He leaned back and spoke with great deliberation. "I'm the one who made the mistake. I was stupid and arrogant, and so obsessed with catching a killer I couldn't see beyond that goal. And I'm sorry. Not a day passes that I don't regret what happened eight years ago. But it's done, Miranda. I can't go back and change anything, as much as I'd like to. I have to live with what I did, what I caused to happen. But..."
She didn't move, didn't prompt him or do anything except wait.
"But if anything happened now to you or Bonnie because of me, I couldn't live with that. I'm not asking for your forgiveness. I'm just asking you not to hurt yourself trying to keep me out. I'll stay out. I swear to you, I will."
Miranda would have liked to say something cool or mocking, but she didn't trust herself to say a word. Instead, she just turned and walked out, leaving him there.
And wondered how long she could keep the truth from him.
EIGHT
Wednesday, January 12
Liz Hallowell had learned at her grandmother's knee how to read faces. The color and shape of eyes, the angle of jaw and arch of brow, the curve of the mouth. They were all signposts, her gran had said, the outer directions to the soul.
So when she stepped outside her store in the early afternoon for a quick break and one of the rare cigarettes she allowed herself, and saw standing on the sidewalk only a few yards away the FBI agent with the marked face, she studied him intently. They hadn't yet been introduced; the other two agents had been in her coffee shop, but not this one.
He was talking to Peter Green, who owned the old-fashioned barbershop behind them, and Liz didn't have to read the tea leaves to know what they were discussing. Half of Randy's deputies and two of the three federal agents had been moving methodically through town all day, talking to everyone who might have seen something yesterday when the Penman boy had vanished. Nobody had talked to Liz yet.
Taking advantage of the time granted to her, she smoked and watched the agent, not especially worried if he noticed her stare. Most of the people on the streets were staring at him anyway, so why should she be different?
It was an interesting face. Fascinating, even. Her gran would have loved it. It was both unquestionably hard and unquestionably handsome, and the scar marking his left cheek didn't detract a bit from either quality. It was a face that kept the secrets of the man who wore it, yet to Liz it also revealed much of his character.
Even at a distance, the intensity of his pale gray eyes was almost hypnotic, the outward sign of deep and powerful emotions, and laugh lines at the corners suggested he was at least capable of laughing at himself. His mouth was sensitive and mobile, yet held firm with absolute mastery. His sharp jaw was strong, determined, his forehead high and exotically framed by the perfect widow's peak of gleaming black hair. The flying arch of his eyebrows hinted at quick wit, and the faint kink in the bridge of his aristocratic nose pointed to equally quick fists.
It was, Liz decided, the face of a brilliant, proud, highly perceptive man of considerable courage and acute compassion. It was also the face of a man who could be caustic, arrogant, impatient, and apt to act ruthlessly if he honestly believed the occasion called for it — and the results were important enough to him.
His friends, Liz thought, would never question his absolute loyalty or his willingness to do anything within his power to help in times of trouble. And his enemies would never doubt that once on their trail he simply would not give up.
Liz shivered without really being aware of it and drew her jacket more closely around her. But when the agent left Peter and approached her, she was able to sound perfectly calm. "My turn now?"
His sentry eyes studied her with interest. "You're Liz Hallowell?"
"That's me."
In a virtually automatic gesture, he showed her his I.D. "Noah Bishop."
Liz felt her eyebrows climbing. "Now, that's unexpected."
"What is?"
"Your name. Not the Bishop part, that's definitely you, but the Noah part. Noah was a caretaker, someone who offered comfort. Is that you?"
He smiled faintly. "I'm just a cop, Miss Hallowell." He paused and then, almost as if he couldn't help himself, added, "Why is the Bishop part definitely me?"
"Bishop means overseer." She barely hesitated. "I'm afraid I can't tell you anything about Steve Penman disappearing yesterday. I mean, I know that he did, but I didn't see anything. Not surprising, since the drugstore is at the other end of town."
"Do you know him?"
"Sure, as well as I knew any of the teenagers. To speak to. I didn't like him much."
"Why not?"
"The way he treated his girlfriends," she answered promptly.
"How does he treat them? Is he abusive?"
Liz took a long draw on her cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly before she spoke. "Depends on your definition of abusive, I guess. I never heard he hit any of them, or was physically rough in any other way. But he was a good-looking, charming kid who knew it and took advantage of it to get what he wanted. I don't think many girls said no to him, even though he had a track record of getting bored and moving on fairly quickly. What I didn't like was the way he seemed to view the girls as just something useful he carried along with him — like his backpack."
Bishop nodded and then, softly, said, "You keep using the past tense, Miss Hallowell. Do you know something I don't know?"
"I know he's lost. But you know that too."
"I know he's missing."
She shook her head. "You know more than that, Agent Bishop."
"Do I?"
"Sure. It's your job to know more, isn't it? They call what you do profiling, I hear. Which basically means you try to climb inside the head of the monster, figure out who he is and what he's going to do next. Isn't that right?"
"More or less."
"I wouldn't call that a pleasant job."
"That part of it isn't."
"But you're good at it, aren't you? You understand how the monsters think."
He shrugged. "There's a kind of logic even in insanity. It looks like a jigsaw puzzle, but all the pieces are there and usually fit together. It isn't that difficult to do once you know how."
Liz drew on her cigarette and blew out the smoke in a quick burst. "Maybe, but I'd say it was dangerous. If you go too deep into that insane logic, you might never get out."
Bishop smiled suddenly. "Who's interviewing whom, Miss Hallowell?"
Liz had to laugh. "Sorry. I'm incurably nosy, but I don't mean any harm. What was it you wanted to know? Why I believe Steve Penman won't be coming back? Well, I don't know monsters as well as you do, but one thing I do know about them is that they seldom leave their . . . prey . . . unharmed. Right?"
"Right."
"And this monster didn't leave behind any puzzle pieces for you guys to put together, did he?"
"Not many."
"Then Steve's lost, isn't he?"
Bishop looked at her for a long, steady moment, then smiled again. "I hear you read tea leaves, Miss Hallowell. Have you seen anything in the bottom of a cup lately that could help us?"
Liz listened for scorn or disbelief in his voice, and heard nothing except mild interest. It encouraged her to say, "I don't know how helpful it'll be, but he's trying to distract you — not you personally, I mean the investigation — by taking Steve Penman. There's something about one of the others he doesn't want you to look at closely. I don't know what it is, maybe a mistake he made or just something you have the ability to see more clearly than he bargained for, but it's there. And he's afraid you'll find it."
"So he took Steve Penman?"
Liz hesitated. "That's partly it. He had other reasons for picking Steve. I don't think he liked him." Unconsciously, she cocked her head, trying to hear what her gypsy blood was trying to tell her. "He was a little afraid of Steve — no, he was afraid of something Steve knew."