Cross My Heart (Alex Cross 21)

“Name several, then.”

“How about Body Heat, the entire movie? I saw it over in Afghanistan. As I remember it, William Hurt and Kathleen Turner are, well, scorching, but maybe that was because I’d been in the desert far too long by that point.”

Guin laughed, deep, unabashed. “You’re right. They were scorching, and humid too. Remember how their skin was always damp and shiny?”

Nodding, I poured the rest of the wine into my glass, said, “The English Patient would be up there too. That scene where Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas are in that room in the heat with the slats of light, and they’re bathing together?”

She raised her glass. “Certainly a contender. How about Shampoo?”

I shot her a look of arch amusement, said, “Warren Beatty in his prime.”

“So was Julie Christie.”

There was a moment between us. Then my cell phone rang.

Guin shook her head. I glanced at the ID: Sherman Wilkerson.

“Damn,” I said. “Big client. Big, big client. I…I’ve got to take this, Guin.”

She protested, “But I was just going to nominate the masquerade ball in Eyes Wide Shut.”

Shooting Guin an expression of genuine shared sympathy and remorse, I clicked ANSWER, turned from her, said, “Sherman. How are you?”

“Not very damned well, Jack,” Wilkerson shot back. “There are sheriff’s deputies crawling the beach in front of my house, and at least four dead bodies that I can see.”

I looked at Guin, flashed ruefully on what might have been, said, “I’m on my way right now, Sherman. Ten minutes tops.”

Speeding north into Malibu on Pacific Coast Highway, driving the VW Touareg I use when the weather turns sloppy, I could still smell Guin, still hear her words to me before the cab took her away: “No more dress rehearsals, Jack.”

Pulling up to Sherman Wilkerson’s gate, I felt like the village idiot for leaving Guin, wanted to spin around and head for her place in Westwood.

Wilkerson, however, had recently hired my firm, Private Investigations, to help reorganize security at Wilkerson Data Systems offices around the world. I parked in an empty spot in front of the screen of bougainvillea that covered the wall above the dream home Wilkerson had bought the year before for his wife, Elaine. Tragically, she’d died in a car wreck a month after they moved in.

Head ducked to the driving rain, I rang the bell at the gate, heard it buzz, went down steep wet stairs onto a terrace that overlooked the turbulent beach. Waves thundered against the squalling wind that buffeted various LA Sheriff’s vehicles converged on a crime scene lit

by spotlights.

“They’re in the fire, four dead men, Jack,” said Wilkerson, who’d come out a sliding glass door in a raincoat, hood up. “You can’t see them now because of the tarps, but they’re there. I saw them through my binoculars when the first cop showed up with a flashlight.”

“Anyone come talk to you?”

“They will,” he said, close enough that I could see his bushy gray brows beneath the hood. “Crime scene abuts my property.”

“But you have nothing to worry about, right?”

“You mean did I kill them?”

“Crime scene abuts your property.”

“I was at work with several people on my management team until after midnight, got here around one, looked down on the beach, saw the flashlight, used the binoculars, called you,” Wilkerson said.

“I’ll take a look,” I said.

“Unless it’s dire, tell me about it all in the morning, would you? I’m exhausted.”

“Absolutely, Sherman,” I said, shook his hand. “And one of my people is coming in behind me, in case you have the driveway alert on.”

He nodded. I headed to the staircase to the beach, watched Wilkerson go into his house and turn on a light, saw moving boxes piled everywhere.