Killing Hour - Lisa Gardner [144]
She showered. First, hot and steamy to relax her tired muscles, then cool and crisp to eradicate all memories of the heat. She didn’t cry this time. She didn’t stand there with haunted images of her mother or sister. The worst of her grief had passed, and in some ways, she felt the most composed she’d been in weeks.
They had tried again. They had failed again. And soon, maybe in a day, maybe in an hour, they would try yet again. That’s the way life worked. She could either quit now, or forge ahead, and for whatever reason, she wasn’t the quitting type. So that was it, then. She had chosen her path. She would keep trying, and keep trying, even if some days it broke her heart.
She took her time drying off. She searched her small toiletry bag for the bottle of perfume she didn’t own. She wondered if she should do something with her hair, or put makeup on her wan face. She wished she possessed even a bottle of lotion to smooth over her sun-battered skin.
But she wasn’t that kind of girl. She didn’t travel with those kinds of things.
She walked back into the bedroom with a threadbare white towel wrapped self-consciously around her breasts. Mac still didn’t say anything. He merely grabbed his shaving kit and disappeared into the bathroom.
She put on a plain gray FBI T-shirt and waited as he showered.
It was pitch black outside now. Still hot, she imagined. Was that easier on a missing person than being someplace cold and dark? Or by now, was the girl delirious with her need for something cool and soothing against her overheated skin? It must seem like a ridiculous joke for the air to remain so hot, long after the sun had retreated from the sky.
Nora Ray had survived out there. She’d protected herself from the sun; she’d found a way to keep cool as endless day slipped into day. How small she must have felt, as she dug deeper into the marsh and waited for someone to find her in the vast line of a coastal horizon. She’d never given up hope, however. She’d never succumbed to panic. And in the end, she’d survived.
Only to lose sight of the victory in her grief for her sister. She had won the battle, then lost the war. It was such an easy thing to do.
The shower shut off. Kimberly heard the rake of metal as the shower curtain was pulled back. Her breathing grew uneven. She took a seat in the broken-down chair next to the TV. Her hands trembled on her thighs.
The sound of running water in the sink. A toothbrush sudsing across teeth. Now some fresh splashes. He was probably shaving.
Kimberly got up, paced the room. She had had final exams easier than this. She had held her first loaded firearm with less trepidation. Oh, how could this be so hard?
Then the door opened. Mac was standing there, freshly showered, freshly shaven, with just a towel wrapped around his lean, tanned waist.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said softly. “Come here often?”
She crossed to him, placed her hands on his bare shoulders and it wasn’t so difficult after all.
Nora Ray didn’t sleep. Alone at last in the motel room, she plopped down in an old chair and contemplated her traveling bag. She knew what she needed to do. Funny, now that the moment was at hand, she was stalling. She was nervous.
She hadn’t thought it would feel like this. She’d expected to be stronger, more triumphant. Instead, she was terrified.
She got up out of the chair, idly inspecting the room. The lumpy double bed. The cheap TV cabinet, covered in fresh nicks and ancient water rings. The TV itself, so old and small no one would even consider it worth stealing. She counted the cigarette burns in the carpet.
Three years was such a long time. She could be wrong, but she didn’t think so. You didn’t forget your last moments with your sister. Nor one man’s voice saying, “You need some help, ladies?”
So now here she was. And now here he was. What was she going to do?
She crossed to her bag, unzipped the canvas top, reached in and pulled out the plastic Ziploc bag that passed as her toiletry kit. She hadn’t lied to Mac. There wasn