her, his gaze filled with alarm. He lifted her off the edge of the tub and she melted against his solid chest, circling his neck with grateful arms and closing her eyes again. Wrapped in his arms, she felt safer than she had since this ordeal began.
And then she felt a creepy sensation steal over her body. Flat black eyes stared at her behind a glistening silver curtain. Red hot hands grabbed her.
Screaming, she pushed her attacker away. The jolt when she hit the floor forced another scream from her throat.
“Grace, Grace, it’s okay,” Mac said.
She was on the floor. Mac bent over her. Gathering her in his arms, he held her for a moment while the fear subsided and the tears died in her throat. He helped her to her feet and onto the bed. She looked around for her assailant. No one else was in the room.
Somewhere in her head, she knew there never had been.
Mac tucked her between snow-white sheets. She caught his hand and held it for a moment, loath to give up the connection. She wanted to thank him for helping her, but the words were swallowed by fatigue and she drifted off to oblivion…or death.
What was the difference?
MAC SAT at his desk. He downed a stiff drink in two swallows.
The desk had been his father’s. Mac had grown up doing his homework on its polished surface, shoving aside the blotter and suffering his father’s wrath when the older man caught him doing it. Mac now ran his finger over the myriad of shallow indentations that still existed, ghosts of long-ago essays and algebra equations.
He stared down the hall at the bedroom door that he’d left slightly ajar and wondered what he was going to do with this woman come morning. He reviewed the impulses that had led him to bringing her into his home. Her confusion. Her distress. Her minor injury. Her robotic behavior.
Her vulnerability.
Her fragile beauty.
The memory of his mother…
That’s how she’d gotten here.
Now he was confronted with the realization that she was, or had been, married. She’d been pregnant, possibly still had a living child waiting for her return. Had she run away from her husband and her child?
Like his mother had.
Tempted to pour himself another drink, he stayed seated instead.
She was an addict. Drugs, liquor…something. If the marks on her arm weren’t witness enough, that fit she’d had while he carried her to bed was. She’d gone berserk, sleeping like an angel one moment and screaming like a banshee the next. He would spend the night in this chair to keep an eye on her, and then the next morning, he would take her to Sister Theresa’s or back to her alley, whichever she wanted.
And what about her child?
Burying his head in his hands, he found it almost impossible not to feel that child’s loss. He understood all too well the ache for a mother who has vanished, the ache that never goes away.
But what could he do?
Find him or her?
Find Grace’s husband?
How did someone do any of that when the person he was helping didn’t seem to have the slightest clue as to who they were?
Swearing at all the ambiguities, he opened the drawer and took out a dozen pages of facts and figures. Maybe he could lose himself in his work.
Once upon a time, way back when, Mac had had a best friend named Rob Confit, an army buddy who died as a result of injuries suffered in a helicopter crash. Since Rob’s death, Mac had become close to Rob’s father, and now the elder Confit was challenging the current mayor in next fall’s mayoral race.
It was Bill Confit’s contention that the city government’s mishandling of homelessness within Billington had resulted in skyrocketing inner-city crime. Appointing a privately funded task force to investigate this situation, Confit had asked Mac to act as chairman. Who better, he’d asked, than a former cop who’d risked his career to unveil corruption within the police force?
There was no way in the world Mac would think of denying Confit’s request. At first, he’d approached it readily, able to put his own past in perspective. But gradually, he’d come to see his mother’s face superimposed on every derelict he came across and the old wounds resurfaced.
Hence the need he felt to get out on the streets and see how the people who had next to nothing managed to survive. Did they prey on one another and the public at large? Were they responsible for rising crime rates and dying inner cities, or were they the victims of apathy and budget crunches?
Mac didn’t know the answers yet, but he was becoming increasingly determined to make sure that the homeless and the defenseless didn’t take the brunt of the censure unless they deserved it.
So far, he didn’t think most of them did.
The current mayor disagreed.
The police disagreed.
Most of the committee disagreed.
And to top it off, Mac couldn’t swear his own agenda didn’t sway his conclusions. Most people thought facts and figures were foolproof, that there was only one way to translate dry, hard data. As an ex-cop, Mac knew nothing could be further from the truth. There was always room for interpretation.
But tonight he couldn’t make his eyes focus on the papers. He kept seeing flashes of the woman he’d dubbed Grace. Naked in the shower, her skin and features breathtaking; crying; dripping wet in the alley, looking at him from under the brim of his hat. Her tan lines suggesting recent sunbathing, marriage and happy times.
Her image seemed to fill his mind and even a little corner of his heart. He knew it was foolish and he knew it was dangerous. Not only for him, but for her. He just didn’t know what to do about it.
Rubbing his forehead, he shuffled the papers back into the drawer and thought to walk down the hall to check on Grace. He had every intention of doing this.
Sometime later, he awoke with a start. For a second, he felt confused, wondering why he’d fallen asleep at his desk, his head on his arms.
And then he sat up. The noise that had awakened him finally registered, and he tore off down the hall toward his bedroom.
Breaking glass. That’s what he’d heard. His guest had woken up, panicked and tried to escape. She’d hurt herself if she tried jumping to the sidewalk….
Light from the hall flooded the bedroom as he threw open the door. It twinkled off the shards of glass that littered the floor beneath the only window in the room, one that opened onto the street half a floor up from the sidewalk. A jagged brick lay amid the glass.
Grace had apparently slept right through the mayhem. Sidestepping the worst of the mess, he peered out the window. Sometime during the night, the rain had turned to snow, but not the greeting card variety. Instead of making the city glow, this snow just colored the world in shades of gray.
With a lingering look at Grace’s
