a pen?”
Nick cradled the phone against his shoulder and searched through his bag for pen and paper. After scrawling down an address, he snapped the phone shut and looked apologetically at Sara. “I’ve got to go.”
“Oh, really? That’s too bad.” When Sara glanced down at her watch, Nick noticed a gold and platinum Rolex loose on her wrist, its face set with diamonds. Not exactly the watch of a struggling actress.
“I
