But then his gaze froze on her. He stopped moving. He had Charles’s eyes-large and black, with flecks of brown, surrounded by thick lashes. She and Charles had lived together eight intimate years, and she knew every gesture, every nuance of his expressions, and how he reacted. His eyes radiated shock, then narrowed in fear. He tilted back his head-pride. And finally there was the emotionless expression she knew so well when confronted with the unexpected. His lips formed the word Eva.
The room seemed to fade away, and the chattering talk vanished as she tried to breathe, to feel the beat of her heart, to know her feet were planted firmly on the floor. She struggled to think, to understand how Charles could still be alive. Relief washed through her as she realized she had not killed him. But how could he have survived the car crash? Abruptly her grief and guilt turned into stunned rage. She had lost two years because of him. Lost most of her friends. Her reputation. Her career. She had mourned and blamed herself-while he had been alive the entire time.
As he scowled at her, she pulled out her cell phone, touched the keypad, and focused the cell’s video camera on him.
His scowl deepened, and with a jerk of his head, he cupped his left ear and dove into the crowd.
“Charles, wait!” She rushed after him, dodging people, leaving a trail of disgusted remarks.
He brushed past an older couple and slid deeper into the masses. She raised up on her toes and spotted him skirting a display cabinet. She ran. As he elbowed past a circle of women, his shoulder hit a waiter carrying a tray of full wineglasses. The tray cartwheeled; the glasses sailed. Red wine splashed the women. They yelled and slipped on their high heels.
While guests stared, security guards grabbed radios off their belts, and Charles dashed out the door. Eva tore after him and down the stairs. The guards shouted for them to stop. As she reached the landing, a sentry peeled away from the wall, lowering his radio.
“Stop, miss!” He raced toward her, pendulous belly jiggling.
She put on a burst of speed, and the guard had no time to correct. His hands grabbed at her trench coat and missed. Stumbling forward, he fell across the railing, balancing precariously over the full-story drop.
She stopped to go back to help, but a man in a dark blue peacoat leaped down three steps and pulled the guard back to safety.
Cursing the time she had lost, Eva resumed her pell-mell run down the steps, the feet of guards hammering behind her. When she landed on the first floor, she accelerated past the elevators and into the cavernous Great Court. Thunder cracked loudly overhead, and a burst of rain pelted the high glass dome.
She saw Charles again. With an angry glance back at her across the wide expanse, he hurtled past a hulking statue of the head of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III.
She chased after, following him into the museum’s Front Hall. Visitors fell back, silent, confused, as he rushed past. Two sentries were standing on either side of the open front door, both holding radios to their ears and looking as if they had just been given orders.
As Charles approached them, she saw his back stiffen.
His words floated back to her, earnestly telling the pair in Charles’s deep voice, “She’s a madwoman… She has a knife.”
Enraged, she ran faster. The guards glanced at each other, and Charles took advantage of their distraction to lunge between them and sprint out into the stormy night.
Silently Eva swore. The two guards had recovered and were standing shoulder to shoulder, facing her, blocking the opening.
“Halt,” the taller of the two commanded.
She bolted straight at them. As their eyes narrowed, she paused and slammed the heels of her hands into each man’s solar plexis in teish karate strikes.
Surprised, the air driven from their lungs, they staggered, giving her just enough of an opening. In seconds she was outside. Cold rain bled in sheets from the roiling sky, drenching her, as she rushed down the stone steps.
Charles was a black sliver in the night, arms swinging as he propelled himself across the long forecourt toward the museum’s entry gates.
“Dammit, Charles. Wait!”
The shriek of a police siren was growing louder, closer. Breathing hard, she raced after him and out onto Great Russell Street. Vehicles cruised past, their tires splashing dark waves of water up onto the sidewalk. Pedestrians hurried along, umbrellas open, a phalanx of bobbing rain gear.
As she slowed, looking everywhere for Charles, hands grabbed her from behind. She struggled, but the hands held fast.
“You were told to halt,” a museum guard ordered, panting.
Another one ripped away her shoulder satchel.
A Metropolitan Police car screeched to the curb. Uniformed bobbies jumped out and pushed Eva against the car, patting her down. Frustrated, furious, she twisted around and saw Charles step into a taxi near the end of the block. As she stared, its red taillights vanished into traffic.
9
THE POLICE interview room was a cramped space on a lower floor of the thirteen-story Holborn Police Station, just seven blocks from the British Museum.
“Well, there, Dr. Blake, it seems you weren’t being truthful with me.” Metropolitan Police inspector Kent Collins nodded at the police guard standing in the corner, who nodded back. The inspector closed the door behind him, sealing out the world. “You told me your husband was dead. You didn’t tell me you were convicted of killing him.”
He was a bristly man with a large nose and, despite the late hour, smoothly shaved cheeks. Tough, impeccable, and definitely in charge, he was carrying a crisp new manila file folder under his arm.
Eva’s hands were in her lap, rotating the gold wedding band on her finger. She had not been able to phone Tucker Andersen because she had not been alone since the police arrested her. His warning to tell no one about her assignment was loud in her mind. But how was she going to get out of this? Could she, even?
“I said Charles was supposed to be dead,” she told the inspector. “If I’d filled you in on the rest, you might not have heard me out. The man I saw was Charles Sherback. My husband. Alive.” Then she reminded him, “I’m not the one who lied to the museum guards. He did. He told them I had a knife. They searched me. There was no knife.”
Inspector Collins slapped down his file folder and dropped into a plastic chair at the end of the table next to her so they would be sitting close but at a ninety-degree angle. She recognized the technique: If you want someone to resonate with you, sit shoulder to shoulder. But if you need to challenge them, face them. The ninety-degree angle gave him flexibility.
He turned, facing her. “We’re a little on the busy side to be searching among the living for a man who’s dead and buried.”
“Charles not only lied about the knife, he ran because he recognized me.”
“Or he ran because he was some innocent bloke you were harassing.”
“But then he would’ve complained to the guards about me.”
The inspector lost his patience. “Bollocks. You-not him-assaulted the two sentries at the museum’s entrance.”
“I didn’t have time to stop to prove I didn’t have a knife and explain why I needed to catch Charles. And another thing-I have a black belt in karate. I could’ve hurt the guards badly. Instead I hit them just hard enough to make them step back and take deep breaths. Did either file a personal complaint?” She suspected not, since there had been no mention of it.
“As a matter of fact, no.”
She nodded. “This is a lot bigger than just me. Charles is alive, and someone else must be buried in his grave. Will you please look for him?”
Inspector Collins’s expression said it all-he thought she was mad. “How do you expect us to find him? You don’t have an address. Nothing concrete at all.”